Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/The Romantic Old Days
THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS
IT must have been terribly difficult getting around in the days before automobiles were invented, or railroads or anything like that.
Though, of course, it was wonderfully romantic, too.
The old coaching days, particularly, when everybody blew on horns as they drove from town to town, and there were highwaymen and cavaliers with swords and all those people, you know, riding by the coaches.
Don't you just dote on romance? I do!
But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.
But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with lavender and old roses.
I always say that one can be advanced and in the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear, you know.
Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene means the death of romance?
It's a serious thought, isn t it?
But what I always say is: "Which of these things will do the most good in the world?"
Especially good to the poor!
You know how frightfully interested I am in the poor.
I make that my test. I always say to myself: "Which will do the most good to the great masses?"
I take such a serious interest in the masses!
We should think twice before we take romance out of their lives and replace it with science of any kind.
For, after all, you know, they represent the Future.
We should all think of the Future!
That's what makes the Feminist Movement such a wonderful thing—it is moving right straight ahead toward the Future!
I'm thinking of being a Suffragist again. I was once, you know, but I resigned.
The sashes and banners are such a frightful shade of yellow, you know. So I quit.
Beauty, after all, is the chief thing. What, after all, do all our reforms come to, if the world is not to be made more beautiful because of them?
And I simply cannot wear yellow.