Ladies wear hoops; the hoops expand and expand, until the maximum of possibility in size is reached. Something must be done! The crinoline contracts until these same ladies appear in clinging skirts, and the pull-back lives its little hour. Then the former width of the dress is used to lengthen it. The skirt touches the ground, trails two inches, six, eight, a foot, two feet. Its length becomes too great to drag and so is carried, to the great inconvenience of its owner; or in banquet halls pages are employed. But this is too much, a protest comes and two hundred women in Boston agree to appear on the streets the first rainy day in skirts barely coming to the boot top. “Dress Reform” societies spring up, magazines become the organs of the protestants and the printing presses run over time. The garb of the Quaker is only a revulsion from a flutter of ribbons and towering headgear. From Beau Brummel lifting his hat with great flourish and uncovering on slight excuse, we have William Penn who uncovers to nobody; the height of Brummel’s hat finds place in the width of Penn’s. All things move in an orbit. Even theories have their regular times of incubation. They are hatched, grow lusty, crow in falsetto or else cackle; then they proceed to scratch in the flower beds of conservatism to the hysterical fear of good old ladies, who shoo them away. Or if the damage seems serious, the ladies set dogs—the lap-dogs of war—upon them. “The sun do move;” Brother Jasper is right. All things move. And when matters get pushed to a point where they fall on t’other side, a Reformer appears. The people proclaim him king, but he modestly calls himself “Protector.” He is spoken of in history as the Savior of the State. There are only two classes of men who live in history: those who crowd a thing to its extreme limit, and those who then arise and cry “Hold!” A Pharaoh makes a Moses possible. The latter we write down in our books as immortal, the first as infamous. This is true of all who live in history, whether in the realm of politics, religion or art. History is only a record of ideas (or lack of them) pushed to a point where revulsion occurs. If Rome had been moderate, Luther would have had no excuse. Literature obeys the law; its orbit is an ellipse. The illustrious names in letters are those of the men who have stood at aphelion or perihelion and waved the flaring comet back. The so-called great poets are the men stationed by fate at these pivotal points. And as fires burn brightest when the wind is high, so these men facing mob majorities have, through opposition, had their intellects fanned into a flame. More than thirteen decisive battles have taken place in the world of letters. And the question at issue has always been the same: Radical and Conservative calling themselves Realist, Romanticist, Veritist or What-not struggling for supremacy.