little district which lies between Gloucester, Worcester, and Plymouth), was the industrial nursery of the United States, and no doubt it went on very nicely, with hand labor and elementary machinery, up to the middle of the nineteenth century; but the new America insisted on pushing out toward the west, toward the fort surrounded by shacks, brand-new stores, and rough Lake piers which is now Chicago. Coal and iron appeared in Pennsylvania, oil, natural gas; the little railway which had united Boston with Salem found a terrible brother in the steely serpent which threw out its head, not only toward Chicago, but across the prairie toward the desert of Nebraska. Swiftly industry arose in Pittsburgh and in Illinois.

Those people had no traditions; they had no old factories, no old plants. They had all their brains, all their energy, and no old habits to hamper them. Thus there arose outside New England a new mechanical industry which very soon began to promise ruin. to the little factories of Massachusetts. They would have been ruined probably through another cause, which was the loss of their water power, when the demand for pulp for paper compelled the cutting down of the forest of the north; it was the coal of West Virginia that saved New England, but it was the example of the West, and especially of Detroit, which induced New England to save itself. It has saved itself, and I spent a long day in the factories of Bridgeport, particularly at the American Chain Company, to see see the most modern automatic plant turning out tire chains; and I saw an almost human dynamo in Massachusetts, a dynamo which warns the negligent human being when it is overloaded, and even switches itself off when it feels itself dangerously handled. Thus New England has saved itself from the industrial point of view, but in so doing it has transmuted itself. The metaphor of grub, chrysalis, and butter

fly is apt to the transformation of Boston and the surrounding states. The old-fashioned people will no doubt say that industrial New England is now in the unpleasant grub state, and that the land we know is the painful result of the sober butterfly which once hovered above the beautiful cottage roofs of Concord. For my part, I doubt it, because it seems to me that modern industry is the soldier who will conquer beauty and ease of life for all men, while the old times merely possessed beauty and comfort for a few men.

The spectacle of New England to-day, and even the spectacle of Boston, with its swarming tenements, its crowds of yelling children, its resounding trolley cars, all this is really sane and splendid and full of promise for a luminous future. I weep no tears over old Boston that lies in its own dust, nor smile, for instance, at the Boston Mushroom Society. Boston still stands for good taste and for the appreciation of learning. Only it is dangerous to concentrate upon academic Boston, because one may easily forget that within twenty years, if Boston develops on its actual lines, it will be a great industrial city.

The modernism of Boston is found quite as easily as its age. For instance, in the trolley cars you are requested to report not only cases of discourtesy on the part of conductors, but also you are asked to report commendable acts. That is a revolution; for the old point of view as to labor, which prevails in Europe, is that it should be punished when it does wrong, while the broad American point of view is infinitely more human (though none the less mercenary); it holds that men work best when they are treated in a human way. Old Boston would never have thought of congratulating its conductors. It is new

Boston, absorbing the business theories of the West, which seeks to develop in its employees the human qualities of courtesy and kindness. I do not suppose these remarks will mean much to my American readers, for they are accus

tomed to that point of view, but to an Englishman they are startling.

Startling, too, is another item in Boston-namely, the office of the Christian Science Monitor. It is the most amazing newspaper office in the world; the walls are white, the floors are made of parquet, and carpeted. When you go in you think you are going into a government department closed for the night. But if you enter the sub-editors' room you discover a large place, with about ten desks. Now, in most other newspaper offices you find dirty, whitewashed walls, tables stained with the ink and carved by the knives of generations, masses of dusty papers, six weeks' torn issues on the floor, mixed with the dottels of pipes and hundreds of cigarette stubs. Everybody bellows. Everybody smokes. Nearly everybody

swears.

