If any lover of Hogarth will look at the series of pictures which tell the story of the Idle and the Industrious Apprentice, he will feel that while the industrious apprentice fitted admirably into his time and place, the idle apprentice had the misfortune to be born out of date. In what a different spirit would his tragic tale be told to-day, and what different emotions it would awaken. A poor tired boy, who ought to be at school or at play, sleeping for very exhaustion at his loom. A cruel boss daring to strike the worn-out lad. No better playground given him in the scant leisure which Sunday brings than a loathsome graveyard. No healthier sport provided for him than gaming. And, in the end, a lack of living wage forcing him to steal. Unhappy apprentice, to have lived and sinned nearly two centuries too soon! And as if this were not a fate bitter enough for tears, he must needs have contrasted with him at every step an industrious companion, whom that unenlightened age permitted to work as hard as he pleased, even for the benefit of a master, and to build up his own fortunes on the foundation of his own worth. Hogarth's simple conception of personal responsibility and of personal equation is as obsolete as the clumsy looms at which his apprentices sit, and the full-skirted coats they wear.

Yet the softening of the hard old rules, the rigid old standards, has not tended to strengthen the fibre of our race. Nobody supposes that the industrious apprentice had an enjoyable boy

hood. As far as we can see, going to church was his sole recreation, as it was probably the principal recreation of his master's daughter, whose hymn-book he shared, and whom he duly married. Her home-life doubtless bore a strong resemblance to the home-life of the tumultuous heroine of Fanny's First Play, who tells us with a heaving breast that she never knew the joy of existence until she had knocked out a policeman's tooth. Hogarth's young lady would probably have cared little for this form of exercise, even had the London policemen of 1748 been the chivalrous sufferers they are to-day. She is a buxom, demure damsel; and in her, as in the lad by her side, there is a suggestion of reserve power. They are citizens in the making, prepared to accept soberly the restrictions and responsibilities of citizenship, and to follow with relish the star of their own destinies.

And all things considered, what can be better than to make a good job out of a given piece of work? "That intricate web of normal expectation,' which Mr. Gilbert Murray tells us is the very essence of human society, provides incentives for reasonable men and women, and provides also compensations for courage. What Mr. Murray calls a 'failure of nerve' in Greek philosophy and Greek religion is the relaxing of effort, the letting down of obligation. With the asceticism imposed, or at least induced, by Christianity, 'the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live in

what survives the more completely,' he has but scant and narrow sympathy; but he explains with characteristic clearness that the ideals of Greek citizenship withered and died, because of a weakening of faith in normal human resistance. All the last manifestations of Hellenistic religion betray a lack of nerve.'

It is with the best intentions in the world that we Americans are now engaged in letting down the walls of human resistance, in lessening personal obligation; and already the failure of nerve is apparent on every side. We begin our kindly ministrations with the little kindergarten scholar, to whom work is presented as play, and who is expected to absorb the elements of education without conscious effort, and certainly without compulsion. We encourage him to feel that the business of his teacher is to keep him interested in his task, and that he is justified in stopping short as soon as any mental process becomes irksome or difficult. Indeed, I do not know why I permit myself the use of the word 'task,' which by common consent is banished from the vocabulary of school. Professor Gilman said it was a word which should never be spoken by teacher, never heard by pupil, and no doubt a well-disposed public cordially agreed with him.

The firm old belief that the task is a valuable asset in education, that the making of a good job out of a given piece of work is about the highest thing on earth, has lost its hold upon the world. The firm old disbelief in a royal road to learning has vanished long ago. All knowledge, we are told, can be made so attractive-if only we have a very up-to-date teacher. that school-children will absorb it with delight. If they are not absorbing it, the teacher is to blame. Professor Wiener tells us that when his marvelous

little son failed to acquire the multiplication tables, he took him away from school, and let him study advanced mathematics. Whereupon the child discovered the tables for himself. Mrs. John Macy, well-known to the community as the friend and instructor of Miss Helen Keller, has informed a listening world that she does not see why a child should study anything in which he is not interested. 'It is a waste of energy.'

