Another thing that we shall do well to remember is that no condition or relation one of whose elements or factors is the human mind can ever be properly considered apart from that mind.  Shakespeare’s plays would seem to be fairly unalterable.  Shakespeare is dead and cannot change them, and they have been written down in black and white this many a year.  But the real play, so far as it makes any difference to us to-day, is not in the books; or, at least, the book is but one of its elements.  It is the effect produced upon the auditor, and of this a very important element is the auditor’s mental and spiritual state.  Considered from this standpoint, Shakespeare’s plays have been changing ever since they were written.  Environment, physical and mental, has altered; the language has developed; the plain, ordinary talk of Shakespeare’s time now seems to us quaint and odd; every-day allusions have become cryptic.  It all “ain’t up to date,” to quote the Cockney’s complaint about it.  Probably no one to-day can under any circumstances get the same reaction to a play of Shakespeare as that of his original audience, and probably no one ever will.

Anecdotes possess a sort of centripetal force; tales illustrative of the matter at hand have been flying to me from all parts of the country.  From the Pacific Northwest comes this, which seems pertinent just here.  A good clubwoman, who had been slaving all day over a paper on Chaucer, finally at its close threw down her pen and exclaimed, “Oh, dear!  I wish Chaucer were dead!” She had her wish in more senses than the obvious one.  Not only has Chaucer’s physical body long ago given up its substance to earth and air, but his works have to be translated for most readers of the present day; his language is fast becoming as dead as Latin or Greek.  But, worse still, Ills very spirit was dead, so far as its reaction on her was concerned.  Poetry, to you and me, is what we make of it; and what do you suppose our friend from Oregon was making of Chaucer?  Our indifference, our failure to react, is thus more far-reaching than its influence on ourselves—­it is, in some sense, a sin against the immortal souls of those who have bequeathed their spiritual selves to the world in books.  And this sin the clubs are, in more cases than I care to think, forcing deliberately upon their members.

A well-known cartoonist toiled long in early life at some uncongenial task for a pittance.  Meanwhile he drew pictures for fun, and one day a journalist, seeing one of his sketches, offered him fifty dollars for it—­the salary of many days.  “And when,” said the cartoonist, “I found I could get more money by playing than by working, I swore I would never work again—­and I haven’t.”

When we can all play—­do exactly what we like—­and keep ourselves and the world running by it, then the Earthly Paradise will be achieved.  But, meanwhile, cannot we realize that these clubwomen will accomplish more if we can direct and control their voluntary activity, backed by their whole mental energy, than when they devote some small part of their minds to an uncongenial task, dictated by a programme committee?