Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
As one grows older and, let us hope, wiser, one becomes more and more shy of easy generalizations and classifications. As one moves through one’s world, the old generalized types, for example, of fiction and youth, standing for an “artist,” a Frenchman, or an Englishman, break...
As one grows older and, let us hope, wiser, one becomes more and more shy of easy generalizations and classifications. As one moves through one’s world, the old generalized type...
2. CHAPTER IINot long ago a despatch from Washington announced that “the highest standard of living ever attained in the history of the world was reached last year [1926] by the American peo...
3. CHAPTER IIIThe scapegoat is one of the most venerable and widespread of human institutions. The victim may be literally a goat, as among the Children of Israel, or a rat or a monkey or oth...
4. CHAPTER IV“We hold these truths to be self-evident,—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are Life, Libe...
5. CHAPTER VThe question is frequently asked, “Is the Eighteenth Amendment making us a nation of lawbreakers?” There are two answers, depending upon the meaning of the question. If it is in...
6. CHAPTER VITo an American citizen profoundly interested in the welfare of his country, it is all too obvious that the one fundamental question transcending all others is that of law and th...
7. CHAPTER VIIA recent writer in a privately printed volume on education begins with the sentence: “What is the matter with our schools?—Everything.” I would not go quite as far as that in a...
8. did. Their happiest fate was to marry the town dentist or doctor, theclerk in the bank, the owner of the garage. Their highest ambition in life would be to send their children to Chippewa. The men in the College of Arts were generally serving tim...
9. CHAPTER VIIIEducation in America, where there are about seven hundred thousand students in institutions of collegiate rank alone, has become almost a major industry. Although teachers are n...
10. CHAPTER IXThis borrowed title expresses better than any I have been able to devise for myself a problem which has recently been put to me by several of my American friends, men who on acc...
11. CHAPTER XOur critics have often assured us that the dollar sign is the symbol of America. I am coming to the conclusion that our more characteristic one is the question mark. I have just...
12. CHAPTER XIIn 1719 an anonymous New England author who signed himself, rather oddly, “your friend among the Oakes and Pines,” gave voice to the doctrine that America was young. Speaking fo...
13. CHAPTER XIIAfter some months at “home” in America and a couple spent in rambling over Italy and France, I returned recently once more to London. The first thing that struck me, happily, wa...
14. CHAPTER XIIIIt is an easy phrase, “the art of living,” and one which, like any cliché, is rather of the tongue than of the mind, yet in a general way we know well enough what we mean to sig...