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RICHARD WATSON GILDER-PERSONAL MEMORIES

BY MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER

"O one, I think, can ever have tried

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to describe Richard Gilder by comparing him with somebody else. At the first word with him one recognized a peculiarly distinct personality, and no length of acquaintance, no degree of intimacy, weakened this impression. Among the qualities that produced it were so evident a sympathy with others and so candid and confident a reliance upon their sympathy that, in a very unusual degree, he became to his friends a part of the tissue of their lives. Even to-day, when he has been dead more than twelve years, our sense of whatever we may feel of joy or sorrow still seems incomplete without his participation. And so apt was he to have a fresh idea, to show some flash of insight, to speak some crystallizing word which could have occurred to no one else, that there still comes the impulse to seek his advice, or at least to wait for his comments, before making up our minds about this matter or that. No one else is quite the same kind of friend as he was.

It still seems strange that one who was always so alert and so companionable should now be mute. He was not what we call, with a hint of disparagement, a "great talker;" he never talked just to hear his own voice; he never "orated;" he could be very silent at times, and, while he was often eager to speak, he was quite as eager to listen. Nor was he a great talker in the better sense, like his friend John La Farge, who could hold his hearers spellbound for hours by a quiet monologue couched in words as exact and periods as well rounded as though they were being read from the page of some great French writer. He was not among the talkers of any kind for whom we wish that behind a curtain a stenographer might be garnering their words. But in the give and take of friendly conversation he was one of the best-delightfully ready of tongue, impulsive, interesting, stimulating, and amusing. He was one of the few who can discuss, argue, actually fight in words, without irritation. He really tried to understand why you differed from him and tried to make you understand what he felt, sometimes with an ardor that ran into vehemence but still without irritation, and, I may add, without clamor. His voice, though sensitively modulated to his meanings and sometimes dramatically effective, was always so low and pleasant that to listen to him was to learn the difference between emphasis and noise. When there was no arguing, but merely a casual commenting upon the incidents of the day, one could not grow tired of his company, for he was interested in everything, he wanted you to share his feeling, and he had the gift of the keen

and unexpected word as well as of the fresh and personal thought. Some one who knew him but slightly told me once that she had just talked for a few minutes with Mr. Gilder on the corner of the street, and that she felt as though he had been waiting there in the hope that she might pass, having things to say that he could not say quite as well to anybody else. It was a great part of his charm that he constantly gave this impression, that he made one seem to one's self the right person at the right moment. There was nothing of intention in it, nothing of the wish to flatter or impress. It was merely that, being himself so sympathetic, he felt sure of the sympathy of others. And of course he usually got what with such simplicity he expected.

This strength and breadth of sympathy formed the mainspring of his manifold activities. He used to say that the tasks which he set himself in youth, and which remained for more than forty years his chief concern, were to write poetry and to make a good magazine. But gradually he became interested in almost everything important in the life of the city-political, philanthropic, literary, artistic-and when he became interested he worked. Many things seemed to be forced upon him, and in a sense they were. Yet he accepted them, not chiefly because other people wished, never because he wanted prominence or influence, and not even because a cold conscience prompted, but because his sympathies were awakened and therefore he could not hold his hand. When he undertook his wonderful work for the tenement-house dwellers of New York, it was of them as suffering human beings that he thought, not of sociological facts and theories; and he concerned himself with municipal politics because when he felt that his city was going wrong he agonized for it as for a sentient creature in distress and disgrace.

