There was, perhaps, never in the history of our civilization so great a gap between the ideals and social practices of the grandparents and those of the third generation.

The parents even are feeling themselves too far from the children; the grandparents often realize a vast distance between themselves and the rising generation.

The distance is not always the measure of progress.

It is not seldom the effect of rapid changes in mechanical appliances, in material agencies and economic conditions, in literary taste and in ideals of culture; an effect which has unsettled youth in the inherited ways and not yet settled them in well-considered new rules of living.

The experience that might aid in easing the process of readjustment is not always at hand and not always used when it is attainable.