On page four the reader will find that young Hugh has been apprenticed to work on the sewers and after that, as the writer warms to his task, things begin to grow less cheerful. This particular exhibit happens to be taken from Sherwood Anderson's _Poor White_, but if we go north to Gopher Prairie, celebrated by Sinclair Lewis in _Main Street_, we shall find: "A fly-buzzing saloon with a brilliant gold and enamel whisky sign across the front. Other saloons down the block. From them a stink of stale beer, and thick voices bellowing pidgin German or trolling out dirty songs--vice gone feeble and unenterprising and dull--the delicacy of a mining camp minus its vigor. In front of the saloons, farm wives sitting on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and ready to start home." Wander as you will through the novels of the year, I assure you that things will be found to be about the same. Of course, it is possible now and again to get away from the stale beer, but once a story enters prohibition time the study of starved souls and complexes begins. There are also books in which there isn't any mud, but these pay particular attention to the stifling dust. It must be that all this sort of life has been going on for some time, but naturally during the war when the Hun was at the gate it would hardly have been patriotic to talk about it. Now that it's all among friends we can talk about our morals and habits and they seem to range from none to appalling. I can't testify completely to the state of affairs reported upon by the novelists, because I have spent a good deal of time recently in the theater and it is only fair to say that there, at any rate, peach jam and country air still combine to reform city dwellers, and people get married and live happily ever after, and some of them dance and sing and make jokes, and, of course, sunlight and moonlight and pink dresses and green ones and gold and silver ones, too, abound. My aunt says that this is just as it should be. "There's so much unhappiness in the world," she says, "that why should we pay money to see shows and read books that help to remind us about it. The man worth while," she says, "is the man who can smile when everything goes dead wrong." Practically all the shows in town seem to have been written to please my aunt, but I don't agree with her at all. As a matter of fact, she lives in Pelham and has never heard of Freud or Jung. I tried to convince her once that practically all of what we call the civilized world is inhibited, and she interrupted to say that the last Saturday night lecturer told them the same thing about Mars. Perhaps it will be just as well to leave my aunt out of the story at this point and go on to explain why the modern novel is more stimulating and encouraging to the ego than the modern play.