As his daughter writes in the excellent narrative commentary embodied in the volume of his letters, he could not have borne his ever-growing burden of labor and responsibility without the comfort, the support, and the happiness of a perfect marriage. Among the other things that helped to sustain him, always overworked as he was in his fragile body and his vigorous mind, was his unfailing sense of humor. I had almost called it unfaltering or unflinching, for it was often a weapon of defense instinctively used when other men would have used contempt or anger or an assumed stolidity. It is hard to remember now how scornfully at first he was abused and ridiculed, not for definite acts or words, but merely because he ventured to "meddle" in what his critics

Even by

did not think his business. decent people the "scholar in politics" was not as much respected then as he is to-day, and a mere literary man in city politics, a poet appealing to voters on street corners- It was too much for the gravity of the politicians. But Mr. Gilder only laughed back and kept on. "I hope," he said during one campaign, "that the 'Sun' will not get tired of calling me a song-bird catching cold on a cart-tail. It is making my reputation. It is telling thousands of people who never knew it before that I am a poet."

His poetry is almost invariably serious. But almost always humor tinged his conversation, keeping sweet his ardent anger against the wrong-doer, the fumbler, and the slacker, preserving his earnestness from solemnity, his deep fund of sentiment from sentimentality, and now prompting, now holding in check, a lively whimsical imagination and a boyish impulsiveness. He was never too busy or too tired for a jest and seldom too ill, although he was often more ill and more exhausted than I have ever seen any one else who kept busy at all. But as his arguing was not noisy, so his jesting was not boisterous or, to use a still uglier word, hilarious. Nor was he a "funny man" with a conscious desire to be amusing and a fund of well-rehearsed anecdotes on tap. It was a spontaneous personal kind of humor that he gave us, not the remembered humor of others; and, persistent though it was, and apt to make itself heard when least expected, it was only one thread in the many-colored fabric of his talk. But delighting in fun and boyish in many ways he remained until the end of his life. During his last days he was reading serious things and, as his last letter shows, commenting on them in serious ways. Yet the very last thing he read (it was found by his bedside after his death) he had chosen from a big bookcase filled with volumes of the most miscellaneous sort that stood in his bedroom in my house, and it was a little old copy of "The Pirate's Own Book."

Frail though he was, he had great physical as well as moral courage. He did not make little of dangers, delight in physical risks, as a stronger man may, but he could not be timid in any moment of need. Once when I was living near him at Marion, by a quiet inlet of Buzzards Bay, he was the only person to hear a cry of distress from a rowboat at some, distance from the shore. Racing across a field and casting off only his coat and waistcoat, he plunged in, reached the boat from which a young girl had ventured to bathe in deep water, recovered the oar that her frightened companion had let drift

away, and, just in time, pulled the halfdrowned swimmer into the boat. Yet he was himself so very poor a swimmer that afterwards neither he nor the rest of us could understand how he could possibly have done what he did.

In New York also we were neighbors. He was a night-owl, and so was I, and often late in the evening I would hear his tentative tap at my door. One night he stopped to tell how he had just seen a young couple quarreling in the street near by. The man had struck the girl, thrown something far off into the street, and, while the girl sobbed loudly, walked away. Of course Mr. Gilder quickly asked her what was the matter, and when she told him that her husband had thrown away the key of their flat and sworn he would never come home again he ran after the man, brought him back, "gave him fits," so he said, and told him to go and find the key. This the man meekly did, and as meekly started for home arm in arm with his wife. "He was a big fellow," said Mr. Gilder, laughing; "it scares me now to think how he might have eaten me up." But there were many others who docilely took a sharp reproof from him. There was no compelling power in the slight, stooping figure under middle height. There was much in the keen aquiline face and in the singular intensity of the eyes, black not in a hard and shining way but in a lusterless velvety way that suggested those of an Arab.

