Nevertheless, we ought to be thankful that we live in Britain.  The case of the United States is in some respects far worse than ours.  The egregious Sir Robert Anderson has just explained in Blackwood how he established a sort of unofficial censorship of morals at the English Post Office.  In the United States an official censorship of mailed matter exists, and the United States Post Office can and does regularly examine the literature entrusted to it, and can and does reject what it deems inimical to the morals of the native land of Jay Gould, James Gordon Bennett, J.D.  Rockefeller, and the regretted Harriman.  Among other matter which the United States Post Office censorship has recently excluded are the following items: 

An extract from an article in the Fortnightly Review.

An extract from “Man and Superman.”

An article in favour of freedom of the Press reprinted from the Boston’s Woman’s Journal.

An article by Lady Florence Dixie reprinted from a Scottish county paper.

* * * * *

On one occasion the editor of Lucifer had occasion to mention that adultery and fornication had not been criminal offences in England since 1660.  The authorities were so aghast at the idea of this information being allowed to creep out that they insisted on the passage being deleted.  It was.

* * * * *

Further.  The Editor of an American paper, on it being suggested to him that he should reprint portions of a criticism of “Measure for Measure,” by Mr. A.B.  Walkley in the Times, refused to do so for fear of prosecution.  Perhaps the most truly American instance of all is the misfortune that befell the Reverend Mabel McCoy Irwin.  The excellent lady began to publish a paper advocating strict chastity for both sexes.  It was excluded from the mails on the ground that no allusion to sex could be tolerated.  I reckon this anecdote to be the most exquisitely perfect of all anecdotes that I have ever come across in the diverting history of moral censorships.  There is a subtle flavour about that name, Mabel McCoy Irwin, which is indescribably apposite ...  McCoy.  It is a wonderful world!  I am much indebted to an American correspondent for these delights.

BRIEUX

[17 Feb. ’10]

I foresee a craze in this country for Brieux.  I first perceived its coming one day during an intellectual meal in a green-painted little restaurant in Soho.  Whenever I go into Soho I pass through experiences which send me out again a wiser man.  On this occasion I happened to speak lightly of Brieux to a friend of mine, a prominent and influential member of the Stage Society—­one of those men in London who think to-day what London will think to-morrow, and what Paris thought yesterday.  He was visibly shocked by my tone.  His invincible politeness