This may sound worldly. The people of the United States used to consider it worldly to admire pictures or to listen to beautiful music. Some think so still. Many a citizen of what was lately the prairie sits down to his dinner in his shirt-sleeves to-day and pretends to be thankful that he is neither an aristocrat nor a gold-bug. The next week, perhaps, this same citizen will vote against a national bankrupt law because he does not wish to pay his debts, or vote for a bill which will enable him to pay them in depreciated currency. Many a clergyman who knows better gives his flock consolingly to understand that to be absorbed in the best human interests of life is unworthy of the Christian, and that to be ordinary and unattractive is a legitimate condition of mind and body. Surely the best Americanism is the Americanism of the man or woman who makes the most of what this life affords, and throws himself or herself keenly into the thick of it. The art of living is the science of living nobly and well, and how can one live either nobly or well by regarding life on the earth as a mere log-cabin existence? If we in this country who seek to live wisely are in danger from the extravagant vanities of the very rich, we are scarcely less menaced by that narrow spirit of ethical teaching which tries to inculcate that it does not much matter what our material surroundings are, and that any progress made by society, except in the direction of sheer morality, is a delusion and a snare. Character is the basis and the indispensable requisite of the finest humanity; without it refinement, appreciation, manners, fancy, and power of expression are like so many boughs on a tree which is dead. But, on the other hand, what is more uninspiring than an unadorned soul? That kind of virtue and morality which finds no interest in the affairs of this life is but a fresh contribution to the sum of human incompetence, and but serves to retard the progress of civilization. The true and the chief reason why there is less misery in the world than formerly is that men understand better how to live. That straight-laced type of American, who is content to be moral in his own narrow way, and to exclude from his scheme of life all those interests which serve to refine and to inspire, bears the same relation to the ideal man or woman that a chromo bears to a masterpiece of painting.