direction of pleasant, not too arduous exertion, the arts are attacked
with great earnestness of intention, literature, "movements" of many
sorts are ingredients in these homes. Many things that are imperative
to the aristocratic home are regarded as needless, and in their place
appear other things that the aristocrat would despise, books,
instruction, travel in incorrect parts of the world, _games_, that
most seductive development of modern life, played to the pitch of
distinction. Into both these homes comes literature, comes the Press,
comes the talk of alien minds, comes the observation of things without,
sometimes reinforcing the tradition, sometimes insidiously glossing
upon it or undermining it, sometimes "letting daylight through it"; but
much more into the latter type than into the former. And slowly the two
fundamentally identical things tend to assimilate their superficial
difference, to homologize their traditions, each generation sees a
relaxation of the aristocratic prohibitions, a "gentleman" may tout for
wines nowadays--among gentlemen--he may be a journalist, a fashionable
artist, a schoolmaster, his sisters may "act," while, on the other
hand, each generation of the ex-commercial shareholder reaches out more
earnestly towards refinement, towards tone and quality, towards
etiquette, and away from what is "common" in life.

So in these typical cases one follows the strands of tradition into the
new conditions, the new homes of our modern state. In America one finds
exactly the same new elements shaped by quite parallel economic
developments, shopmen in a large store, skilled operatives, and
independent shareholders developing homes not out of a triple strand of
tradition, but out of the predominant home tradition of an emancipated
middle class, and in a widely different atmosphere of thought and
suggestion. As a consequence, one finds, I am told, a skilled operative
already with no eye (or only an angry eye) for tips, sociable shopmen,