savage life; nor, I fear, is that prejudice yet wholly eradicated, though surely abated. Every instance which brings their real character home to observation will impress us with a more generous sense of feeling

for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own. But such instances can only be obtained in their writings: and these will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.

The consummation suggested by the second sentence has been in part attained. England is confirming the natural rights of the natives of India, and leading them in the paths of selfgovernment.

What of the third sentence? Was the first great architect of British imperialism right when he discerned in the ancient writings of India something that would last long after the British dominion there shall have ceased to exist?

There is reason to believe that he was a true prophet. We are coming to recognize in ancient India one of the great intellectual and spiritual civilizations, perhaps the greatest in all history. The recognition is as yet neither general nor complete. Too many histories of thought begin with Hellas, ignoring India; as though an historian of architecture, dazzled by the Parthenon, were to forget the splendid temples of Egypt. Even to-day we speak of 'Arabic' figures and call algebra by an Arabic name, though both had their origin in India.

But the truth is that we are only now reaching the point in our own intellectual development when we can rightly estimate ancient India's attain

ment. When Warren Hastings wrote the introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Charles Wilkins, from which we have quoted, the version used by Emerson and Thoreau, it was the

common view in Christendom that the world and the universe were but six thousand years old; but India had discerned millenniums ago the vast antiquity of life, and had developed figures of astronomical magnitude to express this perception. There was a clear view of the multitude of worlds to which our astronomy is only now attaining. India was thinking cosmically ages before the Seven Sages of Greece were born.

Yet it is not so much the magnificent sweep of their scientific thought, both in time and in space, that would seem to be India's greatest achievement. That achievement lies rather in depth than in expanse, in the perception of the spiritual universe, a universe resting on eternal Life, and ruled by everlasting Law.

The records of this superb spiritual accomplishment exist accomplishment exist not carved on desert rocks like the inscriptions of Persia and Egypt, but recorded in a noble tongue, well known in India today, and from which half the current speech of India is derived. It is, in the best sense, a living literature; it is an undying literature.

So our concern with India goes deeper than our interest in the extension of self-government to two or three hundred millions, the inclusion of a sixth of mankind in the net of democracy. There is the larger question: India still holds her ancient inheritance; can she become in the future what she was in the past a great intellectual and spiritual power?

SLIPPERS FOR CINDERELLA DR. MEIKLEJOHN remarked the other day that the American mind was very clever, but that it thought about the wrong things. Shoes, for instance, instead of religion. According to the Doctor, Massachusetts thinks beautifully about shoes, and very badly about where we are going in them. Personally, I disagree. I admit the badness of our philosophy, but I question whether we do any better by the shoe.

At least, after two days of shopping, what I want to ask is this: has Mr. Hoover's bureau of standards waved its wand over the shoe industry and ruled out as a wasteful side line all heels on which a person who loves exercise, beauty, and her feet might like to walk? Or are this year's shoes only Babbittry in pedal form? If we have here merely the tyranny of the mob over the manufacturing mind, then, alas! I suppose I am doomed to wear standardized shoes on an unstandardized foot- or pay the price of individuality at twenty dollars a pair.

The pity of it is that it is really a very fine foot capable of a smart appearance in proper boots. It might even have made Trilby look to her honors. It can walk or dance ten miles barefoot, and its arch supports were provided by that complex of cumulative forces familiarly called Nature. And must this foot, as strong as a peasant's and as slim as a duchess's, be thrust into a hideous object called a pump but resembling nothing in nature so much as a hyena humped upward in the rear? It never had a heel under it till it was twenty years old,

and then only experimentally. Those were the days when children were children, and misses' shoes were springheeled, and a small lady could wear them all her life. Those were the days when odd people could find something to taste in the shops, and short lines were a specialty of the smart dealer. Those were the days when little flat slippers of spangled satin, rosetted and ribbon-bound, such as stole in and out among grandmother's hoop skirts, were still worn to parties by her tiny great-grandchildren and such grandchildren as had the wit and the feet slippers in which one stood upon the ground, and could cross a room with graceful dignity or pirouette securely in a fancy dance.

For consider the foot, not, after the fashion of shoe designers, as a mere spare part, but as the base of the whole body's rhythm. Vera incessu patuit dea -the goddess was revealed by her walk. Put the Venus de Milo in French heels, and how would her godhead vanish! Clap them upon Pavlowa's winged feet, and where would be the poetry, the lovely rise and fall from earth to heaven? Choose thenwings or heels! All dancers answer, 'Wings.' All manufacturers have answered, 'Heels'; and the feet of America freeze into an attitude-motionless, expressionless, grotesque.

