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THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
"Books by TBrander Matthews: 
 
 ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS 
 
 French Dramatists of the igth Century 
 Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more 
 
 or less importance 
 
 Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays 
 The Historical Novel, and other Essays 
 Parts of Speech, Essays on English 
 The Development of the Drama 
 Inquiries and Opinions 
 The American of the Future, and other 
 
 Essays 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE 
 FUTURE 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1909 
 
Copyright, 1909, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 Published October, 1909 
 
 
TO WM. M. POLK 
 
 PHYSICIAN AND FRIEND 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A The American of the Future .... 3 
 
 II American Character ....... 2^ 
 
 III The Americans and the British . . . ., 59 
 
 IV "Blood is Thicker than Water" ... 85 
 V The Scream of the Spread-Eagle . . . 113 
 
 VI American Manners ....... 
 
 VII American Humor ....... >i 
 
 \ 
 
 VIII The Speech of the People ..... 179 
 
 IX English as a World-Language ... 197 
 
 X Simplified Spelling and <( Fonetic Reform" 2 19 
 
 */ XI The Question of the Theater . . . . 235 
 
 XII Persuasion and Controversy .... 263 
 
 , XlII Reform and Reformers ..... ^$8$ 
 
 " XIV " Those Literary Fellows" ..... 39 
 
 XV Standards of Success ...... 333 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
[This address was delivered before the American Library 
 Association at Narragansett Pier, on July 4, 1906.] 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ONE Monday in the spring of 1906 a New 
 York morning paper recorded the fact 
 that "ten thousand men, women and children, 
 immigrants from all sections of the globe, were 
 inside New York harbor before sundown yester 
 day, as many more were on big immigrant ves 
 sels reported off Sandy Hook and three times 
 ten thousand on other vessels little more than 
 two hundred miles from port. All told, at least 
 fifty-two thousand immigrants will have reacht 
 port by Thursday morning, the largest number 
 that has yet come to New York at one time." 
 The new-comers belonged to many different 
 nationalities. Some came from Great Britain 
 and Ireland; some from Germany and Aus 
 tria; some from Russia and Poland; and more 
 from Italy. The reporter noted that there were 
 also a few French and a few Arabians. 
 
 More than fifty thousand in four days! and 
 these were only the advance guard of the host 
 that followed fast all thru the lengthening days 
 of the spring months. Men and women and 
 children from every part of Europe, even from 
 3 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Africa and from Asia, poured into New York 
 to scatter themselves thruout the United States. 
 A few of them intended to work only during the 
 summer and then to return whence they came; 
 but the most of them were resolved to lead a new 
 life in the New World. They wisht to better 
 themselves; and they did not pause to ask whether 
 we wanted them or whether their coming was 
 for our good also. They left us to ask these 
 questions, and to find such answer as we could. 
 
 Wide and unguarded stand our gates, 
 
 And thru them presses a wild motley throng 
 
 Men from the Volga and the Tatar steppes, 
 
 Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, 
 
 Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav, 
 
 Flying the Old World s poverty and scorn; 
 
 These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, 
 
 Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. 
 
 O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well 
 To leave the gates unguarded? 
 
 For so of old 
 
 The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome, 
 And where the temples of the Caesars stood 
 The lean wolf unmolested made her lair. 
 
 In these lofty lines Aldrich sharply phrased 
 
 what many Americans vaguely feared. The 
 
 motley horde that invades us hopes to better 
 
 its condition; but what of our condition? What 
 
 4 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 effect will Malayan and Scythian and Slav 
 have upon us ? Are they worthy to be welcomed 
 within our commonwealth? Will they trample 
 America as the thronging Goth and Vandal 
 trampled Rome? Must we dread the coming 
 of a day when the lean wolf unmolested shall 
 make her lair in the deserted streets where once 
 the many churches stood, the stately libraries 
 and the frequent schoolhouses ? 
 
