APRIL 6, 1920.--Some time ago I wrote a bitter attack on H. 3rd, the reactionary, in which I stated that his political emotions made it necessary for his parents to avoid the use of "proletariat" and such words except when disguised by the expedient of spelling out "p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t." And it is only fair to say that the device takes a good deal of the zest out of sedition. I also stated at the time that we had been able to keep the picture of Trotzky over the mantelpiece in the red room by mendaciously telling H. 3rd that it was a portrait of Nicholas Murray Butler. It now becomes necessary for me to make a public apology to H. 3rd. It is perhaps a tasteless proceeding for me to drag his private political views into print, but the retraction ought to have as much publicity as the original slander. H. 3rd is not a reactionary. He is a liberal. It would have been perfectly safe for us to have said "proletariat" right out and to have confessed the identity of Trotzky. H. 3rd might not have been altogether in support, but he would have been interested. I discovered that he was a liberal early on Sunday morning while we were walking in Central Park. We happened to go near the merry-go-round and H. 3rd, drawn by the strains of "Dardanella," dragged me eagerly toward the pavilion. I supposed, of course, that he wanted to ride and had just time to strap him on top of a camel before the platform began to move. No sooner were we in motion round and round, slow at first and then faster and faster as the revolutions increased in violence, than H. 3rd began to cry. As soon as possible I lifted him back to the firm and stable ground and briskly started to walk away from the scene of his harrowing experience. I thought he wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but after a few steps I noticed that he was not following me. Instead he was hurrying back to the merry-go-round as fast as his legs would carry him. "Perhaps," I thought, "he intends to discipline his will and is going to ride that merry-go-round again just because he is so much afraid of it." I knew that people sometimes did things like that because I had read it in _The Research Magnificent_. H. 3rd is not among them. He howled louder than before when I tried to put him on the camel again. I even tested the fantastic possibility that it was the camel and not the carrousel to which he objected, but he yelled just as vigorously when offered a horse and later a unicorn.