in and out of hate. Egotistical pigs—they have never loved anything but themselves. We will wait a bit before we cast our pearls."
I have fallen, like our Mr. Anderson and like our Mr. Hecht, into symbolism. What I have said about marriage may, of course, be taken as literally as one pleases. The new sport invented by our novelists, called Snubbing the First Wife, is as fashionable in fiction as Mah Jongg in society. But all this about falling in love and falling in hate is really symbolical. It represents the present relation of American literature to American life. I mean to insist that there is something profoundly feminine about the charm of a city or a province or a natural division of the country or a national culture. The essentially feminine element is this: that the city or the province or the national culture will never yield up its charm, will never impart its finer fragrance, except to true lovers—to those who come saying: "We do not fathom you; we love you." To philanderers and cavemen the city will remain a bedizened harlot and the country a buxom or bedraggled wench—with either of whom one may have adventures and fall in and out of hate and become tremendously learned in the psychology of aversion and the vocabulary of disgust. But the delightful things that sleep in the heart of the city, the fragrant things that sleep in the heart of the province, will wait—wait for true lovers.
