Are American Parents Selfish? 208 A Question of Heredity 219 The Little Dumb Brother 220 Fever Dreams 248 A Misunderstood Moralist 250 The Pleasures of Pessimism 255 Moral Pauperism 257 On a Certain Lack of Humour in Frenchmen 258 The Value of a Soul 267 A Grateful Spaniard 271 Bores 271 Emotions and Oxydization 273 Abelard to Heloïse 275 Heloïse to Abelard 277 Yumei Mujitsu 279 The Real Thing 284 "Oh, Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death" 286 "Philistia, be Thou Glad of Me" 299 "Oh King, Live Forever!" 305 The Little Room 307 Aftermath 312 June 21. L'Enfant Terrible. "The very Devil's in the moon for mischief: There's not a day, the longest, not the twenty-first of June, Sees half the mischief in a quiet way On which three single hours of moonlight smile." At my age, alas! one no longer gets into mischief, either by moonlight or at midsummer, and yet to-day all the tricksey spirits of the invisible world are supposed to be abroad--tangling the horses' manes, souring the milkmaid's cream, setting lovers by the ears. Some such frisky Puck stirs even peaceable middle-aged blood at this season to mild little secret sins, such as beginning a diary in which to set down one's private naughty views--the heresies one has grown too staid and cautious to give speech to any longer. All, I think, have some Secret Garden where they unbind the girdle of conventions and breathe to a sympathetic listener the opinions they would repudiate indignantly upon the housetops; but I know of no such kindred soul--indeed my private views are so heretical that I should tremble to whisper them even into the dull cold ear of night, lest I should cause it to turn pink, and thereafter hymns would not purge it. Hence no resource remains to ease my bosom of its perilous stuff but the unprotesting innocence of the blank pages of a diary. There is a story concerning the king of some ungeographical country, to whom came two adventurers of cynical tendencies, professing to be able--given a certain allowance of jewels and precious metals--to weave a garment of exceeding richness and of such subtle texture that no monarch on earth might hope to match it. Setting up a loom and providing themselves with ample materials from the Royal treasury, they went through the motions of stringing a warp and thereupon industriously threw empty shuttles back and forth.