he ought to have persevered day after day and evening after evening, until the management had been forced to exclude uneatable chops and steaks utterly from their palatial premises and to exact the honest performance of duty from each and all of the staff.  In the end it would have dawned upon the management that inedible food was just as much out of place in the restaurant as counterfeit bills and coins at the cash-desk.  The proper course would have been difficult and tiresome.  The proper course often is.  My friend took the easy, wicked course.  That is to say, he exhibited a complete lack of public spirit.

* * * * *

An apartment-house is only an apartment-house; whereas the republic is the republic.  And yet I permit myself to think that the one may conceivably be the mirror of the other.  And I do positively think that American education does not altogether succeed in the very important business of inculcating public spirit into young citizens.  I judge merely by results.  Most peoples fail in the high quality of public spirit; and the American perhaps not more so than the rest.  Perhaps all I ought to say is that according to my own limited observation public spirit is not among the shining attributes of the United States citizen.  And even to that statement there will be animated demur.  For have not the citizens of the United States been conspicuous for their public spirit?...

It depends on what is meant by public spirit—­that is, public spirit in its finer forms.  I know what I do not mean by public spirit.  I was talking once to a member of an important and highly cultivated social community, and he startled me by remarking: 

“The major vices do not exist in this community at all.”

I was prepared to credit that such Commandments as the Second and Sixth were not broken in that community.  But I really had doubts about some others, such as the Seventh and Tenth.  However, he assured me that such transgressions were unknown.

“What do you do here?” I asked.

He replied:  “We live for social service—­for each other.”

The spirit characterizing that community would never be described by me as public spirit.  I should fit it with a word which will occur at once to every reader.

On the other hand, I cannot admit as proof of public spirit the prevalent American habit of giving to the public that which is useless to oneself—­no matter how immense the quantity given, and no matter how admirable the end in view.  When you have got the money it is rather easy to sit down and write a check for five million dollars, and so bring a vast public institution into being.  It is still easier to leave the same sum by testament.  These feats are an affair of five minutes or so; they cost simply nothing in time or comfort or peace of mind.  If they are illustrations of public spirit, it is a low and facile form of public spirit.