Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/88

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his answer, said she had always been 'perfectly wild to see a rhinoceros charge' because they were such 'thrilling' beasts; but she wouldn't care to eat one; then she asked the other Bastoni if he believed in vegetarianism, and told the Japanese gentleman she adored rice, and asked him if there was a Japanese form of Fascismo and what he thought of the League of Nations. She didn't give him any chance to tell her; but said that the League could never deal with the Soviets and she thought perhaps there was something in the idea that religion is the opium of the people. She abhorred every form of 'Victorianism' she said, including Tennyson, and believed that by the time her own children were grown up, 'birth control' would be 'regulated by law.' Immediately upon that, she said she was reading Dante's Inferno 'in the original'; thought its 'medievalism' was 'perfectly rapturous,' and declared her belief that democracy has proved an utter failure and is producing 'no art worth the name,' though there probably is 'some advance in science.' And 'modern interpretive dancing' is an 'advance,' too, she thought; but the world would be really 'so much more picturesque without steam and electricity!' Altogether, she made me dizzy. The action of her mind makes me