Part 3

Then came sophisticated moderns, and the best these moderns could do were hideous casinos, sprawling cottages with verandas stuck all over them helter-skelter, houses with broken and meaningless roof lines, windows badly spaced and without style, ornamentation without dignity, gingerbread trimmings and nothing, anywhere, that had repose, unity, beauty of outline, or even adaptability to its site.

The Puritans of Nantucket left behind no poems or plays, but to say they left behind no art is ridiculous. They left behind an entire town which is a work of art, in its way as charming and as nearly perfect as anything in the Old World, and utterly different from anything in the Old World--a unique expression. They were able to do this because, to them, art was expressed through the crafts, and every man who used a tool (which meant almost every man) was an artist.

Transcriber’s Note

Words may have inconsistent hyphenation in the text; these were not changed. Quotation marks and final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. “Hits.” was changed to “Hist.” “… Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll.…”