admit the newspapers one day how can you forbid them on another
occasion? And while appreciating the head master's difficulty I walked
out into the open air unable to take any further interest in the
sports. Nor has time obliterated anything of the shame I felt that
day. I don't want to make a fuss, I don't want to pose as a moralist,
but I cannot help thinking that while newspapers continue to be
published, the Vigilance Society need not trouble lest certain books
should fall into the hands of young people. My correspondent forgot
that thousands of newspapers are published to-day when he wrote to me
saying that my book roused sensuality. I am afraid I omitted the
passage in which these words occur, fearing to burden my article with
quotation. Here it is:

"The perusal of the episodes (Doris' Orelay experiences) does
certainly not ennoble me, it rouses sensuality, it lowers woman from a
friend and helpmeet into a convenience and a minister to pleasure. I
am less able and less willing to think 'high' after your book; poetry
is distasteful, art is narrowed, I look out for the licentious, the
suggestive, the low, and the mean; and don't you? You seem in passage
after passage to be world-weary in a sense that no sane man ought to
be, sated, disgusted, tired of life--is it not so? You see I speak
from what I am sure you will regard as a narrow platform, my ideals
are certainly not yours but I am simply and frankly curious as to the
ultimates in your book and in yourself."

Let us suppose now that the Vigilance Association after a sharp
crusade has succeeded in redeeming our literature from all
reprehensible matter, and flushed with success has attacked the
newspapers and obtained an interdiction against the publication of all
reports of sexual crimes and misdemeanors. And having extended our