To think of women or to describe them, especially in our printed or publicly uttered word, as anything less than the paragon previously commented upon has become, by this process, not only a sin but a shameful infraction of the moral code. Women are now so good, the sex relationship so vile a thing that to think of the two at once is not to be thought of. They are supposed to have no connection. We must move in a mirage of illusion; we must trample fact underfoot and give fancy, in the guise of our so-called better natures, free rein. How this must affect or stultify the artistic and creative faculties of the race itself must be plain, yet that is exactly where we stand to-day, ethically and spiritually, in regard to sex and women, and that is what is the matter with American social life, letters and art. Imagine a puritan or a moralist attempting anything in art, which is nothing if not a true reflection, emotional and intellectual, of insight into life! Imagine! And contrast this moral or art narrowness with the American’s commercial or financial or agricultural freedom and sense, and note the difference. In regard to all the latter he is cool, skeptical, level-headed, understanding, natural, consequently well-developed in those fields; in regard to this other he is disillusioned, theoretic, religious. In consequence he has no power, except for an occasional individual who may rise in spite of these untoward conditions (to be frowned upon), to understand, much less picture, life as it really is. Artistically, intellectually, philosophically we are weaklings; financially and in all ways commercial we are very powerful. So one-sided has been our development that in this latter respect we are almost giants. Strange, almost fabulous creatures have been developed here by this process, men so singularly devoid of a rounded human nature that they have become freaks in the matter of money-getting. I refer to Rockefeller, Gould, Sage, Vanderbilt the first, H. H. Rogers, Carnegie, Frick.