Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/116

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church with such a heavenly smile about her lips that observers thought she must be meditating on some beatific vision, till a friend, more curious than the rest, asked her how she did it. She explained away the mystery by declaring that all she did was to shape her lips, when she entered the church door, as if she were about to utter the word "spruce." The sequel tells how the friend thought to beautify her own expression by the same technique; but she was stopped in the middle of the aisle and was asked in horror, by an acquaintance, what ailed her. She, much chagrined, explained that she was merely trying the formula which had made the beatific lady look so entrancing. "For heaven's sake," cried the neighbor, "what is it?" "Why," she replied, "as I come in the door, I simply shape my lips as if about to utter the word 'hemlock.'"

Both these ladies illustrate very well what I mean by the externality of the method.

At the present time, our ordinary young people are cultivating the external, the socially-centered type of morality. The individual would rather go wrong with the crowd than right by himself. He has a horror of being in any sense alone. He is almost painfully anxious to do as the rest do. Even his "eccentricities"