Would that have reared another tenor
to take his place? Or would Caruso's gifts have still remained his own?
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT WE MAY EXPECT
We are--unless I do not read the signs aright--in the midst of a change.
It is going on all about us, slowly and scarcely observed, but with a
firm surety. We are gradually learning to relate cause and effect. A
great deal of that which we call disturbance--a great deal of the upset
in what have seemed to be established institutions--is really but the
surface indication of something approaching a regeneration. The public
point of view is changing, and we really need only a somewhat different
point of view to make the very bad system of the past into a very good
system of the future. We are displacing that peculiar virtue which used
to be admired as hard-headedness, and which was really only
wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are getting rid of
mushy sentimentalism. The first confused hardness with progress; the
second confused softness with progress. We are getting a better view of
the realities and are beginning to know that we have already in the
world all things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we
shall use them better once we learn what they are and what they mean.
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