Part 8
Were some affluent citizen to endow a chair of psycho-geographical science in one of our leading universities, especial attention should be paid to the teaching of Systematic Americanism. It is a branch now much neglected. The professor should take pains to instruct his “fellow Academicks” in the manners and customs of their own country, so that they should no longer be reckoned strangers on their native soil. They should be taught to avoid entangling analogies drawn from the experience of other lands, and to look directly at the subject-matter. When they see something going wrong, they should not jump at the conclusion that it is a repetition of the classic tragedy of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,--for it may be something quite different. When there is a popular movement on the prairies, they should not begin to talk of the French Revolution and of the excesses of the proletariat. Before they talk in European fashion of the “classes and the masses,” they should make certain that we have such things, and if we have, that there is a sure way of telling which is which. The Old-World generalizations about the upper and lower and middle classes should be well shaken before using.
Those who elect the course in Americanism should be taught to overcome the nervous fright to which bookish people are subject at the appearance of any man in public life who shows signs of unusual virility. It is a weakness of those who are more familiar with the careers of Cæsar and Napoleon than with the temper of their fellow-citizens. In the early seventies there were academic minds thoroughly convinced that they were watching the Republic in its death struggle with Cæsarism. Curiously enough, they fixed upon plain Ulysses Grant to act the part of Cæsar. It would have been hard to find one less fitted for the rôle. When we look back and contrast what really happened with what the well-read spectators thought was happening, we are reminded of the remark of the British matron to her husband as they left the theatre where they had been seeing the play of “Antony and Cleopatra,” “How unlike the home life of our dear Queen!”
The great thing, as President Roosevelt has often reminded us, is to “think nationally.” This is no small achievement. A nation is a psycho-geographical fact which it requires a very great effort of the imagination to conceive. The same word represents a land and the people who inhabit it. The physical features of the landscape have their spiritual counterparts. It may be that the landscape impresses itself on the imagination of the race, or, as may be maintained with equal plausibility, the imagination of a gifted race may interpret the landscape and impress itself upon it forever. In either case there is a recognizable harmony between the two elements. In reading the great literature of Israel we never forget that the nation was desert-born. “He found him in a desert place, he led him about, he instructed him.” In psalm and prophecy we are conscious of barren mountain ranges, of rocks in a weary land, of narrow valleys which laugh for very joy over the incongruity between themselves and the surrounding desolations. There is the passion of the desert, born of solitude and the stars. In the prophet of righteousness there is the same urgent note that Bayard Taylor catches in his “Bedouin Song:”--
From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire.
The impatient human cry is followed by the refrain natural to those whose lives are surrounded by the eternal calm of the desert,--
Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
When we think of the Greeks we think at the same time of
the sprinkled isles Lily on lily that o’erlace the sea, And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps “Greece.”
England and her Englishmen are forever inseparable. “This happy breed of men” belong to “this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea, this blessed plot, this England.” That Great Britain is an island is more than a fact of physical geography. It is the outward and visible sign of an insularity of sentiment which gives its peculiar quality to British patriotism. There is something snug and homelike about it, as of a family that enjoys “the tumultuous privacy of storm.”
We become conscious of Spain and her Spaniards as we read Longfellow’s lines:--
A something sombre and severe O’er the enchanted landscape reigned, As if King Philip listened near And Torquemada, the austere, His ghostly sway maintained.
When we come to the United States of America there is a peculiar difficulty in thinking and feeling nationally, because the imagination does not at once find the physical facts to serve as symbols. It is not easy to conceive the land as a whole. When we sing “My Country, ’tis of thee,” the country that is visualized is very small. The author of the hymn was a New England clergyman, and naturally enough described New England and called it America. It is a land of rocks and rills and woods, and the hills are templed, in Puritan fashion, by white meeting-houses; for the early New Englander, like erring Israel of old, loved to worship on “the high places.” Over it all is one great tradition: it is the “land of the Pilgrims’ pride.”
The farmer in North Dakota loves his country, too; but the idea that it is a land of rocks and rills and templed hills seems to him rather farfetched. His heart does not thrill with rapture when he thinks of these things. He can plow all day in the Red River valley without striking a stone, and he is glad to have it so.
The Texan cultivates an exuberant Americanism, but he does not think of his country as the “land of the Pilgrims’ pride.” Texas is not proud of the Pilgrims, and perhaps the Pilgrims would not have appreciated Texas.
