_ Do you know, Kultur isn't the same thing at
all as culture . . . FANCY!
When we took it up -- Kultur, I mean yes, --
we took it up in quite a serious way the other
evening -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
know -- and threshed it out thoroughly -- we hadn't
the slightest idea that it would lead us straight to
Nietzsche and -- and, well, all those people like that,
if you get what I mean. Though, of course, as the
man who spoke to us -- he was the LOVELIEST person!
-- spoke in German, we may have missed some of
the finer shades.
Oh, yes, I had German in high school . . . really,
I was quite proficient . . . although, of course,
it's such a GUTTURAL kind of language -- don't you
think? -- that one wonders how they EVER sing it.
And then, the verbs! . . . but I had Latin verbs
about the same time, you know . . . and really,
isn't it surprising how some of those foreign languages
seem to RUN to verbs, if you get what I mean?
It seems it was the Germans who invented the
Superman . . . and I suppose we must be grateful
to them for that, no matter what they may have
done with him after they invented him. . . .
I used to be quite taken with the Superman, you
know. . . . Really, I didn't recognize how
dangerous he might become. . . .
I didn't know he was German at all when we
took him up. . . .
Have you read anything about the Blond Beast?
I felt rather attracted toward him for a long
time myself . . . until lately. . . . But the attraction
passed. . . . I'm not brunette, you know, at
all. . . . Likely that's why I lost interest in
him. . . .
Aren't affinities between people of different
complexion simply WONDERFUL!
It makes me wonder if the Eugenists can be right
after all!
Fothergil Finch says that's where the Eugenists
fall down. . . . He says they don't take account
of Affinities at all.
Sometimes one finds it very puzzling -- doesn't
one? -- the way these modern causes and movements
seem to contradict one another!
But if one is in tune with the Cosmic All these
little inconsistencies don't matter.
The Cosmic All! . . . WHAT would we do without it?
How do you suppose people ever got along a
generation or two ago before the Cosmos and all
that sort of thing was discovered?
I've often thought about it . . . and of what life
must have been like in those days! As Emerson
. . . or WAS it Emerson? . . . says in one of his
poems: "Better a year of Europe than a cycle of
Cathay!"
That's what Fothy Finch says he always feels
about Brooklyn . . . though I WILL say this for
Brooklyn -- the first girl I saw with courage enough
to wear one of those ankle watches on the street
lived in Brooklyn.
But don't you think Brooklyn people are rather
LIKE that . . . go to the latest things in dress, you
know, in an EXTREME sort of way, so that people
won't suspect they live in Brooklyn? _