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T was in his tenement-house work that Richard Gilder most strikingly showed the quality of his courage and of his energy. It was no pleasant task to take the lead, as chairman of the Committee of Investigation appointed by the Governor, in criticisms, for example, of the corporation of Trinity Church, the most powerful and the most widely respected of the ecclesiastical organizations of the city. On the other hand, few knew what physical exertions the work, as he saw it, imposed upon him. I knew, for I was in town during those hot months of 1894 when, as he afterwards wrote, he "waded heart-deep in misery all summer long." Of course his colleagues on the Committee and many others took an earnest and a fruitful part in the work, but he was the heart and the soul of it, its usual and most convincing mouthpiece, and always its keenest and busiest eye. To all its multiform details he gave personal attention. And, taking tenement-house fires and their causes as his special field of inquiry, he was out of bed at any hour of the night to go with the fire chief, whose aid he claimed, not only to any fire of importance that occurred, but into it-in a fireman's coat and helmet, up and down in the building as soon as the fire was under control, led and dragged by the firemen through the scorching heat and smoke, and seeing in the end pretty much all that they saw. One night when I heard the familiar tap on the knocker and opened the door my

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

self so strong was the smell of smoke that I thought there must be a fire close by. But it was only that Mr. Gilder and Chief Bresnan had come from a fire downtown, black of face and powdered with ashes. "Can you give me a drop of whisky?" Richard asked. "I haven't any at home. The Chief doesn't want it, never takes it, but I am done up." Done up he certainly was, yet the next thing he said was: "Chief, do you know what I thought when you were dragging me up that last ladder? I thought you were mighty lucky to have me to pull, and not President Cleveland."

At another time, when I chanced to attend one of the meetings of the Committee, the treasurer of Trinity Corporation, on the witness-stand, was asked about a certain house owned by the corporation which was described as in a very bad condition. Indignantly he asked who had brought in such a report, for it was not true. "It is true in every particular," said Mr. Gilder. "To me too it seemed incredible when our investigator brought it in, so I got up early this morning and saw the house for myself." A few minutes later another incident showed a different side of him-his power to put himself in an other man's place. An Italian who was then on the witness-stand could not understand the questions put to him in conventional legal phraseology and mo

notonous legal intonation. One lawyer after another tried in vain to make himself clear. Then Mr. Gilder, asking whether he might try, spoke slowly and distinctly and not in legal but in simple words, and the man understood at once and intelligently answered question after question.

As his interest in tenement-house con'ditions grew that summer, Mr. Gilder could not imagine any one else content to remain in ignorance of them. One very hot night he insisted that I should see how the people slept outdoors-in such outdoors as they could find, on the roofs and the fire-escapes. It was a strange pilgrimage in our slow-moving cab through the narrow streets, so swarming with life in the daytime, now so dismally abandoned-looking in their midnight silence, and up dark stairways to a roof whence, in the brilliant moonlight, I could see the pitiful sights my guide had told me about. Compassion filled his heart and spoke in his few words, and something like awe at the beauty of the moonlight illumining such a scene. Yet when we were down in the streets again and queried what might be their curious disagreeable, all-pervading odor, he was highly amused to recognize it as the smell of stale beer wafted from the many, many liquor saloons, and more than once on the way home he laughingly exclaimed, "Beer, beer! No

body else ever discovered that beer is the characteristic odor of New York!"

That autumn he took part in a municipal campaign, and always he had his exacting editorial work. Yet his tenement work never slackened, and his letters show how in the end it was he who went back and forth to the Capitol at Albany to coach the members who had the tenement bills in charge, watching every move and every word and getting results that could have been achieved in no other way. And when the report of his Committee was published, in a huge volume of innumerable closely printed pages, many of them filled with statistics and figures, it was he who took charge of it and read it in the proof-all of it-giving up to this hard, dry task, which any one else would have intrusted to subordinates, all of his Sundays for months and many of his evenings, an evening often meaning to him what would be half the night to another.

