* * * * * But no matter how many Lucys and Rollos existed prior to our War between the States, it would be mighty hard to find a Lucy or a Rollo now. Times have changed, manners have changed, types have changed. What is responsible for the bold-eyed girl—the girl of loose speech and loud manners? What is responsible for the irreverent boy—the boy of the cigarette and of _the look which undresses every handsome woman that he meets_? These are the boys that greet girls with a “Hello!” and a leer that should offend. These are the girls who shout “Hello!” to the boys, and who lie prone by the side of young men during a “straw-ride” at night. Are all such maidens the daughters of mothers who drink and gamble? Are all such youths the sons of men who have no morals? By no means. Our whole social and industrial situation has changed, and the people have changed with it. Would that I could believe that our Public System is guiltless in this matter. Use your eyes as you pass a crowded academy and note the conditions which make against common decency—to say nothing of that deference and respect with which every properly trained boy should treat members of the other sex. But there are causes deeper, more universal than the promiscuous mix-up in the Public Schools. The centripetal power of class legislation is drawing capital inward to the small centre of the Privileged. To the masses is left a constantly smaller proportion of the nation’s annual production of wealth. In turn, this law-made and abnormal condition of things over-crowds the cities. In fact, rural life has become so unattractive that the trend of population is _from the farm to the town_. Every village has its surplus—the men and boys, white and black, who have no visible means of support and who can not be persuaded to work. In every town is the girl who hardly knows why she’s there,—but she’s there. [Illustration: “‘Oh! Look,’ cried Lucy.”] And the pace-that-kills in the Chicagos and New Yorks is faithfully represented, on a small scale, in each of our towns. Don’t all of us know it? We do. But what is the remedy? The temperance people believe that whiskey is at the bottom of the trouble. The church people believe that irreligion is the source of the evil. The school teacher believes that education will save the day. But can not the student of human affairs see that the demoralization incident to four years of civil strife shook our entire social system like an earthquake? Did not the Spanish war light up,—luridly, vividly, horribly,—the almost universal corruption which had seized upon the body politic?