Perhaps it is impossible to be completely rational. The ante-bellum ladies with ballooning hoops and tightlaced waists wore sensible shoes. The short-skirted, supple-waisted flapper goes on stilts. Yet a year or so ago a moment of reason came to costume. Hair was bobbed, waists were unbound,

skirts were brief and free, shoes almost as lovely as the foot itself-heelless, flexible, filigree sandals for sport or street or ball, the light touch of art on nature which gives beauty its deepest lure. It would have been almost possible two years ago to make a statue of a lady without undressing her. Never had we come so close to the frank grace of Greek sculpture — every pretty girl a Diana in disguise! Then presto! all the lovely little shoes grew heels, and Diana could run no more upon the hills. She must come home in a motor car.

It is not that many Dianas do not still long to run. It is merely that there are no longer any pretty tripping shoes. There are only ground grippers clodhopping hoofs for satyrs, not for nimble nymphs. For Thetis must be silver-slippered, and all the slippers have high heels!

Yet I would not be intolerant. Many there are, no doubt, whose natural feet are so plain or ugly that deformity alone can make them interesting. And for such let heels abound. But why must I too go in grotesque? Why must I limp with my lame neighbor? If this be democracy, let me have done with it. I had thought it meant teaching my halting neighbor how to skip!

'Sir,' said I to a salesman, 'I want a shoe the shape of the human foot. Stylized, perhaps, but still footlike.'

'Not being worn this season, madam,' he replied.

It is true that I shop upon Main Street, where uniformity is the order of the day. Perhaps there are towns where dealers still buy for the few as well as for the mob. I wonder. But mine is not one of them. I live in an Orpheum town, and I suppose I shall have to wear Orpheum shoes and see Orpheum plays. But I do not like it. Still, what can one do? The little theatre outside the syndicate, the

solitary independent baker who still makes my crisp French bread, the old shoemaker around the corner - are these the only ways to keep the feet of ugliness from stamping out the beauty and variety of life? If so, then Pan is dead indeed.

A TALE OF CAPRICE

LISTEN, gentle reader, to this tale of human caprice. If I were not in danger of giving utterance to a platitude, I should remind you that fact is oftentimes stranger than fiction; for no imaginative gesture of my own could more defiantly challenge your credulity than the following-which is the bare truth, and nothing more.

I was the recipient, some days ago, of a printed announcement displaying a list of the new titles added to the shelves of a certain public library during the last few months. I read the announcement from the beginning to the end, and then from the end to the beginning. I shall probably read it again, when I see this in print, just to reassure myself, and if you want a look also I will see to that as well.

At first I thought Don Stewart was playing a practical joke or was it Stephen Leacock? Then I suspected the typesetter. Now I put it up to you.

You know what a library circular looks like? A prosaic white sheet with the usual headings-fiction, biography, religion, travel, juveniles, and the others. Well, this one conformed mechanically, even to the symmetrical list of authors and titles. I glanced at the books listed under the heading, 'Useful Arts.' I had always wondered what they were. I saw 'BOGUE, B. N. -Stammering: Its Cause and Cure.' I supposed that it was the 'cure' that was the 'useful art,' and read on to 'CURRIER, A. F. — How to Keep Well.' A useful art, certainly, although I had

always thought that health was a science. Then came 'PAGE, W. H. A Publisher's Confession.' Well, I reflected in passing, one sure way to keep well is to keep out of publishing. Rather clever to slip those two volumes in together!

'Fine Arts' was the next heading. This selection began with Atkinson's Women on the Farm and ended with Wilcox's Mah-Jongg. Yes, most women on a farm would play MahJongg. Why not? Intermediate titles were artistically grouped as follows: Mayer's Jungle Beasts I Have Captured, Courtney Ryley Cooper's Lions 'n Tigers 'n Everything, a volume on Ideal Homes, and Hatcher Hughes's Hell-Bent for Heaven. I read the heading again and then proceeded. Practical Amateur Photography had its place next to Durant's Taming the Wildings. Of course! A photograph produced at the psychological moment is helpful in any conquest. This is indeed one of the finest of the arts.

'Sociology.' Here I encountered 'ARNOLD, J. H.-The Debater's Guide.' So that's what sociology is being able to outtalk the other fellow! This section also included Richardson's Diplomatic Education and a manual on Seat Weaving. Was there a subtle connection here, I wondered? 'Natural Science' revealed Corke's Wild Flowers As They Grow and A. E. Wiggam's Fruit of the Family Tree, in subtle juxtaposition. I read on. Barrington's romance of Nelson and Lady Hamilton, The Divine Lady, appeared under 'Fiction,' while M. Maurois's Ariel received the sanction of 'History.' Beveridge's Art of Public Speaking was divorced from its spouse, The Debater's Guide, and thrown in under 'Literature.'

