She also relieves her pent-up idealism in plays or
books--in high-wrought, "strong" novels, not in adventures in
society such as the kitchen admires, but in stories with violent
moral and emotional crises, whose characters, no matter how
unlifelike, have "strong" thoughts, and make vital decisions;
succeed or fail significantly. Her brother, the head of a
wholesale dry-goods firm, listens to the stories the drummers
bring home of night life on the road, laughs, says to himself
regretfully that the world has to be like that; and then, in
logical reaction, demands purity and nothing but aggressive purity
in the books of the public library.
The hard man goes in for philanthropy (never before so frequently
as in America); the one-time "boss" takes to picture-collecting;
the railroad wrecker gathers rare editions of the Bible; and tens
of thousands of humbler Americans carry their inherited idealism
into the necessarily sordid experiences of life in an imperfectly
organized country, suppress it for fear of being thought "cranky"
or "soft," and then, in their imagination and all that feeds their
imagination, give it vent.
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