At the Christian Science Monitor all work placidly at desks as neat as those of sinecurists; there is no bustle; there is no noise. In the composing room, even, the compositors are clean and collected; the only noise the Christian Scientists have been unable to repress is that of the linotype machine. Do what they will, it insists upon clanking. Well, I do not want to make out that the Christian Science Monitor is an indication of Finis Bostonia, but in reality it does amount to that, because the Monitor point of view is the top notch of industrial work. It represents the discovery that industry need not be noisy, dirty, and ferocious. Some may think that the roaring factories are more damaging to old Boston, but for my part I suspect that this well-oiled organization goes a step farther and indicates the form which industry is going to take; in that sense, perhaps, the calm sweetness of the labor of that office is attendant upon the funeral of the dusty and musty libraries. The smoke-belching factories may be carrying old Boston to its grave, but the harmonious organization of this extraordinary modern office is laying a delicate wreath of flow

ers upon old Boston's grave. It is a significant contrast after the Monitor to go and see old Boston trying to be new Boston in the shape of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

You find a large site administered on spacious lines housing only 360 beds. I am not attacking the hospital, for it does serve a necessary purpose namely, the care of those who are not too poor to pay; it charges its patients $21 a week in the wards and $40 in the private rooms. Also, it gives a good example by treating its nurses well; the nurses' quarters are fit to live in (which, in England, is seldom the case) and the nurses are not sweated. But what is interesting is the elderly quality of it all. I know that there is nothing elderly in the medical school of the hospital, which is practically the same as that of Harvard, but there is, through these moderate payments, a maintenance of an air of gentility. At the Massachusetts Hospital people are still selected; they are still investigated; if you earn more than $100 a week you are unlikely to get in; if you earn less than $20 a week it is unlikely that you will get in, either. It represents something that was fine

namely, the development of so much charity among the rich; that was suitable enough to the graceful feudalism of old Boston city. But in the new Boston that is lifting its voice in a cry that may ultimately equal the shout of Chicago it represents nothing but survival, and one wonders if it will survive.

Of course it will not survive, for nothing survives, and each one of us takes his turn. Boston may yet snatch from the hand of Chicago the torch of progressive industry, while Chicago may become rich enough to give more thought to the immaterial; it will be able to afford that luxury. Boston may pass from the tradition of James Russell Lowell to the new one of Miss Amy Lowell, while Chicago may cease to respond to the verse of Mr. Carl Sandburg to turn to the polished rimes of some new Keats,

IT

T was a day of ethereal and trance-like beauty-blue hills dissolving into a blue sky; roses, green lawns, and majestic trees disposed with cunning simplicity. From the house which topped the hill spread a parklike lawn merging into gardens or separated by low, vinecovered stone walls from daisied pastures.

Sylvia was not especially aware of all this perfection. This was just the country, where one spent such time between June and October as was not spent in other country places of equal loveliness. She strolled under the arching elms with two proud chows who deigned at intervals to be pleasant to her, and with Terry Selwyn, to whom she, at intervals, deigned to be pleasant.

"I say, Sylv, it was no end silly to name a Chinese dog Thomas, you know." He spoke lazily.

Terry was feeling very fit. He had walloped Dickie Bateman at tennis; tea would soon be served under the striped umbrella whither Sylvia and he were drifting.

He was aware of no particular difference in Sylvia that day. Terence was not an observer of moods. He knew how he himself felt, which, unless wrangled about money matters or nagged from home to return to England and attend to his duties, was surpassingly cheerful, optimistic, hungry, and care-free. He assumed that everyone else felt the same way-that being what life was for -or, at any rate, that everyone else felt that way when he did. Sylvia, of course, was a bit incalculable, but her moods had to be elaborately revealed to him before he was aware they existed.

"What," she inquired, icily, "did you say was silly?"

Sylvia that day was afflicted with an idea. It made her arrogant. It made her disdainful of her family, of Dickie Bateman, and especially of Terry. The latter was, she told herself, a mere useless aristocrat-ornamental, but useless, a parasite brought up in luxury with nothing better to think about than the names of Chinese dogs.

She entertained these intolerant sentiments with all the fury of a novice. They had been hers for some twenty, or, to be exact, nineteen and a half hours. She was convinced they were to be hers for life. They dated from a few moments after she had sat down next to Digby Porterfield at the Peets' dinner the night before. Her humor, too, was impaired by an altercation that had taken place a few moments before between herself and her aunt Mrs. Dillingsby Pott. Words of a tart nature had been exchanged.

