It is interesting to note how many of the world’s great monuments of art were produced by men who saw their country traveling the road to ruin, and pleaded in vain with the ruling classes. Cervantes himself was a devout Catholic, and would not have understood us if we had told him that Don Quixote typified the Spain of his time; the Spain which believed that the human mind could be shackled by religious bigotry, and forced by dungeon and torture and the stake to accept a set of theological dogmas. The Spaniards slaughtered or drove into exile their most intelligent population, the Moors; and Cervantes approved it. They set out to conquer the world for their hateful faith, and Cervantes saw their powerful Armada overthrown and destroyed by the little ships of sturdy, independent Englishmen, who had recently kicked out the pope from their country and taken charge of their own thinking. This pope had by formal decree presented England to Spain; but the old, crack-brained Don Quixote empire had been unable to take possession, and the sad gentleman-soldier, Cervantes, died without having understood any of these world-events. CHAPTER XXXIII OGI, ANGLOMANIAC Says Mrs. Ogi: “This is getting to be quite a respectable literary book: the very thing for club ladies here in Southern California, who hire somebody to read books for them, and tell them what the books are about. Here you’ve read thousands of books for them!” Says Ogi: “They’ll get all the culture of the ages in a lecture lasting three-quarters of an hour. I remember your telling how the Negro mammies chew up the babies’ food for them, and then feed it back into the babies’ mouths.” “Yes, but don’t you tell that!” cries Mrs. Ogi. “A little too Renaissancy?” laughs her husband. “With reasonable care,” persists the other, “you can break into literary society with this book. I understand you’re leading up to English literature; and that is where respectability begins and ends.” “You forget my Russian and German readers. Also, I’m sorry to report, we have to have another chapter of economics and politics.” “What’s happened now?”