"Hermione," they said, "we want to see the bread line."
"My dears," I said, "I don't mind showing it to you, but it's nothing much to see in summer. It's in the winter that it arouses one's deepest sympathies."
And one must keep one's sympathies aroused. Often I say to myself at night: "Have I been sympathetic today, or have I FAILED?"
Mamma often lacks sympathy. She objects to having me reopen my Salon this winter.
"Hermione," she said, "I don't mind the subjects you take up — or the people you take up with — if you only take them up one at a time. And I am glad when your own little group meets here, be- cause it keeps you at home. But I will NOT have all the different kinds of freaks here at the SAME TIME, sitting around discussing free love and sex education."
I was indignant. "Mamma," I said, "what right have you to say they would discuss that all the time?"
"Because," she said, "I have noticed that no matter whether they start with sociology or psychology, they always get around to Sex in the end."
Isn't it funny about pure-minded people? — in the generation before this anything that shocked a pure- minded person like Mamma was sure to be bad.
But now its only the evil-minded people who ever get shocked at all, it seems.
The really PUREST of the pure-minded people don't get shocked by anything at all these days.