The man in the street: Papers on American topics

BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
THE MAN IN THE STREET BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP! LADY LARKSPUR THE MADNESS OF MAY THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
THE MAN IN THE STREET
PAPERS ON AMERICAN TOPICS
BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1921
Copyright, 1921, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published September, 1921
Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1920 by THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. Copyright, 1918, by THE YALE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, Inc. THE SCRIBNER PRESS
To CORNELIA
My right to speak for the man in the street, the average American, is, I am aware, open to serious question. Possibly there are amiable persons who, if urged to pass judgment, would appraise me a trifle higher than the average; others, I am painfully aware, would rate me much lower. The point is, of course, one about which I am not entitled to an opinion. I offer no apology for the apparent unrelated character of the subjects herein discussed, for to my mind the volume has a certain cohesion. In that part of America with which I am most familiar, literature, politics, religion, and the changing social scene are all of a piece. We disport ourselves in one field as blithely as in another. Within a few blocks of this room, on the fifteenth floor of an office-building in the centre of my home town, I can find men and women quite competent to answer questions pertaining to any branch of philosophy or the arts. I called a lawyer friend on the telephone only yesterday and hummed a few bars of music that he might aid me with the correct designation of one of Beethoven’s symphonies. In perplexity over an elusive quotation I can, with all confidence, plant myself on the post-office steps and some one will come along with the answer. I do not mention these matters boastfully, but merely to illustrate the happy conditions of life in the delectable province in which I was born.