"We can't all be biologists," Serviss was accustomed to say, "and I suppose somebody must continue to steal and murder."
They came of good stock, these Servisses, and knew it and felt it. Breeding was indicated in their well-set heads, in their shapely hands, and especially in their handsome noses. "We are inclined to be stubby, that's true, but we have the noses of aristocrats--they go back to the Aryans of the Danube," said Mrs. Rice to a friend. "Morton cannot consider a girl of questionable pedigree, no matter how rich or charming she may be. We believe in stock--not in family, but strain; a family is an accident, a strain is a formation. The Mortons and the Servisses are strains. Their union in my brother will yet make itself felt." Her confidence in his powers was absolute. "He is one of the greatest young men of his day. Time will show," she added, as if to clinch her argument.
The circle of their acquaintance included, first of all--and of course--the scientific group, then in successive widening waves the general literary and educational fraternities, the artistic and musical sets, and finally they kept in touch with the old New York families, their own school-mates and friends and those related. All the details and duties of the social side of his life Morton turned over to Kate, and such was her tact, and her skill and charm as hostess, that her rooms of a Tuesday afternoon were filled with a company of men and women as cheerful and as informal as they were clever and distinguished. Among these groups Serviss moved as detached of all responsibility as any of his guests, finding in this contact with bright minds one of the greatest pleasures of his life.
These various circles moved afar from isms. They prided themselves on their balance, their commonsense, their fund of comparative ideas. True, some of the women had embraced Christian Science more or less openly, but they did not esteem it necessary to proselyte. Political creeds were but jocularly discussed. To advocate any special belief was to prick one's self down a bore, although some of those in the strictly university circles did at times become troublesomely learned in conversation. However, this was esteemed "old fogy-ism" by the younger men like Serviss, who alluded to "the days of the professional monologue" with smiling contempt. Conversation with them was a means of diversion, not of enlightenment as to any special subject.
Into these circles a thorough-going spiritualist never penetrated. To tell the truth, these modernists did not permit the hereafter to awe or affright them. Some of them went to church, but they did so calmly, patiently, as to a decorous function, and some may at times have prayed, through the medium of printed supplication, but, generally speaking, they had reached a sort of philosophic indifference as to the one-time burning question of heaven or hell. So far from acquiescing in the dictum that morality was but filthy rags, they esteemed good deeds and clean thoughts higher than any religion whatsoever.