He had a singular power of concentration, a power that was at command under the most unfavorable circumstances -in brief snatches of time, in illness, in discomfort, in noise, amid distracting interruptions. Because of this power, and not because his wits went woolgathering in the misty fields of vacuity, he was often unpunctual, often almost incredibly absent-minded. He could be so absorbed in one thing that other things were for the moment non-existent. Once when I was dining at his house he left the table and went upstairs to the library to answer an insistent note, and some one who after a while went to seek him found him buried in his tenement-report proofs. He had forgotten that he had had of his dinner nothing but the soup. Many another time, even in the country, I have known him to forget or refuse to come to his meals, and, if the food was brought to him, leave it untasted for hours. Seldom consenting to remember the frailty of his body, often really ill, and, as I have said, tired to the point of exhaustion, year after year he seemed to all of us barely to escape the fate that is generally spoken of only in jest-to escape being "worked to death." And it was this fate that overtook him in the end.

An ineffective public speaker, lacking presence, strength of voice, and even the fluency he had in conversation, nevertheless he was constantly asked to speak. People liked to see him, to know that he was with them, even though they could not really hear him. As for the causes he was implored to father, the committees that wanted him for chairman, the meetings over which he was asked to preside, they were so many and so various that his friends used to plead with him not to squander his time and strength and dissipate his influence by being too undiscriminatingly goodnatured. "But it is such a good thing," he would protest, as though this were a valid reason why he should father or

further it even though it was something as remote from his main interests (I remember that this happened) as the meeting of a society for the encouragement of fine needlework.

Of course no man, whatever his conscience, whatever his sympathies, could have worked so hard if he had not liked to work. Mr. Gilder liked it better than anything else. His idea of resting was to turn to some other kind of activity, eagerly, with all his heart. To take him to drive at Marion was to give him a chance, not to soothe his mind in the silences of the woods and the still-water shore, but to free it of something that he had not yet found the time to say as fully as he wished. And his love for his place at Tyringham, Four Brooks Farm, was a love, not only of the beauty of the region which he keenly felt in its every detail, but also of the opportunities he found on a place of his own to do something worth while when he was not at his desk. After his death one of his friends said: "I hope that no one will write a poem saying that Gilder has gone to his rest. He would not like that! Heaven to him must mean the chance to work harder than ever without getting tired."

o one could be more democratic in spirit. The brotherhood of man was not a creed with him, but an innate un-selfconscious sentiment. He could not have been condescending or patronizing any more than snobbish. As he saw no difference in essentials between the highly and the lowly placed, in any kind of decent company he felt at home and found a welcome. And with his power to put himself at any one else's point of view, an interest in every sort of human enterprise and achievement, and an insatiable curiosity about the human soul, he found almost any person worth talking to for a while. He was ready to like everybody whom any one else could possibly think likable, and a good many others; almost everybody liked him at first sight, and his devoted friends were of all kinds and classes, no more appreciative in the White House than on his farm or among the fishermen at Marion. These he especially delighted in, and the village of Marion loved and delighted in him, although, as in other little New England places, "summer people" were rather suspiciously regarded and some of them were much disliked the village frankly saying so and acting upon its words. But Mr. Gilder became a local institution. Marion was proud as well as fond of him, liking him as well, but no better, when great people came to seek his company as when he sought the villagers' in long confabs on the steps of the little wooden post office. The crustiest old salt unbent to him, and did not find fault with him or laugh at him even for what I may call his lack of seaworthiness. In fact, I think that one of the things that Marion most admired in him was his persistence in going afloat, to fish with President Cleveland

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or for some other reason, although he knew what the consequences would surely be if the waters of Buzzards Bay should, in local parlance, grow "rugged."

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Between him and his fire chief a very real friendship' grew up, based on both sides upon respect and admiration. have a clear picture in my mind of Richard's amused yet deeply admiring interest when Bresnan, taking tea with Mrs. Gilder, laid his napkin across his knee and poised his cup precariously upon it so that his hands might illustrate his words as he told, in his broad brogue, "sad stories of the deaths of kings" and lively ones of their amazing escapes from death-of such kings among men as good firemen may be. Bresnan himself was one of these royalties, a specimen of the best type of Irishman, fine by nature and trained to an admirable vigor of body and mind.' He himself was killed not very long after that summer of 1894-so desperately injured by the falling of the water-tank of a burning factory, into which he had led his men when without blame he might merely have sent them, that he died a few hours later. He knew he was dying, and when asked if there were any one besides the priest whom he wanted to see he answered, "Yes-send for Mr. Gilder." This was one of the many and various rewards that the good citizen, the friend of men, got for his labors. Another was the Cross of the Legion of Honor, which came to him from France in recognition of his civic work.

