_ WE'VE been taking ;up Hedonism lately --
our Little Group of Modern Thinkers,
you know -- and it's wonderful, just
simply WONDERFUL!
Though Mamma -- poor dear Mamma is so
hopelessly old fashioned; -- has entirely the
wrong idea about it.
"Hermione," she said to me the other evening,
after the little talk, "WHAT did the lecturer call
himself?"
"He's a Hedonist," I said.
"Indeed!" she said, "and what sort of modern
impropriety is Hedonism? Is it something about
Sex, or is it something about Psychics?"
I simply couldn't speak.
I just gave her a look and walked out of the
room. It is absolutely useless to attempt to explain
anything to Mamma.
She is so Mid-Victorian!
And Mid-Victorianism has quite gone out, you
know. Really. The loveliest man gave us a talk
on the Mid-Victorian recently, and when he was
done there wasn't a one of us that didn't go and
hide our Tennysons and Ruskins.
Although I always WILL like "Come into the Garden, Maud."
But he did it with such HUMOR, you know. Isn't
a sense of humor a perfectly WONDERFUL thing?
A sense of humor is a sense of proportion, you
know -- he brought that out so cleverly, the
anti-Mid-Victorian man did.
Though so many people who have a sense of
humor are so -- so, well so QUEER about it, if you
get what I mean. That is, if you know they have
one, of course you're naturally watching for them
to say humorous things; and they're forever saying
the sort of things that puzzle you, because you have
never heard those things before in just that way,
and if you DO laugh they're so apt to act as if you
were laughing in the WRONG place!
And one doesn't dare NOT to laugh, does one?
It's really quite unfair and unkind sometimes!
Don't you think so?
We took up a volume on The Analysis of Humor
one winter -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
you know -- and read it completely through, and
before the winter was over it got so there wasn't
a one of us that dared NOT to laugh at anything
any other one said and -- well, it got rather ghastly
before spring. Because even if someone wanted to
know if a person needed an umbrella someone else
would laugh.
Well, I must be going now. I have a committee
meeting at three this afternoon. We're going in
for this one-day Women's Strike, you know -- our
little group is. _