He read as little as possible of the trade-journals which Eva left lying around the house, but the other day in kindling a fire with one his eye had been caught by a passage the phrases of which had fixed themselves in that sensitive verbal memory of his and were not to be dislodged:--“Morally, esthetically, emotionally _and_ commercially, America is helped, uplifted, advanced by the efforts of you and me to induce individual Americans first to want and then to acquire more of the finer things of life. Take fine jewelry. It makes the purchaser a better person by its appeal to the emotional and esthetic side of his or her nature.... Desire for the rich and tasteful adornments obtainable at the jewelry store expresses itself in stronger attempts to acquire the means to purchase. This means advancement for America! Should you not, bearing this wonderful thought in mind, be enthused to broaden your contact with the buying public by increasing your distributing....” They wrote that sort of thing by the yard, by the mile! And they were right. That was the real business of life, of course. He had always known it. That was why men who did other things, teachers, or poets, or musicians, or ministers, were so heartily despised by normal people. And as for any man who might try to be a parent.... Why, the fanatic feminists were right, after all. Under its greasy camouflage of chivalry, society is really based on a contempt for women’s work in the home. The only women who were paid, either in human respect or in money, were women who gave up their traditional job of creating harmony out of human relationships and did something really useful, bought or sold or created material objects. As for any _man’s_ giving his personality to the woman’s work of trying to draw out of children the best there might be in them ... fiddling foolishness! Leave it to the squaws! He was sure that he was the only man who had ever conceived even the possibility of such a lapse from virile self-respect as to do what all women are supposed to do. He knew well enough that other men would feel for such a conception on his part a stupefaction only equaled by their red-blooded scorn.