Naturally, it is hard to convince parents - who have the illusions common to their estate that while exceptional methods may answer for exceptional cases (little William Pitt, for instance, was trained from early boyhood to be a prime minister), common methods have their value for the rank and file. It is harder still to make them understand that enjoyment cannot with safety be accepted as a determining factor in education, and that the mental and moral discipline which comes of hard and perhaps unwilling study is worth a mine of pleasantly acquired information. It is not, after all, a smattering of chemistry, or an acquaintance with the habits of bees, which will carry our children through life; but a capacity for doing what they do not want to do, if it be a thing which needs to be done. They will have to do many things they do not want to do later on, if their lives are going to be worth the living, and the sooner they learn to stand to their guns, the better for them, and for all those whose welfare will lie in their hands.

The assumption that children should never be coerced into self-control, and never confronted with difficulties, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that young people should never be burdened with responsibilities, and never, under any stress of circumstances, be deprived of the pleasures which are no longer a privilege, but their

sacred and inalienable right, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that married women are justified in abandoning their domestic duties and dawdling about Europe, because they cannot stand the strain of home-life and housekeeping, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that invalids must yield to invalidism, must isolate themselves from common currents of life, and from strong and stern incentives to recovery, makes for failure of

nerve.

The assumption that religion should content itself with persuasiveness, and that morality should be sparing in its demands, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that a denial of civic rights constitutes a release from moral obligations makes for such a shattering failure of nerve that it brings insanity in its wake. And the assumption that poverty justifies prostitution, or exonerates the prostitute, lets down the last walls of human resistance. It is easier to find a royal road to learning than a royal road to self-mastery and self-respect.

A student of Mr.Whistler's once said to him that she did not want to paint in the low tones he recommended; she wanted to keep her colors clear and bright. Then,' replied Mr. Whistler, 'you must keep them in your tubes. It is the only way.' If we want bright colors and easy methods we must stay in our tubes, and avoid the inevitable complications of life by careful and consistent uselessness. We may nurse our nerves in comfortable seclusion at home, or we may brace them up in Paris and Nice; it does not matter; we are tube-dwellers under any skies. We may be so dependent on amusements that we never call them anything but duties, or we may be as devout as La Fontaine's rat, which piously retired from the society of other rats into the heart of a Dutch cheese. We may be so rich that the world forgives us, or so poor

that the world exonerates us. In each and every case we destroy life at the roots by a denial of its obligations, a fear of its difficulties, an indifference to its common rewards.

The seriousness of our age expresses itself in eloquent demands for gayety. The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it were amused, and that it would be amused. if plenty of artificial recreation were provided for its entertainment.

A few years ago an English clergyman made an eloquent appeal to the public, affirming that London's crying need was a score of 'PleasurePalaces,' supported by taxpayers, and free as the Roman games. Gladiators being indeed out of date, lions costly, and martyrs very scarce, some milder and simpler form of diversion was to be substituted for the vigorous sports of Rome. Comic songs and acrobats were, in the reverend gentleman's opinion, the appointed agents for the regeneration of the London poor. It is worthy of note that the drama did not occur to him as a bigger and broader pastime. It is worthy of note that the drama is fast losing ground with the proletariat, once its stanch upholders. A very hard-thinking English writer, Mr. J. G. Leigh, sees in the substitution of cheap vaudeville for cheap melodrama an indication of what he calls loss of stamina, and of what Mr. Murray calls loss of nerve. 'When the sturdy melodrama with its foiled villainy and triumphant virtue ceases to allure, and people want in its place the vulgar vapidities of the vaudeville, we may be sure there is a spirit of sluggish impotence in the air.'

To-day the moving pictures present

the most triumphant form of cheap entertainment. They are good of their kind, and there is a visible effort to make them better; but the 'special features' by which they are accompanied in the ten and fifteen-cent shows, the shrill songs, the dull jokes, the clumsy clogdances, are all of an incredible badness. Compared with them the worst of plays seems good, and the ill-paid actors who storm and sob through Alone in a Great City, or No Wedding Bells for Her, assume heroic proportions, as ministering to the emotions of the heart.

The question of amusement is one with which all classes are deeply concerned. Le Monde où l'on s'amuse is no longer the narrow world of fashion. It has extended its border lines to embrace humanity. It is no longer an exclusively adult world. The pleasures of youth have become something too important for interference, too sacred for denial. Whatever may be happening to parents, whatever their cares and anxieties, the sons and daughters must lose none of the gayeties now held essential to their happiness. They are trained to a selfishness which is foreign to their natures, and which does them grievous wrong. A few years ago I asked an acquaintance about her mother, with whom she lived, and who was, I knew, incurably ill. 'She is no better,' said the lady disconsolately, and I must say it is very hard on my children. They cannot have any of their young friends in the house. They cannot entertain. They have been cut off from all social pleasures this winter.'

