“Three generations from the soil” may be a good rule of social eligibility after all. I know a family in one of our great lake cities which has ruled society therein for half a lifetime and it is only two removes from the mud. But savagery will crop out now and then, despite all the austerities of social custom and the perpetual effort to reach the calm of Nirvana and look as if life was a doosid bore. The delight of these, as of all savages, is to astonish the natives. When it can be done by driving a loping team of circus horses down the chief avenue of the city, that suffices. Another pet trick is to mass the family on the porch of the wooden-castled mansion on a Sunday morning and take their pictures in group, in full view of worshippers returning from church. The suggestion of a Ute reservation at such times is complete. When these fail to create a sensation, a yellow tally-ho driven madly through the narrowest streets of the Quartier Teuton, scattering dogs and babies, with whoops and horns and the mottled circus horses in the lead, does the business. It isn’t so long since the richest of our American nobility showed the craven blood of the materialistic sons of the bush, to whom brute life is everything. The American-English duel that failed is still an unpleasant memory. I mention these things only to illustrate the paradox of our days. We do labor hard to get rid of the joy of living and we call the new state culture and repose, when we get it. But the storage of force is a poor thing. It breaks out in abnormal ways and the acquisitive father is punished in his degenerate children to the third and fourth generation sometimes—and usually to the second. * * * * * I have received the second volume of _Moods_, which my Philadelphia correspondent calls _Sulks_. It is a retrograde from the first number in that in some places the printing is on both sides of the leaf. I had hope that _Moods_ would continue its good work and in the second number leave both sides blank. As it is, however, I commend the first volume to that eminent figurer, Mr. Edward Atkinson of Boston, who may use the blank sides upon which to calculate what the other pages are good for. By the way, the announcement of the second volume contains a description of the type used, which is a reprint of the typefounder’s circular concerning the Jenson type. I would imagine that some of the geniuses of _Moods_ could have at least written an original circular. The prospectus of the second volume contains a list of one hundred and seventeen stars—geniuses of the first magnitude—still as my friend of the _Picayune_ says, “Though they twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, we wonder what they are.” * * * * * If McClure can give us more such exquisite stories as the Zenda tale in the August number, a good deal of reminiscent literature and living documents may be pardoned. Hope is better than memory, Mr. McClure.