Mrs. Dillingsby Pott, short and erect, was sitting before her mirror inspecting with a wary eye the adjusting of a smart turban her maid had just put on her head. She wore an almost seamless miraculously fitting costume and gave the impression of having been crammed into it and of being restrained there at high pressure. A certain shortness of breath and obtrusiveness of eye habitual to her furthered this quite false impression. Nevertheless, the result was impressive. Mrs. Dillingsby Pott was impressive and she knew it.

It was when the young woman finished pinning the hat and was dismissed that the discussion began. It was not a long discussion. Mrs. Pott began by observing that since Della Peet and her sister, Linda Mills, had become anar

chists and Black-Handers she did not care to see them at Highcrest. She was distressed that Sylvia had disregarded her wishes not only to the extent of dining with them, but also to the extent of inviting them to tea. She particularly did not wish to see them about when accompanied by their perverted relative, Digby Porterfield. Digby, being a black-hearted Bolshevist, was already, Mrs. Dillingsby Pott did not doubt, plotting to have American women sold in the market-place. To which Sylvia replied, in a tone of the deepest respect, that if her aunt was too sunk in Bourbonism, Capitalism, and Bourgeoisism to perceive the dawning splendor of a new era her aunt would be only the worse off when it was upon her. And her aunt came back that, since the new era seemed to consist, in the unfortunate countries where it had already dawned, in blowing off the head of everybody who didn't agree with you, or who had something you wanted, she would probably fare no worse that anyone else. Upon which she invited Sylvia to withdraw from her presence-recalling her to say that when Sylvia's parlor Bolshevists inquired for her, she, Mrs. Dillingsby Pott, could be considered not at home.

Sylvia did not dare answer back as she would have liked to answer back, and suffered in consequence from a bottled-up feeling which made it necessary to be nasty to somebody. Terry was at hand and offered a field for her endeavors. If only, she thought regretfully, he were not so handsome she could be lots nastier.

"But I say, Sylv, it was silly, you know, to name a Chinese dog Thom"Yes, so you said before."

"Well, why did you, especially since you called the other one Yum Yum. Mind, I don't say I like that name, but Thomas"-he dropped behind to light his pipe and as soon as he caught up went on "Thomas would be all right, you know, for a bally old dog, a cocker or a terrier, or even a hound. But a Chinese dog-”

"Oh, you're driving me wild!" Sylvia burst out.

Terry was surprised-also offended. "I say, if you're going to be grumpy just because I don't like the name of a beastly Chinese-"

"I'm not grumpy. I don't care whether you like my dog's name or not. It's nothing to me. I only named him that so that tiresome people could ask me why."

"Tiresome," he began, threateningly. "Yes, tiresome! If I'd named him Gum Gum, or Tum Tum-"

Suddenly Terry exploded with laughter. "Tum Tum! I say, by Jove!" he roared. "Tum Tum! That would be a rummy one!"

Sylvia eyed him with extreme disfavor. "I'm glad you find it amusing." Terry looked puzzled. "See here, are you rotting, or are you waxy about something?"

"What objectionable words you use. I'm not angry, if that's what you mean. I simply don't happen to be as easily amused as you, that's. all. In fact," she added, loftily, "I no longer feel that amusement is the end and aim of existence, as you do." "I don't." "What?"

Terry didn't exactly know. "Why, whatever the bally thing you said was.' Abstract discussion baffled him. It inclined him to sulk. "I think I'll have my tea inside."

"Very well. I dare say you would find them dull."

"Find who dull?" Terry was not incurious.

"My guests," she replied.

"I didn't know there were any beastly guests."

"There aren't any yet, but there soon will be. However, if you prefer not to meet them-"

"I never said I didn't want to meet them. How could I, if I didn't know there were any?"

"Please," said Sylvia, raising her eyes heavenward with a look of weary resig