MY DEAR MRS. GRUNDY: You may have observed that nowadays we rank the
love-story among the comfits of literature; and we do this for the
excellent reason that man is a thinking animal by courtesy rather
than usage.

Rightly considered, the most trivial love-affair is of staggering import.
Who are we to question this, when nine-tenths of us owe our existence to
a summer flirtation? And while our graver economic and social and psychic
"problems" (to settle some one of which is nowadays the object of all
ponderable fiction) are doubtless worthy of most serious consideration,
you will find, my dear madam, that frivolous love-affairs, little and
big, were shaping history and playing spillikins with sceptres long
before any of these delectable matters were thought of.

Yes, even the most talked-about "questions of the day" are sometimes
worthy of consideration; but were it not for the kisses of remote years
and the high gropings of hearts no longer animate, there would be none to
accord them this same consideration, and a void world would teeter about
the sun, silent and naked as an orange. Love is an illusion, if you
will; but always through this illusion, alone, has the next generation
been rendered possible, and all endearing human idiocies, including
"questions of the day," have been maintained.

Love, then, is no trifle. And literature, mimicking life at a
respectful distance, may very reasonably be permitted an occasional
reference to the corner-stone of all that exists. For in life "a
trivial little love-story" is a matter more frequently aspersed than
found. Viewed in the light of its consequences, any love-affair is of
gigantic signification, inasmuch as the most trivial is a part of
Nature's unending and, some say, her only labor, toward the peopling of