Part 46

And, after all, what GOOD does it do -- letting the vegetable kingdom have Sex, I mean?

Even a good thing, you know, can be carried too far.

"Mamma," I told her, "you are hopelessly behind the times. Sex is a Great Fact. Someone must discuss it. And who but the Leaders of Thought are worthy to?"

I intend to say nothing more about it now -- but when the time comes I WILL reopen my Salon.

And as far as talking about Sex is concerned -- the right sort of mind will get GOOD out of it, and the wrong sort will get HARM.

I don't really LIKE discussions of Sex any more than Mamma does. No really nice girl does.

But we advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race.

Not that the race is grateful. Especially the lower classes.

It was only last week that I was endeavoring to introduce the cook to some advanced ideas -- for her own good, you know, and because one owes a spiritual duty to one's servants -- and she got angry and gave notice.

The servant problem is frightful. It will have to be taken seriously.

BLOUSES, BURGARS AND BUTTERMILK

SOME of us -- Our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know -- are going in for Bulgarian buttermilk.

It came in about the time the Bulgarian blouses did -- there was a war over there somewhere, you know, before this big war, that made it fashionable.

But the blouses went out, and the buttermilk stayed in.

It seems there's a Bulgarian by the name of Metchnikoff in Paris who sits down and designs these things -- the buttermilk, you know, not the blouses.

Isn't science wonderful -- simply WONDERFUL!

We're going to take up Metchnikoff in a serious way. You know what he aims to do is to lengthen life.

The question is: "Should life be lengthened? Or should it not?

The Leaders of Thought will have to thresh that out soon.

The question of old age is a subtle one, isn't it?

And it's very typical of our times, don't you think, that we should discuss the problems of old age?

Other epochs have done it, of course, but not optimistically.

The question enters into everything -- even millinery.

I'm having the loveliest hat adapted from a French model -- to wear with my lingerie costumes, you know -- a wide-brimmed black lace with a black velvet crown.

It's only recently that young women could afford to wear black, even when it was becoming. When Mamma was young it was a sign that youth was past.

And nowadays, age doesn't matter so much one way or another. A person is the age one FEELS, you know.

Have you thought deeply on Hypnagogic Illusions? We're planning to take them up.

TWILIGHT SLEEP