I couldn’t but admit that there were two sides to the problem of our parents. It was shameful to be ashamed of them. But it was also human. I couldn’t--and can’t--utterly damn in Edna a fault, a vulgar weakness, I myself had, and almost everyone I knew. No doubt, gentle reader, you are scandalized and disgusted. But one of my objects in relating this whole story is to scandalize and to disgust you. You have had too much consideration at the hands of writers--you and your hypocritical virtues and your hysterical nerves. If you are an American, you are probably far in advance of your parents in worldly knowledge, in education, in every way except perhaps manly and womanly self-respect. For along with your progress has come an infection of snobbishness and toadyism that seems in some mysterious way inseparable from higher civilization. So be shocked and disgusted with Edna and me, and don’t turn your hypocritical eyes inward on your own secret thoughts and actions about your own humble parents. Above all, don’t learn from this horrifying episode a decenter mode of thinking and feeling--_and_ acting. “We must get them out of the way before we move to New York,” said Edna. “Ever since Margot began at Mrs. Ryper’s I’ve been on pins and needles. You don’t know how malicious fashionable people are. Why, some of them who have nothing to do might at any time run out to Passaic and see for themselves.” Edna was sitting up in my lap, gazing at me with wide harassed-looking eyes. I burst out laughing. “They might take a camera along, and get some snapshots,” I suggested. Edna’s face contracted with horror and her form grew limp and weak. “My God!” she cried. “So they might. Godfrey, we must attend to it at once.” III I have never been able to come to a satisfactory verdict as to the intelligence of the human race. Is it stupid, or is it, rather, sluggish? Is it unable to think, or does it refuse to think? Does it believe the follies it pretends to believe and usually acts upon, or is it the victim of its own willful prejudices and hypocrisies? Never have I decided that a certain man or woman was practically witless, but that he or she has confounded me by saying or doing something indicating shrewdness or even wisdom. The women are especially difficult to judge. Take Edna, for example.