 Our inexpugnable optimism is prompt to dis 
 miss this dire possibility; and it is still our pride 
 to proffer a refuge to the opprest But the 
 danger-signal has been heeded; and the gates 
 are no longer unguarded. The " featureless 
 figures of the Hoang-Ho" are denied admission; 
 and the wisdom of this exclusion is evident, 
 however harsh we may sometimes seem in its 
 application. These orientals have a civiliza 
 tion, older than ours, hostile to ours, exclusive 
 and repellent. They do not come here to throw 
 in their lot with us. They abhor assimilation 
 and they have no desire to be absorbed. They 
 mean to remain aliens; they insist upon being 
 taken back when they are dead, and we do 
 well to keep them out while they are alive. 
 
 We exclude also with equal wisdom the maimed 
 
 and the halt and the blind. We refuse to receive 
 
 the wastrel and the broken driftwood of humanity ; 
 
 in a single year we have sent back whence they 
 
 5 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 came twelve thousand undesirable immigrants, 
 some of them insane, some of them diseased, but 
 most of them mere weaklings likely soon to be 
 come dependent. We have accepted the prin 
 ciple that it is our duty to defend our coasts 
 against an undesirable invasion. We are glad 
 still to provide a refuge for the opprest, but only 
 when those who demand hospitality are fit to 
 be incorporated in our body politic and only 
 when they are willing to accept loyally the laws 
 under which they seek shelter. Of late we have 
 been putting hard questions to all new arrivals 
 at our ports, and if they have no answer ready, 
 the gates are closed in their faces. We have 
 seen in time the danger of a liberality too lax; 
 and we have recognized the sagacity of the late 
 Mayo-Smith s saying that those "who desire 
 that the United States should discharge the 
 function of a world-asylum forget that asylums 
 are not governed by their inmates." 
 
 But there are those among us who are not sat 
 isfied with this setting up of barriers against the 
 unfit, and who see a menace to American stand 
 ards in the admission even of the physically fit, 
 if they come from alien stocks. There are those 
 and they are not a few who would keep out 
 the "men from the Volga and the Tatar steppes" 
 and all "bringing with them unknown gods and 
 rites." Willing enough still to welcome Teuton 
 6 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and even Celt, they see peril to our citizenship 
 in granting it to Slav and to Scythian, with 
 " tiger passions, here to stretch their claws." 
 They look askant at New York with its immense 
 masses of imperfectly assimilated foreigners, 
 with its Little Italys, with its mysterious China 
 town, with its Syrian quarter, with its half- 
 million of Russian Jews. They ask themselves 
 whether the metropolis of the United States can 
 any longer be considered an American city. 
 
 To this last question the answer is easy. New 
 York is quite as American to-day as it ever has 
 been in any of its three centuries. Diversity 
 of blood has always been its dominant character 
 istic. As one of its historians has tersely asserted, 
 "no sooner has one set of varying elements been 
 fused together than another stream has been 
 poured into the crucible. There probably has 
 been no period in the city s growth during which 
 the New Yorkers whose parents were born in 
 New York formed the majority of the popula 
 tion; and there never has been a time when the 
 bulk of the citizens were of English blood." 
 The history of the metropolis from which these 
 quotations are taken was written by Theodore 
 Roosevelt, a typical New Yorker as he is a typical 
 American; and he illustrates in his own person 
 this commingling of stocks. He is of Dutch 
 descent, with other ancestors who were Huguenot 
 7 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and Scotch-Irish; and he has declared that so 
 far as he himself is aware, he has not a drop of 
 English blood in his veins. 
 
 The diversity of origin is nothing new in 
 American cities, and equally old is the dread of 
 the successive new-comers. It is a curious feature 
 of the settlement of this country, so Mr. Roose 
 velt pointed out elsewhere in his vigorous nar 
 rative of the development of his native city, 
 "that each mass of immigrants feels much dis 
 trust and contempt for the mass usually of a 
 different nationality which comes a genera 
 tion later." There is piquancy in the fact that 
 the chief immigration into New York City in 
 the thirty or forty years following the Revolution 
 was of English stock from Connecticut and 
 Massachusetts, and that the old New Yorkers 
 regarded this New England invasion with jealous 
 hostility. Some of these old New Yorkers were 
 descendants of the original Dutch, and of the 
 Walloons and Huguenots who had come over 
 while the little town was still New Amsterdam; 
 and some were descendants of the English, the 
 Scotch, the Scotch-Irish and the Germans, who 
 had arrived in increasing numbers in the cen 
 tury between the downfall of Peter Stuyvesant 
 and the first public appearance of Alexander 
 Hamilton at the outbreak of the Revolution. 
 
