through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter, snatches of lyric
song, the recovered forms of old dances, and the traditional rondels
of merry games. It would thus bring charm and beauty to the prosaic
city and connect it subtly with the arts of the past as well as with
the vigor and renewed life of the future.




CHAPTER II

THE WRECKED FOUNDATIONS OF DOMESTICITY

"Sense with keenest edge unused
Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire:
Lovely feet as yet unbruised
On the ways of dark desire!"


These words written by a poet to his young son express the longing
which has at times seized all of us, to guard youth from the mass of
difficulties which may be traced to the obscure manifestation of that
fundamental susceptibility of which we are all slow to speak and
concerning which we evade public responsibility, although it brings
its scores of victims into the police courts every morning.

At the very outset we must bear in mind that the senses of youth are
singularly acute, and ready to respond to every vivid appeal. We know
that nature herself has sharpened the senses for her own purposes, and
is deliberately establishing a connection between them and the newly