Naturally, we have no right to imply that nothing of consequence can happen in wild and strange places. There is just as much romance on Chinese junks as on Jersey Central ferryboats. But no more. Here is the crux of our complaint. Conrad and Kipling and the rest have written so magnificently about the far places that we have come to think of them as the true home of romance. Indeed, we have almost been induced to believe that there is nothing adventurous west of Suez. Hereabouts, it seems as if one qualified as a true romancer simply from the fact of living in Shanghai or Singapore, or just off the island of Carimata. And yet we suppose there are people in Shanghai who cobble shoes all day long and sleep at nights, and that there are dishes to be washed in Singapore. For our own part, we remember that we once spent ten days in Peking, and our liveliest recollection is that one night we held a ten high straight flush in hearts against two full houses. One of them was aces and kings. That was adventure, to be sure, and yet we have held a jack high straight flush in clubs against four sixes in no more distant realm than West Forty-fourth Street. Adventure is like that. It always seizes upon a person when he least expects it. There is no good chasing to the ends of the earth after romance. Not if you want the true romance. It moves faster than tramp steamers or pirate schooners. We hold that there is no validity in the belief that a little salt will assist the capture; no, not even when it is mixed with spume, or green waves, or purple seas. Only this year we saw a play about a youngster who pined away to death because he neglected to accept an opportunity to sail around the world. He wanted adventure. He starved for romance. He felt sure that it was in Penang and not in the fields of his father's farm. It was not reasonable for him thus to break his heart. If Romance had marked him for her own the hills of Vermont would have been no more a barrier to her coming than the tops of the Andes. Reform Through Reading Virtue, good health, efficiency and all the other subjects which are served up in the numberless thick volumes with a purpose seldom seem desirable when the propagandist has finished his say about them. For instance, we began the day with a firm determination never to smoke again--that is, not for some time--and then we ran across _Efficiency Through Concentration_, by B. Johnston. Since then we light the new cigarette from the dying embers of the old. The passage which enraged us most occurs in a chapter called "Personal Habits," in which the author writes: "If you are a gentleman always ask a lady's permission before smoking, and if you find that her statement that it is disagreeable to her is a disappointment to you, and that your observance of her wishes causes you real discomfort, then you may know that the time has come to give up the habit entirely."