The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1901-11-17
Too MANY Itch to Write.

Too Many Itch to Write.
We found writers Of witty and some
times learned letters diaries or memoirs,
expressed with eloquence and ease; we
leave the new journalism, where titles
fetch their price; postcards. and Ian
guage compounded of the slang of many
nations choicely culled and shortened to
fit in with our telegraphic needs and
fleeing opportunities.
1t is not only mine enemy who needs no
pressing to write a book; it is his wife,
even his little children contribute in their
degree, either pertly or priggishly, to the
pages of weekly papers. Their poems are
marvelously good, all things considered.
If rather tiresome and obvious: and one
heSitateS as to which characteristic in
them is most eveoped-preternatura
sharpness and weird instructive insight
into the foibes of their elders, for it
eludes punishment and reduces the parent
to the condition of a silent witness of the
gambols of his offspring among the eggs
of life and society. not all of which are
strictly new laid, and some of which
break, obviously added, beneath the I'M
conscious foot of the little dancer. VIII
their precociouS knowledge fade away as
problems spread themselves, no longer
simple, but complex before their Adde'S
cent eyes? or are they young plants,
seedlings Of future race of strange, I'M
known forest trees. with virtues which
we cannot reach at, and nearness to ma
ture from which education and experience
have debarred our blunted minds? WHIT t.
ever they may prove eventually to be, to
us they seem mysterious little offshoots
of some alien stock, reversions, perhaps,
to long forgotten type-changelings in
which we seem to have no part. What
they are as compared with the social
children Of the past it is difficult to say,
Tor records on this point are sparse; but
their elders have suffered a complete rev.
olution not entirely in favor Of the latter.
One OF the great disadvantages of
modern society is the disproportionate
IF on puhi oh fc 1oI, fa1t a.,
a Protestant country. where few seek the
protection of convent from a world
which has. no use for them, and where.
although they know that they cumber the
ground, they must always look bright
and amused even when they are dull and
sick at heart. Many such now resort to
cape from the trammels of a life where it
is not all sunshine, although 1t may be
all luxury.
Growth of Moral Laws.
AS society becomes more complex,
larger and more elastic, SO the moral law
themselves and from the strong, and to
enable this large and buzzing beehive of
a,a world to get along without too much
to the right or keep to the left, according
to the rule of the road.
Social laws which often seem hard are
really benefcent, and the relaxation which
seems to have taken place in them in
earnest OF late years may not prove
blessing even to those in whose favor they
are looSened
1t should be remembered that the
time when Dante wrote his Inferno the
story of Francesca da Rimini was barely
ten years old: but it will be difficult to
judge of the true state of the society Of
our day from its published records which
contain highly Bowdlerized accounts of
its real dOings. And in spite of all that
can be said either of our period or of pre-
vious ones, pure lives shine out; ''the
good deed in a naughty world casts a
glow round darker prospects, but virtue
is not always triumphant nor vice always
secuted.
The good and the bad flourish together
in the worlds great fleld-howers and
weeds and corn alike; but 1T is evident
that the good must predominant over the
bad, or~society and its rules, it's petty
laws its great warm life and historic
continuity would long since have faded
into nothing. as some day 1t must and
will, which It shall have fulfilled the pur-
pose for which it is allowed to exist