 The New Englanders were swiftly assimilated 
 8 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 as the Huguenots had been a century earlier; 
 and they, in turn, disliked and dreaded the Irish 
 invasion that followed soon, and the later Ger 
 man invasion that came before and during the 
 Civil War. But in that bitter conflict the Irish 
 and the Germans and their children proved them 
 selves stanch Americans; they revealed their be 
 lief that this was not only a good land to live in 
 but a good country to die for. And the Irish 
 and the Germans in their turn also disliked and 
 dreaded the more recent invasion of the Italians 
 and of the Russian Jews; and they joined with 
 the older New Yorkers in wondering whether 
 these strange new-comers were not unfit for the 
 citizenship which had been generously granted 
 to them. Yet there is scarcely a larger proportion 
 of foreigners in the population of New York, at 
 the beginning of the twentieth century, than 
 there was at the end of the seventeenth; nor are 
 the dangerous elements proportionately larger 
 now than they were then. The fire still glows 
 beneath the crucible and the process of fusing is 
 as rapid and as complete to-day as ever it has 
 been in the past. The children are the flux for 
 this fusing; they are taken captive first by the 
 schools, and then the public libraries bind them 
 fast; and finally the young folks react on their 
 parents. Sooner or later, the foreigners are made 
 over; they are born anew; and they have a proud 
 9 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 consciousness that they have come into their 
 birthright. 
 
 When Maxim Gorky was asked what had 
 most imprest him on his arrival in New York, 
 he answered that it was the bodily bearing of the 
 throngs in the streets. "They stand erect," he 
 said; "they do not cringe." And yet a large 
 majority of the men who made up the throngs 
 were immigrants or the sons of immigrants. In 
 their native land they may not have been allowed 
 to assert their manhood; but they had it in them 
 to assert when they arrived here and adjusted 
 themselves to our free conditions. And their 
 self-assertion and their self-expression have been 
 to our profit, since the most of them came from 
 stocks which had been denied the opportunity 
 to select out their best. They have brought 
 undeveloped possibilities to this country where 
 careers are widely opened to all talents. It 
 needs to be noted that two of the most distin 
 guished electrical inventors of America are of 
 Slavonic birth. That shrewd observer of social 
 conditions, Miss Jane Addams, has asserted that 
 we talk far too loosely about our immigrants. 
 We use the phrase "the scum of Europe" and 
 other unwarrantable words, "without realizing 
 that the undevelopt peasant may be much 
 more valuable to us here than the more highly 
 developt but also more highly specialized town- 
 10 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 dweller, who may much less readily develop the 
 acquired characteristics which the new environ 
 ment demands." 
 
 "The way to compare men is to compare 
 their respective ideals," said Thoreau; "the 
 actual man is too complex to deal with." In 
 some mysterious fashion we Americans have 
 imposed our ideals on the Irish and on the 
 Germans, as we are now imposing them on the 
 Italians and on the Russian Jews. The children 
 and the grandchildren of these ignorant immi 
 grants learn to revere Washington and Lincoln, 
 and they take swift pride in being Americans. 
 They thrill in response to the same patriotic 
 appeals which move us of the older stocks; and 
 when the nation celebrated, in 1889, the cente 
 nary of the constitution of the United States, no 
 where were the portraits of the Father of the 
 Country more frequent than here in New York, 
 and in its Little Italy and in its Ghetto. When 
 the President of the United States declared that a 
 certain friend of his was "the most useful citizen 
 of New York," he named not a native but a man 
 who was by birth a Dane; and if any one with 
 equal opportunity for knowing should under 
 take to draw up a list of the five most useful cit 
 izens of New York, he would have to include also 
 one Hebrew of German birth. If this observer 
 should extend the list to ten he would be forced 
 ii 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 to set down the name of another German Hebrew 
 whose service to the public good has been quite 
 as indisputable. 
 