Zealous though he was in fighting evil when convinced of its existence, Mr. Gilder was loth to believe in it, and still more loth to think that evil-doers realized what they were about. And sometimes he regretted his own vehemence when other people saw nothing in it to deplore. His verses called "The Guar dians of a Sacred Trust" saved from de struction for a time one of our fine old churches. They did what a hundred arguments, protests, and pleas in prose could not effect, showing how much, even in this supposedly prosaic time, our good causes might profit were it our habit to turn to art of this and of other kinds for aid. But just because his verses had this sort of historic interest Mr. Gilder would not include them in his collected poems.

His activities as an editor come within the frame of these memories only on their personal side. No other editor of the many for whom I have worked took, for their sakes, so deep an interest in his authors. No other was so bent upon finding, not only new writers, but new paths for established ones. When he wanted something done, he was not afraid, if so prompted, to pick out a person who could only protest that he knew nothing whatever of the subject. "Well," he would answer, "you can learn. Other people have." And as a rule he showed as much sagacity as boldness in making

1 Mr. James Ford tells something of this fine fire chief in his "Forty Odd Years in the Literary Shop."*

such assignments. Often his authors did learn-learn things upon which they never would have ventured but for his trustful, stimulating insistence.

Taking up a newspaper one day and pointing to the obituary column, where people of minor importance were commemorated on a sliding scale-in paragraphs which at the top of the list were two or three inches long and gradually dwindled to a couple of lines at the bottom-Richard said: "I never look at this column without wondering how high up I shall be placed when I die. I hope that I'm gradually climbing!" I wish he could have foreseen what happened when he did die. No obituary notice, however long, sufficed in any of the papers. Day after day they all gave space to tributes of all kinds from all quarters until in their sum total they exceeded by far any others that within my memory have been paid in New York excepting to public men of the highest rank.

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Much is said nowadays, especially for the benefit of the young, about "success" in life and the way to achieve it. Any one who thinks that to Americans it must mean something material, something bound up with rewards of money or of place, should read all he can find about Richard Gilder. Surely his was a successful life-rich in interest, rich in influence, rich in private affection and public honor. It grew to be what it was by reason partly of his acute intelligence, partly of his personal charm, partly of his indefatigable industry, but before all and most of all by reason of the moral rectitude, the disinterested conscientiousness, which, indeed, gave his other qualities their value. And all that he won he won for himself, not merely without external help, but in spite of many other handicaps besides ill health. He came to New York unknown, poor, and without influential family connections or that membership

QUESTION

in some highly esteemed profession which may quickly bring friends and influence; and, without any ambition save to do his best for mankind, he made himself one of the chief citizens of the big and busy city. He won from it everything that it had to give excepting wealth and office. For these he did not care and did not strive, nor did New York ever for a moment show that it would have thought more of him had he possessed them.

It is a clear proof of the strength of his personality that, although his name never appeared in his magazine as that of its editor, every one in America knew that he was its editor and that it was his voice. When he died, the whole country spoke in his honor, and his city-the city so often miscalled coldhearted and indifferent-mourned not only for a man whom it admired, but for a son and, in the best sense, a servant whom it loved.

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SOME ARRESTING DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE IDEALS OF OUR SUPPOSEDLY WILD YOUNG PEOPLE

ERHAPS the American educational system is going to pot.

Perhaps

the youth of the Nation is threatened by inadequate instruction in school and the influence of gross materialism out of it. Perhaps everything in curricula everywhere is improper and misguiding.

