“I think, Bernice, it must be because they’ve missed the meaning of true culture entirely. They have a blind pride groping for higher things. That’s fine and commendable. But they don’t stop to reason why that culture should be, what lies at the bottom of it, I mean. Speaking for myself, I’ve reasoned it that real culture has its base and foundation in an inherent appreciation of the Beautiful. And unless one has an inherent taste and appreciation of the Beautiful, dear, and builds all things upon that, they’re merely apes and imitators. They’re ludicrously copying the behavior and tastes of those who have. People who do the most worrying about their culture, as you phrase it, are not worrying about their own sense of the beautiful and appropriate. They’re worrying because they may not be aping correctly some one who has the fundamentals and is letting culture take care of itself. Having no fundamentals of their own, the imitators, I mean, merely a superficial, competitive pride, they fret their lives away. They make themselves and all those around them miserable—acting a part instead of living a part.” “Well,” continued Bernie, “mother crammed royalty and culture down my throat so long and hard that when I got outside I just had to explode. I guess you’re right, Madge; I never had it reasoned out for me why I should do this or that. Mother’s battle-cry was, ‘It simply isn’t done by the Best People!’ I got so heartily sick of those Best People—whoever they were—that I wanted to shriek. This thing wasn’t nice and that thing wasn’t proper. The Best People never did exactly the things I hungered to do. And everything was ‘shocking! shocking!’ Life wasn’t like that. I saw it soon enough. And repressing all my curiosity and impulse to get my share of fun out of it grew more and more unbearable. I remember once I went on a picnic. I wandered off in the woods with one of the little hicks of our town. I wanted to be just as bad as I knew how. But all my poor little pate could conceive was kissing him and letting him kiss me as much as I pleased—and taking off shoes and stockings and paddling in a brook. I felt I was getting back at mother. Though why I should get back at her, or what I hoped to gain by it, I never stopped to think. Mother never told me anything about myself. She never sat down and reasoned with me. She never tried to make me understand what my impulses meant or why I possessed them. It seemed as if everything natural and normal was just shocking, shocking——” “And hasn’t the reason for intuitive decency and normality ever occurred to you, dear?” “I never stop to reason things out. I’m not like you, Madge! I go more by my feelings.” Madelaine toyed thoughtfully with a tiny gold watch chain encircling her neck. “Sometimes, dear,” she observed, “when I think how narrow and short-sighted and unfair some parents seem to be, I wonder the race is as clean and decent as it is.”