As we haven't time to think--i. e., to make our own slides--naturally we haven't time to bring our collection together to see whether it is consistent. We are going about with a most extraordinary selection of slides. The only reason we get along with peace of mind is that we do not take our slides out of the different boxes at the same time. You keep your religious slides in one box, your moral slides in another, your business slides in another, your professional slides in another--and never take anything out of two pigeon-holes at once. For that reason you go through life without knowing what an extraordinary collection of hopelessly contradictory and mutually destructive ideas you are carrying about under that hat of yours. It is only by keeping these things in their boxes that we have anything like peace of mind. A few people, of course, are constantly going through their boxes, sifting, reorganizing and unifying their collections. These are the men and women who think, who have courage, and for the most part they represent genuine leadership. But most of us are satisfied to get our slides ready made, to get them in quantities and to have them remain a most heterogeneous accumulation. There is a vast popular demand for ready-made slides. In every possible way these substitutes for thought are being sent out. Political slides are industriously distributed. You notice the difficulty that you have just now in talking about the political situation in our glorious country. We do not yet know what to say. You see, the slides haven't yet been sent out for this week. We have to wait until the slide makers put them on the market. We are all waiting to know what to say; we are all waiting for a new set of slides which shall be adjusted to the new conditions. If you bring out that old slide about the Republican party that saved the country--No! You don't want to say anything about that. You see at once, even though it has saved the country for years--you can see that that slide won't do. It is cracked. Pardon a digression which enforces the point that in these days everything has to be pictorial. You see, when I am addressing a group of librarians in a jaded condition, I have to use pictorial illustrations. It is true, I should like to be didactic and pedagogic on an occasion like this, but you are in a psychological condition which makes it absolutely impossible. Even the thought of listening to these songs that are coming afterward, would not keep you if I were not constantly pictorial and keeping your minds filled with this beguiling imagery.