Indeed, more than anyone else among us, he has kept his faith that youth, given time enough, will discover art as it will find out other incarnations of beauty, and will achieve new miracles in its worship. Twenty-five years ago he taught us to love the masters in poetry—no easier thing to do for boys then than it is now. We have still to acquire his hospitality toward the future, to look on with his good humor and sympathy while the immature in the world of art, as elsewhere, try to rearrange the universe, not knowing that it has been here for some time and is set in its ways. J. E. THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE I DECENCY IN LITERATURE I The quarrel with indecent art is an old one, and the present discussion of improper books, with threats of censorship, begins to rally itself in two familiar camps—on one side the moralists, showing in the heat of debate less understanding of art than they probably have, and on the other side the writers, showing in the same heat somewhat less concern for morals than it is to be hoped they feel. The censorious seem disposed to suppress on the ground of indecency almost any kind of book they happen not to like; the writers seem at times to argue that all books are equally good, or, at least, should be free and equal. These are the old exaggerations of the quarrel. Yet in two important respects the present discussion is quite novel and more than usually interesting; for one thing, the attack now is less on obscenity, about which there are no two opinions, than on indecency, of which we have at the moment no adequate definition; for another thing, the writers themselves, perhaps for the first time in history, have no definition of literary decency to offer, and seem not greatly interested in forming one.