We confess that such was not always the case. We entered one of the first classes ever taught in this country in what was then called the Science of Society. We listened with amused interest, possibly with profit, to the remarks, interspersed with puns, which the erudite professor allowed himself to make on the subject of marriage as an institution. Later we read ponderous books on this topic and kindred ones, and we even plumed ourselves upon our advocacy of woman suffrage and our practical interest in organized philanthropy. Political economy and history were not neglected by us, and so we rounded out the last century cherishing the delusion that we were somewhat progressive. Alas, we were primitive enough to spell it with a small "p." And now, but a few short years later, we are wailing in or about a Sociological Nightmare! Is it that, in the natural course of things, we have merely become conservative, have been caught up with, and passed, by a more radical generation, and are taking out on them, regardless of justice and of shifting metaphors, a spite caused by our own weakness of mental digestion?
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Thus far we have not flung even the tiniest of stones at the important study known as Sociology, nor have we meant to hit any of its serious students. The banner under which we enlisted as the humblest of privates, we still salute, and as the army of workers marches on, we, droppers-out yet loyal, raise our feeble cheer. But behold! we are caught in a frantic mob of camp-followers, and we struggle in vain to extricate ourselves. And what a mob it is! Men and women who call themselves "Progressives" without being able to read a pedometer; anarchists who, with less sense than bulls, mistake a red flag for a new Gospel; propagandists of peace who have no respect for rest; advocates of nostrums who actually resent being called quacks; women who rejoice in being "hikers;" philanthropists who are doing their foolish best to make the under dog a mad one; lecturers who convert their lungs into cash; fashionable women who open their drawing-rooms to cranks, and their heads to whims;--but why attempt an impossible description? It seems better to fall back upon Matthew Arnold's more decorous expression of his feelings, in _Bacchanalia; or, the New Age_:--