Being a blue point is not conducive to successful interviewing, so I shook off my lethargy and asked as to her favorite flower. “That is better,” approved her Grace. “I have two favorites—bachelors’ buttons and mock orange blossoms.” “If not yourself, who would you rather be?” “The author of one of the six ‘best sellers.’” “Who is your favorite character in history?” “I really must decline to answer.” I did not press the point, for one naturally looks for modesty in a Virgin Queen. “Do you mind telling me in what epoch you would have chosen to live?” “The reign of Terrible Teddy, by all means. Hesiod says there are five ages of the world; how is yours designated: golden, brazen, or—?” “This is the age of folly—the folly of flesh,” I answered. “Higher critics deny the decalogue and bone Jonah’s fish until it resembles an eel. Even our modern writers play ping pong with hearts and the seventh commandment, for to them love is nothing unless it brings in ten per cent royalty. Society has become sensuous; we are having rather too much of the body. The corsage serves no purpose but to hide the heart; bosom and back are bared before the footlights while gartered grace trips tantalizingly in the limelight. Soul has sunk beneath the seductions of the senses. The demon of desire so entices men that for the amorous allurement of Kipling’s Vampire—the woman who did not care—they would go to Hell and consider the trip an enjoyable excursion. Has virtue fled to hide its blushes in a nunnery and is there no longer a shrine of sex? Is ‘Don Juan’ to be deified and ‘Camille’ to be glorified? Will—but in deference to Colonel Comstock, I really must desist.” “Wherefore so pessimistic—jaundiced or jilted?” “More likely I’m dyspeptic.” “Don’t deny it; a lost love is the only justification of a man’s being a misanthropist and a misogynist.” “Won’t you kindly translate or at least tell me the language? Emerson always was a voiceless sphinx to me and foreign tongues are not articulate to ears deafened by the slang of the streets.” “Don’t be silly! Your idiomatic Americanisms make muddy the well of English undefiled, but methinks the water is the clearer and the more sparkling after each stirring up.