E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ When your generation was young, Mother, it didn't think.”
“Didn't it?”
“No. It simply accepted what the old people taught it.”
“Well, no,” the mother said. “There's a difference I might point out. We accepted what the good old people taught us.”
“Pooh! You just accepted the Victorian standards of conduct. The old people told you a thing was good, and you never examined it to see if it was good. They ruled you with words like 'impropriety!' If they told you something was an 'impropriety,' you shivered and kept away from it. Well, we don't. You can't scare us off that way. ”

“ You'd rather I shouldn't be respectable?”
“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I hate respectability—Victorian respectability! Victorian smugness!”
“I don't seem to follow you.” Renfrew said pathetically. “Is it something or other you've been reading lately, Muriel?”
It was indeed; but this direct and naïve arrival at the fact was far from soothing her. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “You talk just like Mamma! Don't you suppose there are some people on earth who do their own thinking?”
“Oh, I know you do,” he assured her hastily. “I know you always think for yourself, Muriel. ”

“ Eliot interrupted. “But old people had the ideas that got the young people into it. Of course, the young people thought these were their own ideas; I know that. You see when a young person gets an idea, he usually doesn't stop to notice where it came from. The way he feels about it, when he finds some money in his pocket, he thinks it must belong to him, and when he finds an idea in his head he thinks it's his own idea of course. No; the old people are behind everything. if you look for them.”
“Well, they're not behind the ideas of my generation,” Muriel declared. ”

“ If you care for an instance: about marriage. You take the Victorian attitude; you believe in it as an institution; you believe in all the old institutions, Renfrew. You've simply accepted life as your parents and teachers taught it to you. ”

“ He looked at her in surprise. “Don't you think it's a Muriel?”
“My idea of 'a nice day,'” she said, “is a day when something pleasant happens.”
Oh, I see,” he responded, somewhat faintly. “I expect you mean nothing pleasant has happened to you today, so far.” Then, with a flickering of his hopefulness, which already was near disappearance, he said: “Well, I hope nothing exactly unpleasant has happened to you, either.” ”

“ I'd behave as if nothing at all were happening.”
“Go tell that Clown to come here to me!” said Muriel
“What? Right before everybody?”
“What difference does that make now? Go tell him!”
The friendly Eleanor hesitated, evidently of half a mind to remonstrate against the supreme conspicuousness of such a course. But even a devoted friend may not always resist the temptation to become an important actor in a dramatic climax,—there are not many tests of friendship more severe than this,—and Miss Middleton's hesitation was brief, for within her a universal human yearning had been roused. ”

“ The rest of it is precisely as 'funny' as the title.”
“Do you go on and explain how poor Queen Victoria got her delusion?”
“Mamma!” the girl exclaimed angrily. “There isn't a word about Queen Victoria in my paper, and you know there isn't!”
“Well, then, what is in it?”
“If you care to know, I attack the whole institution of marriage. Marriage is purely a device of the wretched capitalistic system to secure the inheritance of private property to so-called legitimate offspring.”
“Good gracious!”
“That's all it is,” Muriel declared. “Yet your generation accepted it without question.” ”

“ We young people are going to build up a new world, Mamma: we don't think your generation did very well with the old one, and we decline to accept it. We've taken it from your hands and we're going to remodel it to suit ourselves. Renfrew Mears hasn't any part in the work, and when I talk about it, he hasn't the faintest idea of what I mean.”
Illustration: He stood close by, addressing himself heatedly to delighted auditors. “I think they ought to be put a stop to!” he declared. “What have you been doing to the poor thing, Muriel?” ”

“ Renfrew and the New Generation
By Booth Tarkington
Illustrated by Arthur William Brown
MURIEL ELIOT had taken upon her young and comely shoulders the principal burdens of our ancient world. That it is to say, the world still wabbled along, unconscious of the relief, and Muriel's mother warned her to be more careful of her health. “You'll lose your fine color,” Mrs. Eliot said, “if you sit all the time in the house, reading and writing. You'll bleach out into one of those pale women with spectacles, and you don't want to be like that, do you? ”

“ Eliot, “is childishly simple for any schoolboy, as people say who don't know schoolboys. You, my daughter, are the most probable implanter of sparks within that bosom, I seem to gather, and therefore I take it that about two or perhaps three weeks ago you spoke to him of the admirableness of some bearded magnifico, or perhaps it was only of the admirableness of beards. ”

“ Why, probably four or five times as many people get engaged as get married, and of course they're right about it, and there are good reasons for it. You take people that are engaged or anything like that, well, just look how much happier they look than married people! And besides, anybody can tell that engaged people think twice as much of each other as married people do. ”

“ We go and see for ourselves; we don't let the old people lead us in blinders.”
Mrs. Eliot shook here head. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Are you sure some of the old people aren't leading you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I was just wondering if maybe old people weren't leading you, after all; only instead of its being the good old people, maybe its the bad old people. Some old people always lead the young people, ou know, Muriel.”
“How absurd! Look at the French Revolution. Look at every revolution that happened. The young people—”
“Yes, the young people took all the risks,” Mrs. ”

“ So I got an idea. For instance, people that just used water to wash in were probably a lot more natural and had fewer diseases, and they kept cleaner, too. I began to think we oughtn't to use so much soap. That's all I was talking about, Muriel. I wasn't telling 'em marriage ought to be put a stop to, but too much soap. ”

“ Had there been such a spying eye as she suspected, she was worth the work, it may be said—her appearance being far beyond what mere self-respect demands of a girl who is going to a garden party She had been deliberately at the pains to make herself beautiful, putting more time and mind upon her garnitures than would popularly be thought consistent in an Intellectual. ”