Harrington in whom I see the world typified. Now Mrs. Harrington is
inconceivable in a scheme where the proper reply to every question is
not as thoroughly established as the rule for the proper use of forks
at dinner. In the presence of an unfamiliar reply to a familiar question
Mrs. Harrington is suspicious and uneasy. She scents either a joke or an
insult; and we are all Mrs. Harrington. If you were to ask a stranger
whom did he consider the greatest playwright of all times and, instead
of Shakespeare or Moliere, he were to say Racine, it would be as if one
were to ask him whether he took tea or coffee for breakfast and he said
arsenic. It would be as though you asked your neighbour what he thought
of a beautiful sunset and he said he did not like it. It would be as if
I were to say to Mrs. Harrington, "Well, I suppose I have stayed quite
long enough," and she were to say, "Yes, I think you had better be
going."
V
THE MIND TRIUMPHANT
One night after dinner I quoted for Harding the following sentence from
an address by President Lowell of Harvard: "The most painful defect in
the American College at the present time is the lack of esteem for
excellence in scholarship.
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