This is fundamental, and this is why true
literature has no fashion and knows no change, despite the cries of the
modern weaklings who affect weird forms. The clarity of Shakespeare is
the clarity of to-day and will be that of to-morrow.
XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage
Edward Bok was now jumping from one sizzling frying-pan into another. He
had become vitally interested in the growth of women's clubs as a power
for good, and began to follow their work and study their methods. He
attended meetings; he had his editors attend others and give him
reports; he collected and read the year-books of scores of clubs, and he
secured and read a number of the papers that had been presented by
members at these meetings. He saw at once that what might prove a
wonderful power in the civic life of the nation was being misdirected
into gatherings of pseudo-culture, where papers ill-digested and mostly
copied from books were read and superficially discussed.
Apparently the average club thought nothing of disposing of the works of
the Victorian poets in one afternoon; the Italian Renaissance was "fully
treated and most ably discussed," according to one programme, at a
single meeting; Rembrandt and his school were likewise disposed of in
one afternoon, and German literature was "adequately treated" at one
session "in able papers."
Bok gathered a mass of this material, and then paid his respects to it
in the magazine.
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