The return of Blue Laws is not improbable. A few towns have already adopted them, and in these movies are not tolerated on the Sabbath, newspapers are not allowed to be sold, even the trolley cars are stopped. A man may be arrested for painting his roof on Sunday; and as for a game of baseball on that day--it is unthinkable in many a community. One may not walk--except to church. The Puritan spirit is not dead. It lives in many a hamlet, dreary enough under the best conditions. The American people have come to a point where it is a matter of living or existing. For my own part, I am perfectly willing for the _Babbitts_ of this country to do as they please; all I ask is that they let me alone as I certainly shall let them alone. I have said elsewhere that I firmly believe in local option. That is because, perhaps, I think that contrast is the greatest thing in art and in life. I have never cared for regions of perpetual sunshine, just as I have never cared for localities where it rains, seemingly, forever. Give me a little of each. The Gopher Prairieite must feel an impulse to see a metropolis now and then; just as we who live in tremendous cities feel the urge every so often to seek the stillness of the woods. It so happens that a few people--nay, a great many--prefer to hive in cities, because there they find a certain amount of culture. They like the opera, and good plays, well acted--the sparkle which city life gives to them. They like dining out in restaurants, and they happen to care for the jeweled beauty of, say, Fifth Avenue or Michigan Avenue on a winter evening. The monotony of the life of a Kansas farmer does not appeal to them. They can scarcely understand that passion for seclusion which he craves. But they find no fault with his mode of living. They even look with a sort of amused tolerance upon those curious beings who sneer at women who smoke cigarettes. They know perfectly well that there are many virtuous women who smoke cigarettes, and it is difficult to understand why everyone cannot be possessed of the same knowledge. But they do not seek to impose their beliefs upon others. They do no proselytizing. They are not anxious to convert people to a way of thinking and reasoning that seems to them simple and natural. They understand that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison; but they do resent being told that what they consume as meat should be labeled poison--by someone who has never tasted it. The Eighteenth Amendment tells us, practically, that it is wrong to drink. You and I know that it is not wrong to drink. But we do know full well, without being told, that it is very wrong to get drunk. In Kansas, the people are told that it is wrong to smoke; whereas anyone at all knows that it is in no wise wrong to smoke; but it is exceedingly wrong to over-smoke until one’s nerves become shattered and one’s hands tremble.