It would be rather a joke to find that in these ways youth may surpass us one day in virtue and purity. It is quite possible that Don Juan, about whom we whispered so much behind our hands, would make no impression at all upon the young men and women of Minga's group. Walt Whitman's great biologic, physiologic roaring they would frown over, puzzled. That one man, old, too, with a white beard, should speak familiarly of prostitutes and be so anxious to specify and catalogue arms and legs and thighs and bones and blood and bone-sockets, they would think "queer." But if one were to step out and say to a group like that on the Judge's loggia, "Don Juan was over-sexed. His amours were silly and maudlin because his great creator was an embittered and sensitive and suffering man" there would be a low understanding comment of "Uh, huh?—that so?" and a general cold-blooded note-taking as to Don Juan.
To go on about Whitman and suggest that Walt was a great human comrade who at a time when there were no "legs" and no "spades" spoken of in the world believed in men and women recognizing the glory of sex and helping each other; believed in something divine inside of each that works its way through, no matter how low we sink; believed that we must struggle and overcome, yet be honest while conquering, sincere about life while controlled with it, that would be to receive the casual answer, "Say, that's some little Walt. Where did he tend bar?" But these things would strike little fire. There would be no real interest until one mentioned a new machine, a scientific discovery, a sporting champion or a unique crime. Then keen faces would be bent upon you, keen eyes would interrogate—Facts, facts, facts! So youth pushes by all your dreams, all your virtues, all your sentimentalities and theories for its true meat—facts!
The light, the casual, the cynical, the flippant, the pondering of rather gross realities and in the cases of the girls a very destructive, squalid and ignorant playing with the great laws of life as given into the hands of men and women is the expression of America to-day. To deplore is futile, to try to train any group of children away from these general lines of license and freedom, impossible. It belongs to the age; that age is the aftermath of crazy luxury and wealth. There is some great biologic secret behind it all, and this biologic secret may be that such wealth, such leisure, such exhibition, as opposed to inhibition, as we once deemed desirable is undesirable, unendurable, in that it affects life with a kind of sponginess, a sort of quicksand whereon nothing may grow or be built. It may be that such surroundings as we have tried to give our children have made their bodies fine, but have shrunken and vitiated their souls, that their use of our hard-earned materialism has been to deny all our insistence upon worth and solidity and virtue but it bears one sure portent. To the observer of the "Minga group" all over America to-day it is apparent that this Youth will some day take itself in hand, that it will create a new ethic of worth and virtue that will bear more acute scanning than does ours. That, though they must stop and go back to hard things and solemn things, above all to recreate the things they have wasted; they are preparing for some enormous new Scheme, some great rational universalism; they will perform that duty ultimately, with a greater measure of understanding than our precepts could have given them. They will be free of all tangle and rot of the Seeming, they will know! They will go forward, keen, fearless, open-eyed, fit to help carry on the destiny of the whole world.
Soon the general restlessness on the terrace communicated itself in expression. "Where do we go from here?" asked one chap—he rose and did a short shuffling step, the others clapping their hands and whistling an air which ended with the plaintive refrain: "And the reason he didn't marry me, was his four merry wives across the sea." Minga stepped inside and slipped on the phonograph a record of Honolulu Jazz and to this brassy whistling clangor the couples clinched, and young, long, canvas-shoed, thin legs stepped about in one of the curious walking dances of the time. This over, they stopped and dawdled, staring at each other. There were a few personal sallies, one or two lazy whoops, and then the old thirst for sensation: "Where do we go from here?"
"I know," suggested the youth with the new car—"Dunce, listen to my hunch, love me for my bright ideas. All hike out to Lovejoy's for hot dogs and then back to Billy's for sundaes. Come on, be a sport, everybody, what matter if you've got no coin? I'm cahoots with you, I'll stand the multitude. Got me gold mine with me."
"I can't go," complained Dunstan moodily, "got a quizz coming at eight-thirty, the infernal Latin rooster. I'd like to choke him."
"Cut it out, cut it out!" came a chorus of stern voices.... "Say, Dunce, what's the matter with yah, gettin' queer? Hey? They only put Latin in the cirickulum to please the wives of the trustees. Yah! cut it out, man—say, if yuh don't have any fun, you'll go batty; the doctors all say so. Sure they do! Everybody does go batty that's high-brow and studies and all that drool. Say, cut it out, whoop it up if yuh want to keep from suicide. By heck! you'll do sumpin desperate if you keep up with this Latin, like that feller your old man is going to put in the Can. How about that trial; when is it coming off?"
"Chuck that," muttered Dunstan, a grave significant look in the direction of the house—"Governor is inside. Sard's coming out——"
"Sard's coming out," they chanted gibingly.
"Oh, the Mermaid Lady came out, you bet,
She was not fully dressed:
The pretty curls of her hair were wet
I leave you to guess the rest."