I said it was a matter of regret, and I forbore to add that the poor invalid would probably have been glad to die a little sooner, had she been given the chance. It was not the mere selfishness of old age which kept her so long about it. Yet neither was my acquaintance the callous creature that she seemed.

Left to herself, she would not have begrudged her mother the time to die; but she had been deeply imbued with the conviction that young people in general, and her own children in particular, should never be saddened, or depressed, or asked to assume responsibilities, or be called upon for selfdenial. She was preparing them carefully for that failure of nerve which would make them impotent in the emergencies of life.

The desire of the modern philanthropist to provide amusement for the working-classes is based upon the determination of the working-classes to be amused. He is as keen that the poor should have their fill of dancing, as Dickens in his less enlightened age was keen that the poor should have their fill of beer. He knows that it is natural for young men and women to crave diversion, and that it is right for them to have it. What he does not always clearly understand, what Dickens did not always clearly understand, is that to crave either amusement or drink so weakly that we cannot often very often-conquer our craving, is to be worthless in a work-a-day world.

Miss Jane Addams, in her careful study of the Chicago streets, speaks of the 'pleasure-loving girl who demands that each evening shall bring her some measure of recreation.' Miss Addams admits that such a girl is beset by nightly dangers, but does not appear to think her attitude an unnatural or an unreasonable one. A very capable and intelligent woman who has worked hard for the establishment of decently conducted dance-halls in New York and elsewhere, dance-halls sorely needed to supplant the vicious places of entertainment where drink and degradation walk hand in hand, was asked at a meeting last winter whether the girls for whose welfare she was pleading never stayed at home. 'Never,'

was the firm reply, 'and will you pardon me for saying, Neither do you.' The retort provoked laughter because the young married woman who had put the question probably never did spend a night at home unless she were entertaining. She represented a social extreme, a combination of health, wealth, beauty, charm and high spirits. But there were scores of girls and women in the audience who spent many nights at home. There are hundreds of girls and women in what are called fashionable circles who spend many nights at home. There are thousands of girls and women in more modest circumstances who spend many nights at home. If this were not the case, our big cities would soon present a spectacle of demoralization. They would be chaotic on the surface, and rotten at the core.

It is claimed that the nervous exhaustion produced by hours of sustained and monotonous labor sends the factory girl into the streets at night. She is too unstrung for rest. That this is in a measure true, no experienced worker will deny, because every experienced worker is familiar with the sensation. Every woman who has toiled for hours, whether with a sewing machine or a typewriter, whether with a needle or a pen, whether in an office or at home, has felt the nervous fatigue which does not crave rest but distraction, which makes her want to 'go.' Every woman worth her salt has overcome this weakness, has mastered this desire. It is probable that many men suffer and struggle in the same fashion. Dr. Johnson certainly did. With inspired directness he speaks of people who are afraid to go home and think.' He knew that fear. Many a night it drove him through the London streets till daybreak. He conquered it, conquered the sick nerves so at variance with his sound and righteous principles,

and his example is a beacon light to strugglers in the gloom.

Naturally, the working girl knows nothing about Dr. Johnson. Unhappily, she knows little of any beacon light or guide. But, if she be a reasonable human being, she does know that to expect every evening to 'bring her some measure of recreation' is an utterly unreasonable demand, and that it can be gratified only at the risk of her physical and moral undoing. She has been taught to read in our public schools; she is provided with countless novels and story-books by our public libraries; the lightest of light literature is at her command. Is this not enough to tide her over a night or two in the week? If her clothes never want mending or renovating, she is unlike any other woman the world has got to show. If there is never any washing, ironing, or housework for her to do, her position is at once unusual and regrettable. If she will not sometimes read, or work, or, because she is tired, go early to bed; if her craving for amusement has reached that acute stage when only the streets, or the moving pictures, or the dance-hall will satisfy it, she has so completely lost nerve that she has no moral stamina left. She may be virtuous, but she is an incapable weakling, and the working man who marries her ruins his life. Such girls swell the army of deserted wives which is the despair of all organized charities.

The sincere effort to regenerate the world by amusing it is to be respected; but it is not the final word of reform. The sincere effort to regenerate the world by a legal regulation of wages is a new version of an old story, the shifting of personal obligation, the search for somebody's door at which to lay the burden of blame. It is also a denial of human experience, inherited and acquired, and a rejection of the only doctrine which stands for self