can build enduring beauty.  And all this,” he waved his hand around him at the resplendent, modern city, “this isn’t Athens; it’s—­it’s Corinth, if you want to go on being classic.  As near as I can make out from what Sylvia lets fall, the nearest approach to Athenian life that I ever heard of, was the life she left behind her, her parents’ life.  That has all the elements of the best Athenian color, except physical ease.  And ease is no Athenian quality!  It’s Persian!  Socrates was a stone-cutter, you know.  And even in the real Athens, even that best Athens, the one in Plato’s mind—­there was a whole class given over to doing the dirty work for the others.  That never seemed to bother Plato—­happy Plato! but—­I’m sure I don’t pretend to say if it ultimately means more or less greatness for the human race—­but somehow since Christianity, people find it harder and harder to get back to Plato’s serenity on that point.  I’m not arguing the case against men like you, Morrison—­except that there’s only one of you.  You’ve always seemed to me more like Plato than anybody alive, and I’ve regarded you as the most enviable personality going.  I’d emulate you in a minute—­if I could; but if mine is a case of mania, it’s a genuine case.  I’m sane on everything else, but when it comes to that—­it’s being money that I don’t earn, but they, those men off there underground, do earn and are forced to give to me—­when it comes to that, I’m as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.  I don’t blame you for being out of patience with me.  As you say I only spoil fine minutes by thinking of it, and as you charitably refrained from saying, I spoil other people’s fine moments by speaking of it.”

“What would you have us do!” Morrison challenged him—­“all turn in and clean sewers for a living?  And wouldn’t it be a lovely world, if we did!”

Page did not answer for a moment.  “I wonder,” he finally suggested mildly, “if it were all divided up, the dirty work, and each of us did our share—­”

“Oh, impractical! impractical!  Wholly a back-eddy in the forward-moving current.  You can’t go back of a world-wide movement.  Things are too complicated now for everybody to do his share of anything.  It’s as reasonable, as to suggest that everybody do his share of watchmaking, or fancy juggling.  Every man to his trade!  And if the man who makes watches, or cleans sewers, or even mines coal—­your especial sore spot—­does his work well, and is suited to it in temperament, who knows that he does not find it a satisfaction as complete as mine in telling a bit of genuine Palissy ware from an imitation.  You, for instance, you’d make a pretty coal-miner, wouldn’t you?  You’re about as suited to it as Miss Marshall here for being a college settlement worker!”