"These wealthy women," he said, "take up reform work as a recourse. Society life is not very filling. They have a sense of emptiness. So they go in for reform, to fill out their lives more adequately. "But I don't know that I'd call that kind of thing reform. I'd call it a large form of social activity. These women are attending to a great mass of people who need this attention. But the bulk of this kind of work is too small for it to be called reform. "In New York there are very many young people who need care and leadership. The neglected and incompetent must be looked after. The old-fashioned family control has been considerably loosened, and an attempt must be made to guard those who are therefore less protected than they would have been a generation ago. Certainly these efforts to look after young people who don't have enough care taken of them by their families are directed in the right direction." I asked Mr. Martin what he thought of the present condition of American literature, particularly the work presented to the public on the pages of magazines. "Just now," he said, "the newspapers seem to have almost everything. The great interest of the last few years has been in the newspapers. They have had a tremendous story to tell, they have told it every day, and other things have seemed, in comparison, flat and lifeless. "It has been a hard time for every sort of a publication not absolutely up to the minute all the time. The newspapers have had the field almost to themselves. "And I think that the newspapers have greatly improved. They have had an immense chance, and it has been very stimulating." _COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT_ ROBERT HERRICK "Realism," said Robert Herrick, "is not the celebration of sexuality." I had not recalled to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation to go a-Maying still echoes in the heart of every lover of poetry. The Robert Herrick with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating critic of poetry, but the world knows him chiefly for his novels--_The Common Lot_, _Together_, _Clark's Field_, and other intimate studies of American life and character. He is a realist, and not many years ago there were critics who thought that his manner of dealing with sexual themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the statement that he had just made seemed to me particularly significant. "It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term Realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by novelists and critics as well as by the public.