 The census records the number of those in 
 our cities and in our states who are of foreign 
 birth and also those who are of foreign parent 
 age; and these figures seem to suggest that there 
 exists among us a mass of undigested aliens. But 
 in so far as the statistics do suggest this they con 
 vey a false impression. The boys and girls of 
 Little Italy speak English as fluently as they 
 speak Italian; and while they salute the flag in 
 school, in the street they amuse themselves 
 with Little Sally Waters and with the traditional 
 games of Anglo-Saxon youth. Already are the 
 intelligent sons of Italian immigrants coming 
 up thru the high schools of New York and the 
 City College, and entering the graduate-depart 
 ments of our universities to fit themselves for 
 the higher degrees. It is not uncommon to hear 
 a young man of German parentage term his 
 own father "a Dutchman." The sons of the 
 Fatherland often forget their German, and their 
 children do not always acquire it. A prominent 
 lawyer of New York is the nephew of a prominent 
 German author; and he told me once that he 
 had read only those of his uncle s works which 
 had been translated into English. The German 
 theater in New York is deserted by the sons and 
 
 12 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 daughters of the older Germans who subsidize 
 it; the young people prefer to see plays in the 
 English language with which they are more fa 
 miliar. 
 
 Even among the immigrants themselves, the 
 process of Americanization is sometimes extraor 
 dinarily swift. It did not take long for Galla- 
 tin and Agassiz and Schurz to make themselves 
 at home here; and the less gifted and the less well 
 educated foreigner has an even stronger incentive 
 to get out of his old-world shell. When the late 
 Professor Boyesen went to Minnesota, he was 
 surprized to find that his fellow Scandinavians 
 preferred to speak English even to him; and it 
 was explained to him that the return to their 
 native tongue would reveal their peasant origin 
 and thus testify to their social inferiority to a 
 gentleman who had been graduated from the 
 university of Upsala, whereas the use of English 
 lifted them all to the lofty tableland of American 
 citizenship. 
 
 The process of assimilation, at work now under 
 our own eyes, was visible also to our fathers and 
 to our forefathers. Indeed, there is no stronger 
 phenomenon in all the marvelous history of civ 
 ilization than this very process, than this Ameri 
 canization of countless aliens, generation after 
 generation, with no violent modification of 
 American ideals. Three centuries ago "men of 
 13 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 sturdy English fiber began to come in search of 
 mental, religious and economic freedom," as an 
 acute student of social conditions has phrased it. 
 "Daring men in search of new experiences came 
 as adventurers and discoverers. Men of moral 
 daring came in search of religious and civic 
 freedom. Men of industrial and commercial 
 daring came in search of larger opportunity. 
 These men establisht ideals and set standards 
 and created tendencies for a nation." These 
 standards, these ideals, these tendencies still sur 
 vive after almost three hundred years, modified 
 a little, no doubt, but developt only, not radically 
 transformed, and never renounced. The Ameri 
 can of to-day, whatever his descent, has most of 
 the characteristics of the American of yesterday. 
 The ideals endure; and the aspirations have not 
 been blunted by time or turned aside by alien 
 influences. 
 
