Dead and buried creeds have not carried with them the essential morality
they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of
superstition. And all that there is of justice and kindness and beauty,
embodied in our cumbrous forms of etiquette, will live perennially when
the forms themselves have been forgotten.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: From "Illustrations of Universal Progress," 1864.]




TALK AND TALKERS[38]

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON


"Sir, we had a good talk."--JOHNSON.

"As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle
silence."--FRANKLIN.

There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable,
gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an
illustration, pat to every subject; and not only to cheer the flight of
time among our intimates, but bear our part in that great international
congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, public
errors first corrected, and the course of public opinion shaped, day by
day, a little nearer to the right. No measure comes before Parliament