When the American has come to feel, not provincially, but nationally, the words “my country” bring to his mind not merely some familiar scenes of his childhood, but a series of vast pictures. They are broad and simple in outline. “My country” is no tight little island shut out from “the envy of less happier lands.” It is continental in its sweep. It lies open and free to all. It is large and easy of access. There is a vision of busy cities serving as its gateways. Behind them is a pleasant home-like land with “a sweet interchange of hill and valley.” Beyond the mountains another scene opens. We see the sources of the strength of America and feel the promise of its future. To see the Mississippi valley is to believe in “manifest destiny,” and to take a cheerful view of it. To the ancient world the valley of the Nile was the symbol of fertility. It is a narrow ribbon of green in the midst of the desert. Here Plenty and Famine were in plain sight of one another. There was always the suggestion of Pharaoh’s ugly dream of the lean kine devouring the fat and well-favored. But in the valley of the Mississippi the fear of the lean kine is dispelled. One may travel at railroad speed day after day, and still the fields of wheat and corn smile upon him. Here the ample land gives happy confidence to men’s prayer for daily bread. And beyond the fertile prairies “my country” stretches in high plains and lofty mountain ranges. Here are new treasures waiting bold spirits who claim them. The land has a challenge and an invitation.
What a weary dearth Of the homes of men! What a wild delight Of space, of room! What a sense of seas Where seas are not! What salt-like breeze! What dust and taste of quick alkali!
And beyond the mountains lies the American Avilion, where never--
wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows: crown’d with summer seas.
And this great land is one; though it is “a nation of nations” it has achieved a national consciousness. There is an atmosphere about it all which we recognize. To breathe it is an exhilaration. One loves to think of it as the land of “the large and charitable air.”
* * * * *
The conception of the continental proportions of America did not at once dawn upon its new inhabitants. They thought and spoke as transplanted Englishmen. Each of the thirteen States was a tight little republic insisting on its own rights. Each plucky Diogenes sat in its own tub, saying to its neighbors, “Get out of my sunshine!”
It was only as they turned westward that Americans discovered America,--a discovery which in some instances has been long delayed. “The West” is not merely a geographical expression, it is a state of mind which is most distinctive of the national consciousness. It is a feeling, an irresistible impulse. It is the sense of undeveloped resources and limitless opportunities. It is associated with the verb “to go.” To the American the West is the natural place to go to, as the East is the place to come from. It is synonymous with freedom from restraint. It is always “out West.”
Just where the geographical West begins it is not necessary to indicate. On the coast of Maine you may be shown a summer cottage and told that it belongs to a rich Westerner from Massachusetts. Massachusetts is not thought of as exactly the Far West, but it is far enough.
The psychological West begins at the point where the centre of interest suddenly shifts from the day before yesterday to the day after to-morrow. Great expectations are treated with the respect that elsewhere had been reserved for accomplished facts. There is a stir in the air as if Humanity were a new family just setting up housekeeping. What a fine house it is, and how much room there is on the ground floor! What a great show it will make when all the furniture is in! There is no time now for the finishing touches, but all will come in due order. There is need for unskilled labor and plenty of it. Let every able-bodied man lend a hand.
One does not know his America until he has been touched by the Western fever. He must be possessed by a desire to take up a claim and build himself a shack and invest in a corner lot in a Future Great City. He must be capable of a disinterested joy in watching the improvements which other people are making. Let the man of the East cling to the old ways and seek out the old landmarks. The symbol of the West is the plank sidewalk leading out from a brand-new prairie town and pointing to a thriving suburb which as yet exists only in the mind of its projector. There is something prophetic in that sidewalk on which the foot of man has never trod.
One who has once had this fever never completely recovers. Though he may change his environment he is always subject to intermittent attacks.
I remember on my first evening in Oxford sitting blissfully on the top of a leisurely tram car that trundled along High Street. The dons in academic garb were on their way to dinner in the college halls, and they looked just as my imagination had pictured them. I was introduced to one of them. When he learned that I was an American, there was a sudden thaw in his manner.
“Have you ever been in Dodge City, Kansas?” he inquired eagerly.
I modestly replied that I had only passed through on the railway, but I was familiar with other Kansas towns, and, reasoning from analogy, I could tell what manner of place it was. This was enough. I had experienced the West. I was one of the initiated. I could enter into that state of mind represented by the term Dodge City. It appeared that in the golden age, when he and Dodge City were both young, he had sought his fortune for some months in Kansas. He had experienced the joys of civic newness, a newness such as had not been in England since the Heptarchy. He discoursed of the mighty men of those days when every man did what was right in his own eyes, and good-humoredly allowed his neighbor to do likewise. As we parted, he said, with mournful acquiescence in his present estate, “Oxford does very well, you know, but it isn’t Dodge City.” If poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity, what could be more poetical than Dodge City remembered in the tranquillity of Oxford quadrangles?