 It is true enough that the makers of America 
 were mainly of British origin. Benjamin Frank 
 lin and Washington Irving were the sons of immi 
 grants, one English and the other Scotch. But 
 from the very beginning the admixture of other 
 elements was abundant, most obvious in New 
 York but perceptible even in New England. 
 Before the Revolution, besides the Dutch in 
 New York there were Swedes in New Jersey; 
 in Pennsylvania there were Germans and Scotch- 
 14 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Irish; and in New York and South Carolina 
 there were Huguenots, and no single stock has 
 contributed to our citizenship so many men of 
 ability in proportion to its numbers as this sturdy 
 and stalwart group of French Protestants. Thus 
 we see that there is no basis for the prevalent 
 belief that the people of the United States were 
 once almost purely English in descent, and that 
 they have been diluted by foreign admixture 
 only since the war of 1812. In the Louisiana 
 Purchase and in the Northwest Territory there 
 were many French settlers; and men of Spanish 
 descent were incorporated by the acquisition of 
 Texas and of California. The commingling of 
 these many bloods during our first century of 
 national life must be more or less responsible 
 for the divergence now obvious between American 
 ideals, American standards and American ten 
 dencies, on the one hand, and British ideals, 
 British standards and British tendencies, on the 
 other. Both sets are derived from the same root, 
 from the ideals, the standards, and the tendencies 
 of the older Anglo-Saxon stock, transplanted in 
 England from the Teutonic mainland and stimu 
 lated by the commingled Hebrew and Greek and 
 Roman ideals of modern Christianity. 
 
 It is well for us to recall the fact that the 
 English race itself was of many mingled strains, 
 Celtic and Teutonic, welded into unity at last, 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and achieving its richest expression under Eliz 
 abeth. But while the British have been in 
 breeding for centuries now, with only occasional 
 enrichment by alien stocks, Spanish-Hebrew, 
 Huguenot and German, we Americans have been 
 absorbing vigorous foreign blood; and to this 
 infusion must be credited some portion of the 
 differences between the subjects of the British 
 king and the citizens of the American republic. 
 These differences are abundant and they are 
 evident; and there is no need to dwell on them 
 here. 
 
 It is the testimony of many of the intelligent 
 Europeans who have come here to study us in 
 recent years that we Americans are less insular 
 than our kin across the sea, less set in our ways, 
 more open-minded. Senor Juan Valera, some 
 time Spanish Minister in Washington, in the 
 preface to his delightful tale of Pepita Ximenes 
 declared that the American public reads a great 
 deal, is indulgent and "differs from the British 
 public which is eminently exclusive in its tastes 
 by its cosmopolitan spirit. " It may be said 
 that this is one of the variances between the Ameri 
 cans and the British due to the influence exerted 
 by those elements in our population which are 
 not Anglo-Saxon and not even Teutonic. Cecil 
 Rhodes once scornfully commented on the 
 "unctuous rectitude" of the British; and Lowell 
 16 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 once declared that "England seems to be the 
 incarnation of the Kingdom of this world. " 
 Neither of these accusations will lie against us 
 Americans, open as we may be in other respects 
 to the conviction of sin. Perhaps the reason is 
 to be found in the influence of the Celt, of the 
 Huguenot and of the Irish. To this same Cel 
 tic softening of Teutonic harshness we may 
 ascribe also the broader development here of 
 that social instinct which is deficient in Great 
 Britain and which is dominant in France. This 
 social instinct manifests itself in manifold forms, 
 in a wider sympathy, in a friendlier good nature, 
 in a more thoro toleration, both religious and 
 political. It has contributed its share to the 
 core of idealism which sustains the American 
 character, but which is often veiled from view 
 by sordid externals. 
 
 When we consider all these things carefully, 
 we cannot help wondering whether we have not 
 been guilty of flagrant conceit in our assumption 
 that we could not possibly profit by any infusion 
 of other bloods than the Teutonic. We find 
 ourselves face to face with the question whether 
 the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock is of a truth so 
 near to perfection that any admixture is certain 
 to be harmful. We find ourselves doubting 
 whether this stock has always done so well that 
 it has an undisputed right to a halo on demand. 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Much as we owe to England, we have other 
 debts also; and even New England, of which 
 we are all justly proud, is not now the focus of 
 the whole United States. 
 
