Phillips was eleven years older than myself, but we arrived upon the literary scene together, and I used to meet him now and then in New York. I have an idea that I annoyed him; he was generous in praising my books, but that did not satisfy me--I wanted to make a Socialist out of him, and he would not have it! He was the genuine old-fashioned American, the wearer of square-toed shoes and a string tie. I do not mean that I ever saw him in that costume, but that his view of human society was derived from that period. He came from the Middle West, and believed in the simple, small-town democracy he had there known. A man of common sense, he hated all forms of social pretense and finickyness. Like a good American, he respected money and the power of money, but he wanted the people who had this power to behave like sensible human beings, and he was infuriated because they took to putting on “side,” getting English butlers and five footmen in livery. He blamed this especially on the women. He loathed the modern parasitic female, to the extent of some twenty volumes, exposing every aspect of her foolishness and empty-headedness. She it was who dragged men to ruin, she caused the corruption of government and a general riot of greed, in order that she might have silk stockings and jewels and servants. She had spurned the jobs of cooking and sewing and making home, without ever having taken the trouble to learn to do these efficiently. Now she couldn’t do even her foolish society job; she couldn’t run a rich man’s household and be an intelligent companion, she couldn’t bear healthy children, or raise them to be anything but shirkers. Proper people were shocked by Phillips because he talked so plainly, and fastidious people considered him coarse. As a matter of fact, he was a man of tender heart and true refinement, who put on an aspect of rough common sense as a matter of principle. Cut out all this nonsense, he seems to say to his readers; you know we all want money, we all like comfort, we are all selfish creatures; you women especially are making silly pretenses, you know you have to be kept, and you prefer a man who is self-willed and masterful, a fighting man. So he recorded “The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig,” and irritated many fine ladies. So in “Old Wives for New” he preaches the common sense idea, that if a woman is lazy and sluttish and refuses to work at her job as wife, her husband is justified in getting rid of her and marrying a young and attractive woman. In “The Hungry Heart” he deals with the eternal triangle, and shows a husband forgiving an erring wife--which you would think was good Christian doctrine, but which is contrary to fancy notions of sexual implacability. In “The Husband’s Story” he portrays a wife who marries a man because she believes he will succeed; she helps him to succeed, and they rise high, but finding that the higher they get, the less interest there is in life.