I picked up for myself. I'm just turned thirty, and I've got $5,000 in Victory Bonds. My wife and I have a good time. She has her friends whenever she pleases. I had a car, but a good chance come along and I sold it. Time too valuable. Better hire, I says to Kitty, comes cheaper in the end. Now, if it ain't intruding I would like to know what it is we're missing by enjoying ourselves and making a good living and helping others to do the same."
He paused again. What staggered me wasn't so much the difficulty of explaining what intellect and culture and tradition stood for—though I knew I couldn't explain them—it was simply the challenge of the practical. It was like a wave of some vast and unknown sea that had washed up to my door. I perceived in this alert, rubicund-faced, faultlessly attired young man before me the insurgence of the armies of commercialism. It was Labor knocking at the Study door, with perhaps a warrant of arrest in its pocket. It was the Administrator, the Executor, the inheritor of the earth, and it was asking a reason for the faith that was in me. Had I one to give?—that is, one that would be understood? Could the pallid pleasures of the intellect justify them-
