[1] Getting and Spending at the Professional Standard of Living. By J. B. Peixotto. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1927. [2] Incomes and Living Costs of a University Faculty. Edited by Y. Henderson and M. D. Davis. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1928. [3] Teachers’ Salaries 1926-7. By Trevor Arnett. General Education Board. 1928. [Pg 193] CHAPTER IX THE MUCKER POSE [Pg 195] THE MUCKER POSE I This borrowed title expresses better than any I have been able to devise for myself a problem which has recently been put to me by several of my American friends, men who on account of both their profession and positions are familiar with the more cultured portion of the American scene. The question which they put is one that I have been hesitatingly asking myself as I contrast that scene on successive returns from abroad with the one very obviously to be observed in this respect in France or England. “Why,” they ask, “is it that a gentleman in America nowadays seems afraid to appear as such; that even university men try to appear uncultured; and that the pose of a gentleman and a scholar is that of the man in the street?” A few nights ago another friend of mine, a literary editor of some importance in New York, complained in the course of the evening’s talk that the verbal criticism of many of the writers whom he knew had descended to the moronic classifications of “hot stuff,” “bully,” “rot,” and so on. These writers, often meticulous in the artistry of their own work and thoroughly competent to criticize acutely and intelligently that of others, appeared afraid to do so lest they be considered as literary poseurs. The real pose in their cases was in talking like news-agents on a railroad train; but that appeared to them to be safe,[Pg 196] whereas vague danger lurked in conversing as would any intelligent French or English critic.