[THE BEATIFIED RACE]
It is wrong to assert that our fiction magazines have lost their power to inspire, to uplift. High romance and whole-hearted cheerfulness have not deserted them. These qualities have merely migrated to the advertising pages. The morbid, unpleasant fiction is only a short interlude between the innocent joys of Nabiscos and fireless cookers, and the wholesomeness of Mellin's Food. After sin and adulteration comes 99-44/100 per cent pure.
The people in the advertisements help us to forget those in the stories. These pictured endorsers display a generosity that I have not met with elsewhere. They offer me, a total stranger to them, the most delicious refreshments, costly gifts in silverware, whole suites of furniture; they make me aware of "long-felt" wants; they volunteer to teach me Spanish or osteopathy or plumbing in ten lessons; they propose to send me immediately a portable house in many pieces, or a new lease of life in many doses. They take a most personal interest in me, enquiring sympathetically, "Are you bilious?"
Here, I confess, I sometimes feel embarrassed. When my old family doctor asks me, in the privacy of his office, questions of this sort, I am prepared to answer them; but when, as I am turning over the pages of a magazine at a public news-stand, someone bobs out from behind a respectful soap advertisement and accosts me brusquely with, "How is your liver?" or "Are you bowlegged?"—I feel positively uncomfortable.
This forwardness, due to the bad influence of the fiction characters, is, I regret to say, a trait of some of the women. (How sad it is that editors should wilfully allow them to be contaminated! I have seen a little Campbell Soup girl of quite a tender age, placed on the same page with a heroine whose only topic of conversation was unmoral love.) Luxuriant creatures, as unabashed as they are beautiful, invite my approval of their stays, and make disclosures of the most sensational kind. All of this may be in accordance with the modern ideas of frankness, may be part of the sex-education campaign—but somehow I can't get used to it. I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that woman's place is in the home, especially when she is undressing.
However, while the behavior of these people toward me is occasionally a bit disconcerting, their deportment toward each other is uniformly admirable. In their own sphere they lead model lives.
Their family devotion, for example, is a treat to behold. Just see Mama and Papa and Susie and Marian and little Jack, all seated around the dining-table! From their happy smiles it is easy to tell that they love each other and Jell-O. After dinner, dear kind Papa will not bury himself in the evening paper, as selfish, inconsiderate papas do—he will give Mama and the good, rosy-cheeked children each a stick of Spearmint. Then all the family will gather 'round the fire in peaceful attitudes and listen to the phonograph, which protects the atmosphere of their home; and Susie will sit on the arm of Papa's chair and fondly compare their Holeproofs.