whenever public demonstration demands, as the Frankenstein platitudes
proclaim him to be.

The Puritanism of the nation, remorselessly upheld by its laws and its
public factotums is an extraneous and artificial pose into which the
blundering proletaire has tricked itself. There are innumerable
consequences. We have, firstly, the spectacle of the masses disporting
themselves slyly in the undertow of cynicism.

"Modesty," bellows Sir Frankenstein from pulpit and press, "is a
cardinal virtue." "Right O," echoes the feminine contingent and
promptly bobs its hair, shortens its skirts, and rolls down its socks.

"Abstinence, sobriety, are an economic and spiritual necessity,"
bellows Sir Frankenstein. Whereupon the male contingent votes the land
dry and gets drunk.

From the foregoing we may derive glimmers of truth concerning the
public tolerance of iconoclasts. "Main Street," a volume fathered by
Mencken, Freud, and the other Chaos-Bringers, leaps into prominence as
a best seller. It is devoured and acclaimed by the ballot maniac who
reads it, smacks his lips over its "truths" and sallies forth to vote
further canonizations of hypocrisy into the legal code. Even I, who
ten years ago prided myself upon being as indigestible a type of the
Incoherent Young as the land afforded, find myself for one month a
best seller [Footnote: "Erik Dorn," Mr. Hecht's first novel.--Ed.] on
my native heath. Woe the prophet who is with honor in his country! He
will flee in disgust in quest of hair shirts and a bastinado.

Thus, the citizens. With the left hand they greet the iconoclasts and