In this case the poetical view was a sound one. The traveler across the newly developed States of the West has the traveler’s license to contrast unfavorably that which he sees with that which he left behind him in his home country. He may say a dozen uncomplimentary things, and each one of them may be true. He may exhaust all his stock adjectives, as “crude” and “raw” and the like. But when he remarks, as did a certain critic, that because the country lacks “distinction” it is uninteresting, he betrays his own limitations.
It is just that lack of distinction that makes America interesting. Here, no longer distracted by what is exceptional, one may take the welfare of the masses of men seriously.
Here the doings of men correspond to the broad doings of the day and the night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses, careless of particulars.
When Shelley was an undergraduate he was attracted to a lecture on mineralogy. It seemed to him a subject full of poetical suggestiveness. His expectations were disappointed, and he unceremoniously bolted and returned to his room. “What do you think the man talked about? Stones!--stones!--stones! I tell you stones are not interesting--in themselves.”
Shelley was right. Stones are not interesting in themselves; neither are railroads, nor stockyards, nor new unpainted buildings, nor endless cornfields. But for that matter, neither are crumbling columns, nor old manuscripts, nor the remains of feudal castles interesting--in themselves. Things become interesting only when seen in relation to the people whose thoughts they have stimulated and whose imaginations they have stirred.
America is a fresh field for human endeavor. Here are men busily making roads, bridging rivers, building new cities. They have been given the task of subduing a continent. But in such conflicts with Nature the conquered influences the conquerors. What impress does the continent make upon the minds of the hardy men who are mastering it? What visions of the future do they see which transform their drudgery into an heroic adventure?
In the case of the older nations such questions about the beginnings and the ideals of the beginners cannot be answered. The formative period, with all its significant aspirations, is buried in oblivion. “Who thinks any more as they thought?” we ask in regard to the pioneer of Britain. Poetry has license to picture him as a knight in armor and to tell how in romantic fashion he pitched
His tents beside the forest. And he drave The heathen, and he slew the beast, and felled The forest, and let in the sun.
It was all a long time ago, and the men who did these things are not clearly revealed. Not being able to get at their ideals, we attribute to them those which we think appropriate.
The historians are troubled by their lack of authentic material. They are like the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans of the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that he knew was very important, but before he could get it interpreted by his wise men he forgot what it was. They were good at interpretations, and could have made one to fit if only the king had brought the dream with him so that they could try it on. But that was the very thing he could not do.
The founders of London and Paris had doubtless their dreams of the future; but alas! they have long since been forgotten. But Chicago has not had time to forget. Everything is still vivid. Men walk the streets of the great city who remember it when it was no bigger than the Londinium of the time of the Cæsars. They have with their own eyes watched every step in the civic development and they have been a part of all that they have seen. The Londoner has seen only a passing phase of his London; the greater part of its history is received on hearsay evidence. The Chicagoan sees his Chicago steadily and sees it whole. No wonder that there is a self-consciousness about the new metropolis that is not to be found in the old. Its greatness has been thrust upon it suddenly, and there is a full realization of its value.
The genuine American who is the maker of the new fortunes of the world, and who is in love with his work, has not been adequately portrayed in literature. It requires an ample imagination to do justice to his character. There must be a mingling of realism and romance. The realism must not be the minute, painstaking portraiture of a Miss Austen, but the hearty, out-of-door reality of a Fielding. The American Fielding has not yet appeared, but what a good time he will have when he comes! What a host of characters after his own heart he will find! The American Scott, too, is called for to give us a story of American life which will read as well on the edge of a clearing in the forest as “The Lady of the Lake” did in the trenches of Torres Vedras, when the soldiers forgot the enemy’s shells as they gave a glorious shout over the poet’s lines, which their captain was reading to them. I like that story, in spite of the fact that a recent critic declares that to like it shows an uncultivated taste. “This is not,” he says, “a test of poetry. An audience less likely to be critical, a situation less likely to induce criticism, can hardly be imagined.” Nevertheless, Scott would much rather have written lines that rang true to soldiers in the hour of battle, than to have been given a high mark by the most competent corrector of daily themes.
