IN spite of all we've done for them -- by we I
mean the serious thinkers of the world -- some
people are so frightfully uncultured!
A girl asked me the other day -- and the surprising
thing about it, too, is that she belonged to our
own Little Group of Advanced Thinkers -- she asked
me: "Hermione, don't you just done on Rubaiyat's
poetry?"
For a moment I couldn't think who she meant at all.
"He's not an American, is he?" I said.
"Oh, no," she said, "he's some sort of an Oriental."
"It isn't Rubaiyat you're thinking of, my dear,"
I told her. It's Rabindranath. Rabindranath
Something-or-other, that new man -- he's wonderful,
my dear, simply wonderful."
And then she quoted some of it and -- the idea
is too absurd for anything, but what do you sup-
pose it was?
Omar Khayyam -- imagine!
And really, you know, it's been years since anybody
quoted Omar Khayyam; he's QUITE gone out, you know!
Even the question whether he was moral doesn't
attract any attention any more. Although as far
as that is concerned, the pure mind will get purity
out of him and the impure mind will get impurity.
Honi sit qui -- what is the rest of it? Oh, you
know -- it's Latin -- what the Romans used to say
about Caesar's wife and her continual suspicions.
My, how a suspicious wife can handicap a man!
But, of course, as women get more and more
advanced, and know about the lives men lead, they
are finding out that the suspicions were justified.
Their intuitions told them so all the time.
I have a lot of intuition myself -- the moment a
man comes I judge him in spite of myself.
First impressions always last with me, too.
You know, I'm very psychic.
Sometimes I am almost frightened when I think
of the things my intuition would tell me if I al-
lowed it to roam at will, so to speak, among my
friends and acquaintances.
But I restrain it. One must, you know. The
loveliest man gave us such an interesting talk on
self-restraint the other evening.
And now I always ask myself the last thing be-
fore I go to bed at night: "Have I restrained my-
self today? Or have I failed?"
There is no real culture without restraint, you know.
That's where the English are so superior, don't
you think?
I met the loveliest Englishman the other evening.
The moment I saw him I said to myself he
was one of the aristocracy. Other people have
noses like theirs, of course, but it is only the
English aristocracy who can CARRY that kind of a nose.
And my intuition was correct -- there are only
five lives between him and a title, and one of those
is a polo player and another is at the front.
Someone told me his family were paying him
not to go home, but what they think the poor man
would do if he were in England I don't know,
because they don't duel there, you know. If they
dueled there, of course, he might dispose of all
five lives.
Don't you think those old European families are
so, so -- well, so ROMANTIC somehow?