'Philosophy' disclosed but two titles: Fosdick's Twelve Tests of Character and Stearns's Challenge of Youth. Surely here was something else that Horatio

had never dreamt of. Why relegate Principal Stearns's practical solution of the schoolboy problem to this classification, I wondered, and why not let the collection of sermons by Dr. Fosdick skip two lines below and fall in under 'Religion'? After all, he seems to be identified with it.

Why call Struthers Burt's essays on Dude Wrangling "Travel,' and why herd Anzia Yezierska's autobiography, Children of Loneliness, with its marked sociological significance, into the fiction pen? And again, why put John Addington Symonds down as the author of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini? His translation is undoubtedly the best, but let us at least give the militant master-jeweler credit for his tedious hours with quill and foolscap. I found my questions coming thick and fast.

The 'Literature' collection reminded me of a pound of assorted candy from one of the Happiness stores something to suit every taste. Ring Lardner, John Masefield, Agnes Repplier, the Haddock family, Samuel Crothers, and Lafcadio Hearn all got the same cover over them some way. And I hesitate to tell you Edna St. Vincent Millay's Harp-Weaver had jumped into the same box with Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks!

What more is there to say - except that the library is not, as you supposed, a one-room affair above the railroad station at Shade Gap, Iowa? It happens to be and more's the pity — a nice new red-brick building, embellished with busts of Dante and Shakespeare, facing the much-traveled Boston Post Road at a point not so far from the erstwhile country seat of one Elihu Yale.

But wait! I knew I should say that. (I think Professor Tinker corrected me the last time.) A library, gentle reader, is never a nice new building, red-brick or otherwise. A library, if there is one, is always found inside.

Benjamin Stolberg, who gives us his portrait of the most famous unknown man in America, is a sociologist and close student of labor conditions, now living and writing in New York City. Many readers will remember his biography of Samuel Gompers which we published in the Atlantic for March 1925. ¶One must be constantly reminded that, incredible as it may seem, Carl Christian Jensen's autobiography is true to the very last detail. The story began in our October issue, but, like life, can be picked up at any point with significance. ¶After playing a game with consistent skill for forty years, A. Edward Newton may be trusted to exhibit its fine points. Nowadays he talks of taking to the side lines, but we know that to be only the modesty of champions the world over. ¶An observer with alert and arrowy opinions, it is a native boast to say that Agnes Rep plier lives in Philadelphia. Keene Abbott comes of pioneering stock, and his stories and books have been chiefly written out of the traditions of his home state, Nebraska. The present narrative, he tells us, was inspired by an incident told him by an old plainsman. In this memorial year Humbert Wolfe, the English poet, pays tribute to the best-beloved of Saints.

If geography is in a name, Henderson Daingerfield Norman will surely be spotted for a Virginian. At home and abroad she is best known by her translations of Rostand's plays. Characteristic and full of unexpected information are the letters of Ruskin to a young governess which come to us from the careful hands of Leonard Huxley, editor of the Cornhill Magazine. The wife of a distinguished Dutch banker, Madame T. van Houten has traveled to the far corners of the earth, the last being Batavia, Java, where, in 'Oriental splendor,' she and her husband resided for three years. ¶Professor of English literature at Wellesley, Margaret Sherwood is known to many an Atlantic

audience. Conspicuous among her books are Daphne and The Worn Doorstep. Margaret Pond's poem was sent us from Otowi, New Mexico. Her muse, it would seem, visits unconcerned in the midst of houseand baby-keeping. Archer Butler Hulbert is Director of the Stewart Commission on Western History. It was while working through a famous American newspaper collection that he took the opportunity of concocting his distillation of the ages. ¶After sabbatical leave abroad, Margaret Lynn has returned to her post at the University of Kansas, firmly convinced that all Americans should stay away from Europe for the next two years. Absence may make the heart grow fonder. A consulting engineer, graduate of Lehigh, Morris Llewellyn Cooke has held many important appointments, among them the directorship of the Giant Power Survey in Pennsylvania in 1923.

William Stix Wasserman, of Philadelphia, has just returned from a four months' survey of economic and social conditions in Russia, where during his stay he was in constant contact with the leading state officials, traveled down the Volga and through the Caucasus, and on one occasion made a three-hundred-mile trip on horseback. ¶Assistant Oriental Secretary to Lord Allenby, Captain Owen Tweedy was delegated to act as British Aide-de-Camp to Ras Taffari and Princess Menem of Abyssinia during their visits to Cairo in 1923 and 1924. Charles Johnston's experience in the British Civil Service has heretofore borne fruit for readers of the Atlantic.