 The New Englanders long ago relapst from 
 orthodoxy into unitarianism, and then their 
 wavering faith faded into a chilly agnosticism, 
 until now their piety often takes the mild form 
 of ancestor-worship, revealed in not a few of 
 them by a high opinion of themselves as the de 
 scendants of their sainted forefathers. But to 
 some of us My Country! tis of Thee seems 
 only a sectional lyric, by a bard who did not think 
 nationally. There is a certain significance in 
 the fact that political stability, and even political 
 sagacity, have been most evident in certain of 
 the sections where the foreign-born citizens are 
 most thickly settled, and least evident in certain 
 other sections where the inhabitants can trace 
 their descent to forefathers of American birth. 
 
 All that the New Englanders could bring over 
 from Great Britain was a British standard; and 
 if the American standard now differs from the 
 British standard this must be due, more or less, 
 to the pressure exerted in America by a contri 
 bution other than British. If we to-day prefer, 
 as we do undoubtedly, the existing American 
 standards and ideals and tendencies to the British 
 standards and ideals and tendencies, we must 
 18 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 recognize that the various foreign elements in 
 the United States have exerted an influence satis 
 factory to us now, however much our forefathers 
 may once have dreaded it. We must recognize 
 that the commingling of stocks which has been 
 going on here in the past has been beneficial 
 or at least that its results are acceptable to us at 
 present. And in all probability our children will 
 admit also that the commingling which is going 
 on in the present and which will go on in the 
 future, is likely also to be equally acceptable 
 and equally beneficial. 
 
 The strength of the founders of the American 
 republic lay chiefly in character. It is not by 
 brilliancy, by intellect or even by genius that 
 Washington and Jay and John Adams imprest 
 themselves on their fellow-citizens in Virginia, 
 in New York, and in Massachusetts. Ability 
 they had in abundance, no doubt; but it was 
 by character they conquered, by their moral in 
 dividuality. And it is the grossest conceit for 
 us to assume that character is the privilege or 
 the prerogative of any single stock. We have a 
 right to hope, and even to believe, that whatever 
 we may lose by the commingling of the future, 
 by the admixture of other racial types than the 
 Teutonic and the Celtic, will be made up to us 
 by what we shall thereby gain. Our type may 
 be a little transformed, but it is not at all likely 
 19 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 to be deteriorated. There is really very little 
 danger indeed that the preaching of the Puritans 
 will ever be superseded here by the practices of 
 the Impuritans. 
 
 It is true that the latest new-comers are not 
 altogether Teutonic or even Celtic; they are 
 Latin and Slav and Semitic. But it is only a 
 stubborn pride, singularly out of place in an 
 American of the twentieth century, which makes 
 us dread evil consequences from this admixture. 
 The Teuton here has been suppled by the Celt; 
 but the resulting race may benefit still by attri 
 butes of the Latin and of the Slav. The suave 
 manner of the Italian may modify in time the 
 careless discourtesy which discredits us now in 
 the eyes of foreign visitors. The ardor of the 
 Slav may quicken our appreciation of music and 
 of the fine arts. Possibly these gains may have 
 to be paid for by a little relaxing of the unresting 
 energy which is our salient characteristic to-day. 
 It may be that when milder strains are com 
 mingled with the Teutonic-Celtic stock, there 
 will be other modifications, some of them seem 
 ingly less satisfactory. But there is no reason 
 to suppose that in the future we shall not make 
 our profit out of the best that every contributing 
 blood can bring to us, since this is exactly what 
 we have been doing in the past. 
 
 In 1900 there were ten millions of the foreign 
 
 20 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 born here in the United States; but of these 
 three-quarters were of English or Teutonic or 
 Celtic blood, the very elements out of which 
 first the British and then the Americans have 
 been compounded. That is to say, there were 
 less than three million out of some seventy mil 
 lion whites that the most rigid stickler for racial 
 purity could possibly object to. In 1900 again 
 there was only a million of these foreign-born 
 who could not speak English. And who doubts 
 that the children of this million are now busy 
 acquiring our language to fit themselves for the 
 struggle of life? These children are indeed 
 likely to look upon English as their mother- 
 tongue; and with the language they are taking 
 over also the ideals of the community in which 
 they are growing to manhood, ideals which the 
 grandchildren of the immigrants will have ab 
 sorbed unconsciously. It is well for us to re 
 mind ourselves that ideals are communal and 
 not individual; they are the result of environ 
 ment and not of heredity. Ideals are not born 
 in the blood, even tho instincts may be; they 
 are taken over from our associates; they are 
 implanted by the group-feeling. As Lowell once 
 phrased it sharply, "The pressure of public 
 opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; 
 you can t see it, but it is sixteen pounds to the 
 square inch none the less." 
 
