the past, and the fact that it is no longer regarded as unbecoming for
women to take an interest in all the vital problems of the
day--municipal, political and hygienic--provided they can assist in
their solution, marks several milestones on the highroad of advance.

On the other hand the widespread familiarity with these problems, which
has been engendered simply for pecuniary profit by magazine literature
in the form of essays, fiction and even verse, is by no means an
undiluted blessing--particularly if the accentuation of the author is on
the roses lining the path of dalliance quite as much as on the
destruction to which it leads. The very warning against evil may turn
out to be in effect only a hint that it is readily accessible. One does
not leave the candy box open beside the baby even if the infant has
received the most explicit instructions as to the probable effect of too
much sugar upon its tiny kidneys. Moreover, the knowledge of the
prevalence of certain vices suggests to the youthful mind that what is
so universal must also be rather excusable, or at least natural.

It seems to me that, while there is at present a greater popular
knowledge of the high cost of sinning, there is at the same time a
greater tolerance for sin itself. Certainly this is true among the
people who make up the circle of my friends. "Wild oats" are regarded as
entirely a matter of course. No anecdote is too broad to be told openly
at the dinner table; in point of fact the stories that used to be
whispered only very discreetly in the smoking room are now told freely
as the natural relishes to polite conversation. In that respect things
are pretty bad.

One cannot help wondering what goes on inside the villa on Rhode Island
Avenue when the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house remarks to the