COUNTER-CURRENTS.
AMERICANS AND OTHERS.
A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER ESSAYS.
IN OUR CONVENT DAYS.
COMPROMISES.
THE FIRESIDE SPHINX. With 4 full-page and 17 text illustrations by Miss E. BONSALL.
BOOKS AND MEN.
POINTS OF VIEW.
ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS.
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE.
A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside Library for Young People.
THE SAME. Holiday Edition.
VARIA.
BY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY AGNES REPPLIER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October 1912
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Note
Five of the essays in this volume appear in print for the first time.Others have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the CenturyMagazine, Harper's Bazar, and the Catholic World.
"La politesse de l'esprit consiste à penser des choses honnêtes etdélicates."
A great deal has been said and written during the past few years onthe subject of American manners, and the consensus of opinion is,on the whole, unfavourable. We have been told, more in sorrow thanin anger, that we are not a polite people; and our critics have castabout them for causes which may be held responsible for such auniversal and lamentable result. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, for example,is by way of thinking that the fault lies in the sudden expansionof wealth, in the intrusion into the social world of people who failto understand its requirements, and in the universal "spoiling" ofAmerican children. He contrasts