That is a sad sort of situation. But sadder yet is the fact that in New York we lose sight of so many people whom we should like to see--friends of whom we are genuinely fond, but whose evolutions in the whirlpool of the city's life are such that we don't chance to come in contact with them. At first we try. We paddle toward them now and then. But the very act of paddling is fatiguing, so by and by we give it up, and either never see them any more, or, running across them, once in a year or two, on the street or in a shop, lament at the broken intimacy, and make new resolves, only to see them melt away again in the flux and flow of New York life. I thought of all this at a Sunday evening supper party in Grand Rapids--a neighborhood supper party at which a dozen or more people of assorted ages sat around a hospitable table, arguing, explaining, laughing, and chaffing each other like members of one great glorious family. It made me want to go and live there, too. Then I began to wonder how long I'd really want to live there. Would I always want to? Or would I grow tired of that, just as I grow tired of the contrasting coldness of New York? In short, I wondered to myself which is the worst: to know your neighbors with a wonderful, terrible, all-revealing intimacy, or--not to know them at all. I have thought about it often, and still I am not sure. The Grand Rapids "Press" fearing that I might fail to notice certain underlying features of Grand Rapids life, printed an editorial at the time of my visit, in which attention was called to certain things. Said the "Press": It isn't immediately revealed to the stranger that this is one of the clearest-thinking communities in the country. The records of the public library show the local demand for books on sociology, on political economy, on the relations of labor and capital, on taxation, on art, on the literature that has some chance of permanency. The topics discussed in the lecture halls, in the social centers, and in the Sunday gatherings, which are so pronounced a feature of church life here, add to the testimony. Ida M. Tarbell noticed that on her first visit. Her impression deepened on her second.... Without tossing any bouquets at ourselves it can be said that we are thinking some thoughts which only the elect in other cities dream of thinking. I should like to make some intelligent comment on this. I feel, indeed, that something very ponderous, and solemn, and authoritative, and learned, and wise, and owlish, and erudite, ought to be said.