LO! A PROPHET

"A Professor", writing in the current Atlantic Monthly, has arisen to justify the younger generation. He admits that he is sufficiently decrepit to be classed with maiden aunts, dry league reformers, and the bald-headed club, and yet he does not think his generation was infinitely superior in its youth to the present crop of earth-encumberers. It is, indeed, fortunate that he did not reveal his name, for if he had, a delegation of the middle aged would have tried and executed him of heresy long before now.

After avowing that times, styles, and "lines" have changed, "A Professor" discards the fallacy of the status quo, and tries to see new conditions through new eyes. The indeconcies of the modern "young person" are indecent only to the middle aged. Youth has new standards of conduct and decency; he believes that "sin" has been stricken from the new code. "Goodness" and "Sin" have become phrases to the new generation, to which all life is a challenge to experience and expansion.

How far this change has advanced is uncertain, but that it is making giant strides is certain. The literature of the sophisticates has a very strong vogue. A certain moral squeamishness and affectation has disappeared: facts, rather than romantic fallacies, govern youth's outlook more and more. This generation has looked into the past and not the good men, but those who have seen life in its completeness. And today youth, with "A Professor" in its ranks, looks beneath the respected traditions of conduct, and tries to see life whole.