Oh God, the democratic pin! Freedom, Equality, Equal Opportunity, Education, Rights of Man. The pin! The pin! Well, there buzzes Eve Effingham, snobbishly, impaled. She is a perfect American heroine, and I'm sure she wore the first smartly-tailored "suit" that ever woman wore. I'm sure she spoke several languages. I'm sure she was hopelessly competent. I'm sure she "adored" her husband, and spent masses of his money, and divorced him because he didn't understand LOVE. American women in their perfect "suits." American men in their imperfect coats and skirts! I feel I'm the superior of most men I meet. Not in birth, because I never had a great-grandfather. Not in money, because I've got none. Not in education, because I'm merely scrappy. And certainly not in beauty or in manly strength. Well, what then? Just in myself. When I'm challenged, I do feel myself superior to most of the men I meet. Just a natural superiority. But not till there enters an element of challenge. When I meet another man, and he is just himself--even if he is an ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox--then there is no question between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man. We are ourselves. There is no question between us. But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it is more at one with the gods than is his very self. If this is conceit, I am sorry. But it's the gods in me that matter. And in other men. As for me, I am so glad to salute the brave, reckless gods in another man. So glad to meet a man who will abide by his very self. Ideas! Ideals! All this paper between us. What a weariness. If only people would meet in their very selves, without wanting to put some idea over one another, or some ideal. Damn all ideas and all ideals. Damn all the false stress, and the pins. I am I. Here am I. Where are you? Ah, there you are! Now, damn the consequences, we have met. That's my idea of democracy, if you can call it an idea. V. FENIMORE COOPER'S LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS In his Leatherstocking books, Fenimore is off on another track. He is no longer concerned with social white Americans that buzz with pins through them, buzz loudly against every mortal thing except the pin itself. The pin of the Great Ideal. One gets irritated with Cooper because he never for once snarls at the Great Ideal Pin which transfixes him. No, indeed. Rather he tries to push it through the very heart of the Continent. But I have loved the Leatherstocking books so dearly. Wish-fulfilment!