Salesman and Recluse

On the day of rest an automobile sales-agent points with pride, in the presence of the Shop-Talker, to the columns of a Sunday supplement for its evidence that ‘the boyhood of the nation is sold to the idea of the automobile, because the young now realize that rapid transportation is helping to minimize unproductive time.’ On the first working-day of the week the proofs of Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s Pro Vita Monastica pass under the eye and over the desk of the same Talker. Were he a moralist he could dilate — who shall say to what lengths of edification and weariness? — upon the relations between contemporaneous ‘unproductive time’ and the monastic way of life. But, as he is merely an honest admirer of Mr. Sedgwick’s book, he must content himself with remarking that the time is surely ripe for its author to speak in fundamental contradiction of the sales-agent’s idea of happiness.

The book, in a form worthy of the spirit that animates it, will be published before Easter.