Perhaps; perhaps not. When I see people hold up their hands in horror at the hopelessness of the younger genIeration, I think upon a test carried on some months ago in Binghamton, New York. I report the record of that test as a challenge to doubters.

In this test one thousand boys and girls, a typical group of young Americans drawn from every stratum of the conglomerate society of this country, were called upon to set down in black and white their hopes, aspirations, prejudices, determinations, and principles. A questionnaire covering twelve

BY WILLIAM I. ENGLE

personal and social problems was circulated by the Board of Managers among the students in the four classes of the high school at Binghamton. Among them are the children of recent immigrants, with the blood of a score of countries in their veins; the children of families with genealogical records stretching well back toward the Mayflower; sons of the rich; daughters of the poor; girls who have never been out of the city; boys who knew the city first when they went there to register as freshmen.

Unequivocal seriousness marked the attitude of the children toward changing world conditions, social relations, their future. For one who answered frivolously, there were two hundred grim and grave. Underneath the boy's baseball grin and behind the girl's party laugh, it appears, there is an idealism overlooked by a myopic older generation.

To begin, the questionnaire asked the students to name the man or woman in history or life nearest their ideal.

On every other blank filled out by the boys appeared the name Abraham Lincoln. On nearly a fifth of the girls' blanks was written Florence Nightingale.

Second in favor among the boys was Theodore Roosevelt. So the boys do not base their preferences upon information in their text-books, as the high school course gives only a page to Roosevelt. Neither do the girls, for the two persons held in highest regard by themFlorence Nightingale and Alice Freeman Palmer-are granted but scant attention by instructors. Third in esteem was agreed upon by boys and girls. "Mother," they said.

Among the thousand replies, including all those from children of alien-born parents, there were three citing a for

eigner as the ideal character. Napoleon received one vote; Hannibal, one; and Rosa Bonheur, one. No young Italian mentioned Garibaldi; no Greek, Pericles; no Slovak, John Huss.

But sprinkled among the sheaf of ballots for the great American patriots were some more original selections.

"Nathan Hale, because he was a good sport," wrote a fifteen-year-old sophomore.

"Woodrow Wilson. Still water runs deep," declared another fifteen-year-old sophomore girl.

"Mother. She seems to be right always," wrote a fifteen-year-old freshman girl.

"Allyn Ryan, because he beat the stock market," said a fifteen-year-old junior.

"Bill Hart, because he has got the pep," a seventeen-year-old freshman chose.

"Jenny Lind, because she was famous, not egotistical, kind and true, "wrote an eighteen-year-old junior.

"Captain Alfred King, U. S. A. He did not think more of himself, but for his men. He died in France fighting on November 11, 1918," said a nineteenyear-old senior.

Other votes went to Calvin Coolidge, Edith Cavell, Douglas Fairbanks, Joan of Arc, Pershing, several Binghamton clergymen, and "father."

YOUNG AMERICA'S IDEAL CHARACTERS

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The second question in the series was, "Will you marry for money, position, or love?" and it was quite unnecessary.

Algebra and first love are omens, school-teachers say. They presage that brief critical period when youth is wise beyond all saying, when no obstacle big or little is worth a care, no hill too high to climb or jump. The boys and girls who answered the questionnaire, in the main, are between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. It is the algebra-first-love stage.

They stand 992 to 8 in favor of love. Six said they thought they would like to marry for money, and two for position. The remainder chose love in varying degrees. Some, "plain love;" some, "absolute love;" others, "true love;" one, "reciprocated love;" one, "love, the kind that makes your heart stop and you feel queer and empty inside."

The question, "What do you consider your finest achievement?" educed greater diversity of ideals than any other. But standing out sharply above all other accomplishments mentioned was that of helping others. It overshadowed thrift and excellence in school work and prowess in athletics and music. It was cited by a majority of both boys and girls.

"Giving my Liberty Bond to my sister

so she could get new clothes," said a thirteen-year-old freshman.

