different character from its occasional romantic treatment in the novels that you and I were brought up on. The heart of the matter is this: the minds of young people are being gravely affected by a group of writers who, in their several ways, definitely challenge the idea of chastity. Now, what a really serious critic should do is to call a halt in the production and reading of that sort of literature."
"My dear Cornelia," I exclaimed,—I always exclaim "My dear" when I am about to express impatience; it introduces the note of suavity,—"My dear Cornelia, do you read the magazines? Do you attend church? Do you see the newspapers? Did you not observe that the form, 'It is time to call a halt,' was first employed on the tenth of August, 1914, by an editor in Oshkosh with reference to the German advance on Paris? In the following week it was applied by a clergyman of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with reference to the consumption of chewing-gum in the United States. Since that time, it has been in continuous employment by all serious critics, lay and clerical, with reference to the output of the leading English and American novelists."
"Well," she replied, "what if it has? So much