The imagination of Hawthorne, brooding over the past, repeopled the House of the Seven Gables with the successive generations. But there is another kind of romance, in which the imagination is projected into the future. Looking at the new house not yet enclosed against the storm, it dreams dreams and sees visions. There is a story there, also, and the best of it is that it is to be continued.
* * * * *
A shrewd old New England farmer recounted to me the warlike exploits of his family. He himself had been in Gettysburg, and each generation since the time of the French and Indian wars had had its soldier. His son had been shot at Santiago. “The bullet went clean through his body,” he said, indicating a course which seemed to me necessarily fatal. I expressed sympathy. “Oh, it didn’t hurt him much,” he said, “it seemed to go through a vacant spot.”
That there are vacant spots in the character of the typical man of the Western world no one would be more ready to admit than he. His shortcomings are obvious. Yet most of those which have been harshly commented upon by the world are of the kind that might be commended to the consideration of the kindly Pardoner. Some of his weaknesses touch upon nobleness. Those who best know his environment and the work he has done are most ready to grant him a reasonable degree of indulgence.
The most serious charges against him are that he is a boastful materialist enamored of crude bulk, and that he has trampled upon the old sanctities and is a worshiper of the almighty dollar. There is some color for these charges in his manners, but those who make them have certainly not understood his spirit. “The Western Goth,” Lowell called him. The Goths had a bad reputation once as wanton destroyers of ancient art. But after they had had their fling and had settled down, the Teutonic barbarians showed that they could make a thing or two themselves. Gothic has long since ceased to be a term of reproach. Even in the destruction of the ancient, archæologists now admit that the Goths did not do as much harm as was at first feared. The real destroyers of ancient Rome have been the Romans.
From the fact that western America is a place where people are actively engaged in making money, and that they find their work so interesting that they like to talk about it, the superficial observer jumps at the conclusion that this is the seat of the cult of wealth-worship. But there is a vast difference between making a thing and worshiping it. It is reported that one of the varied industries of Great Britain is the manufacture of molten images. It is undoubtedly a sin, but the British manufacturer comforts himself with the reflection that he only breaks half the commandment; he makes the idol, but he does not bow down before it.
Worship is not talkative or boastful. It is reserved and self-abasing. The worshiper accepts the superiority of the object of his devotion as a fact not to be questioned. For such serious-minded worship of wealth go to the English moral tales so popular a generation or two ago, before the wave of democracy came in. Then the affluent Squire and his lady were lifted into the place of superior beings. They dispensed bounty after the manner of Providence to their poorer neighbors, and there was no thought of questioning their ways. They were rich, as had been their fathers and mothers before them, and all other virtues were attributed to them by fond superstition.
The men of the Western mining camps, where millionaires are made in a day, have no conception of such a reverential attitude toward the possessor of wealth. When you see them in the eager pursuit of dollars, you are watching not their religion, but their sport. They care for money as the fox-hunter cares for the fox. They admire the man who wins the prize, in proportion to the skill and pluck which he has exhibited. But there are no illusions of a personal superiority imparted by the possession of property. That is impossible in a community where everybody is acquainted with the short and simple annals of the rich.
The man who is conspicuously successful in the national sport is undoubtedly an object of interest, but it is interest of the superficial sort. He is not the man whom the people delight to honor, and he usually has the good sense to know it. In a Western newspaper my attention was attracted by the headlines: “Noah a Millionaire.” It seems that some one had calculated that, even after making allowance for the low price of labor and materials in his day, the Ark must have cost over half a million dollars, and that Noah must have had at least a million in order prudently to undertake the work. It put the patriarch in a fresh light, and I read the article diligently, as did most of my fellow passengers on the train. But that was the end of it; our opinions about diluvian and antediluvian matters remained unchanged. I suppose that the publicity given to the doings of our conspicuously rich contemporaries has no greater significance.
The millionaire who cares for the admiration of his fellow-citizens must do more than accumulate. When he has made his fortune the next question is, “What will he do with it?” He must do something or sink into the rank of nobodies. Even the most selfish and parsimonious feels that something is required of him. A great part of the stream of new wealth may be wasted, so far as the higher interests of society are concerned, but a certain part of it is pretty certain to be directed toward those same higher interests. The process is like that which goes on with an hydraulic ram. Where there is a good stream of water, one can afford to lose most of it. The waste water, before it escapes down the hill, pumps a slender but sufficient stream into the second story.