"I read this morning, Letitia," I said hurriedly, "that a bill has been introduced into the Assembly for the protection of homes from the unfit servants that are supplied by intelligence offices. It is asserted that women who should not be permitted to come in contact with the family circle are sent out. Strong arguments were made, and--" Letitia smiled in spite of herself. "It is amusing," she said. "Why bother about abolishing bad servants when there are no others? It is wonderful how people can interest themselves in that side of the case, when it is the other that is responsible for all our troubles. However, I suppose they need their little pastimes, even in Albany, and the uninitiated might think, when they read about it, that a bill to abolish bad servants would help you to get good ones, which is, of course, idiotic, as there are none." "Of course you are right, dear," I said, glad to see that I had roused her. "Anyway," she continued, "most people don't want homes and have forgotten what they are like, so that there is no need to feel too regretful. Unfortunately, the real nuisance is that when we're old and have grandchildren, we shall never be able to treat them in the good old way. Grandpa and grandma will be in furnished rooms and the old homestead will exist no more! Perhaps, after all, the home is just a relic of barbarism. Even grandchildren, however, are going out of fashion. New York women are too young to have them, and they have lost the art of growing old. Fancy a New York grandmother in a cap, knitting, with her grandchildren at her knee! No, Archie. She prefers yellow hair, a blush (supplied from a nineteen-cent box) upon her cheek, and a pneumatic figure pumped up around her poor old bones, to the ancient poetic notion." "It is the spirit of progress." "Yes, dear, it must be. Grandma is a giddy young thing and not a bit disturbed when grandpa is gathered unto his fathers. When that happens, she very often marries a pretty little college lad, who was in long dresses when her first grandchild was born. And she takes him to live with her in the family hotel and provides for him generously. And when she really can't live any longer--she would if she could--she dies and leaves him her cash. Dear strenuous young-old thing! One can't help admiring this wonderful tenacity." "You and I are horridly old-fashioned, Letitia." "And we _must_ reform," she declared emphatically. "It can't go on any longer. To us, New York seems funny, doesn't it? And the complicated relationships are so peculiar. An old woman (I beg her pardon, I mean a woman who, years ago, would have been old) and her daughter, think nothing of marrying brothers, and becoming all sorts of impossible relations to each other. Even that most hackneyed of all comic institutions, the mother-in-law, is a light and airy creature in this country, and has no rooted objection to being sued by her own daughter for alienating the affections of her own son-in-law."