I'll admit we lack some things. Maybe
our theater isn't as good as shows in Paris. All right! I don't want
to see any foreign culture suddenly forced on us--whether it's
street-planning or table-manners or crazy communistic ideas."
Vida sketched what she termed "practical things that will make a happier
and prettier town, but that do belong to our life, that actually are
being done." Of the Thanatopsis Club she spoke; of the rest-room, the
fight against mosquitos, the campaign for more gardens and shade-trees
and sewers--matters not fantastic and nebulous and distant, but
immediate and sure.
Carol's answer was fantastic and nebulous enough:
"Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I know. They're good. But if I could put through
all those reforms at once, I'd still want startling, exotic things. Life
is comfortable and clean enough here already. And so secure. What it
needs is to be less secure, more eager. The civic improvements which
I'd like the Thanatopsis to advocate are Strindberg plays, and classic
dancers--exquisite legs beneath tulle--and (I can see him so clearly!)
a thick, black-bearded, cynical Frenchman who would sit about and drink
and sing opera and tell bawdy stories and laugh at our proprieties and
quote Rabelais and not be ashamed to kiss my hand!"
"Huh! Not sure about the rest of it but I guess that's what you and all
the other discontented young women really want: some stranger kissing
your hand!" At Carol's gasp, the old squirrel-like Vida darted out and
cried, "Oh, my dear, don't take that too seriously.
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