"Taking care of the baby all day Saturday while mother goes away," decided a fifteen-year-old sophomore.

"Letting a boy next door have the sweater I won in football," wrote a seventeen-year-old junior.

Thrift also was held in high esteem. Scores of boys mentioned earning money for Liberty Bonds and many girls recalled economizing on hats and shoes.

"Working through vacation so I could come back to school," said an eighteenyear-old senior.

"Sewing and darning for shop girls and paying my way through schoo!," said a seventeen-year-old junior.

Outside of these general classifications of achievements the choice ranged the wide world. Typical replies are: "Being well thought of." "Stopping using slang." "Baking cake."

"Playing Chopin's pieces."

WHAT THEY CALL THEIR BEST
ACHIEVEMENTS

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Total

283 217 173 140

None but young America of the twentieth century could answer the one financial question as this typical American school answered it. The question was, "What would you do with $5,000 if you had it?" The reply three times out of four was, "Invest it in stocks or bonds." Ten times as many children said "invest" as said "save" or "put it in the bank."

Next to investing and saving the choice fell successively to "a college education," "help my family," and "travel."

HOW THEY WOULD SPEND $5,000
College Help
Invest. Education. Family. Travel
225 130
18

Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors

22

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Replies to one question prove the new generation to be old-fashioned. The question was, "Is woman's place in the home or in business and the professions?" The answer their great-grandfathers might have made is theirs. "Home," said nine out of ten, and the tenths hesitated, quibbled, ventured, "Working for herself," with the qualification, "if she has the ability."

8hese are typical reasons given for the decision:

"At home, to keep the aNtion pure," a fifteen-year-old freshman girl.

"At home. They tangle things up in professions," a sixteen-year-old sophomore boy.

"At home. Who will bring up the family if they are neglecting their own duties?" an eighteen-year-old junior.

"At home. They would make competition too keen," a nineteen-year-old senior.

A kindred question, "Should young women enter men's fields of work?" disclosed a somewhat conflicting attitude. Nearly all the girls said that young women should have that privilege, and a third of the boys agreed, both offering the qualification, though, that the women be unmarried and forced to earn their own living.

The range of ideas is illustrated by these typical replies:

"No. They should not enter men's work. Man was made to rule the world," a fourteen-year-old freshman boy.

"Yes. They have a right to choose their occupation, and they are as capable as men," a fifteen-year-old sophomore boy.

"No. They lack stamina," a sixteenyear-old junior boy.

"Yes. They have more ability than the other sex," a nineteen-year-old senior girl.

Favorite amusements are athletics, reading, music, and dancing. Citing the recreation from which they "get the most benefit and pleasure," the majority of the children said either baseball, football, basket-ball or tennis, and a heavy vote from the girls brought dancing up among the leaders. In all classes, however, reading and music were second and third choice, standing ahead of dancing, motion pictures, vaudeville, and the drama.

Desire to attend college increases as the pupil advances in high school. Onethird of the freshmen hope for a higher education; three-fourths of the sophomores; five-sixths of the juniors; six-sevenths of the seniors. question was, "Do you wish to attend college?"

The

Politics obviously is dominated by their parents. Binghamton is a Republican city. Republicans among the school pupils ran well ahead of Democrats, and there was only a scattering of Socialists.

Home-town ties are not so strong as might have been guessed. Only onethird of the students said they intended to remain in the city where they were born.

Ideas of marital conduct are rational. Answering "How big is the ideal American family?" the majority said, "Five persons." Only one boy suggested "Ten children," and very few spoke of fewer than two.

Deductions from the questionnaire replies as a whole tend to show that the overwhelming majority of the children, underneath an exterior of frivolity, are sober and practical, and conservative enough to make any good radical despair of the future of the world.

But, considering the fact that the world has been going to the dogs (for a variety of opposite reasons) with every rising generation since that canine terminus was first discovered, it is surprising how seldom it gets there.

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