 21 
 
THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
 
 We need not fear any weakening of the Teu 
 tonic framework of our social order. Beyond 
 all question we shall preserve the common law 
 of England and the English language, for 
 these are priceless possessions in which the wel 
 come invaders are glad to be allowed to share. 
 The good old timbers of the ship of state are still 
 solid and the sturdy vessel is steered by the same 
 compass. 
 
 One of the best equipt observers of American 
 life and one of the shrewdest also, Professor 
 Giddings, faces the future fearlessly. He holds 
 that in the coming years a mixture of elements 
 not Anglo-Teuton "will soften the emotional 
 nature" and " quicken the poetic and artistic 
 nature" of the American people; gentler in our 
 thoughts and feelings because of the Alpine strain 
 (and this includes the Slav), we shall find our 
 selves "with a higher power to enjoy the beauti 
 ful things of life because of the Celtic and the 
 Latin blood." And as if this prophecy of emo 
 tional benefit was not heartening enough, Pro 
 fessor Giddings holds up to us the high hope of 
 an intellectual benefit also; probably thru the 
 commingling of bloods "we shall become more 
 clearly and fearlessly rational, in a word, more 
 scientific." 
 
 (1906.) 
 
 22 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
[This address was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa of 
 Columbia University in June, 1905; and it was repeated at 
 Rutgers College on Charter Day in November, 1905.] 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 IN a volume recording a series of talks with 
 Tolstoi, publisht by a French writer in the 
 final months of 1904, we are told that the Rus 
 sian novelist thought the Dukhobors had attained 
 to a perfected life, in that they were simple, free 
 from envy, wrath and ambition, detesting vio 
 lence, refraining from theft and murder, and seek 
 ing ever to do good. Then the Parisian inter 
 viewer askt which of the peoples of the world 
 seemed most remote from the perfection to 
 which the Dukhobors had elevated themselves; 
 and when Tolstoi returned that he had given 
 no thought to this question, the French corre 
 spondent suggested that we Americans deserved 
 to be held up to scorn as the least worthy of 
 nations. 
 
 The tolerant Tolstoi askt his visitor why he 
 thought so ill of us; and the journalist of Paris 
 then put forth the opinion that we Americans 
 are "a people terribly practical, avid of pleas 
 ure, systematically hostile to all idealism. The 
 
 2 5 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 ambition of the American s heart, the passion 
 of his life, is money; and it is rather a delight 
 in the conquest and possession of money than 
 in the use of it. The Americans ignore the arts; 
 they despise disinterested beauty. And now, 
 moreover, they are imperialists. They could 
 have remained peaceful without danger to their 
 national existence; but they had to have a fleet 
 and an army. They set out after Spain, and 
 attackt her; and now they begin to defy Eu 
 rope. Is there not something scandalous in this 
 revelation of the conquering appetite in a new 
 people with no hereditary predisposition toward 
 
 warr 
 
 It is to the credit of the French correspond 
 ent that after setting down this fervid arraign 
 ment, he was honest enough to record Tolstoi s 
 dissent. But altho he dissented, the great 
 Russian expresst little surprize at the virulence 
 of this diatribe. No doubt it voiced an opinion 
 familiarized to him of late by many a news 
 paper of France and of Germany. Fortunately 
 for us, the assertion that foreign nations are 
 a contemporaneous posterity is not quite true. 
 Yet the opinion of foreigners, even when most 
 at fault, must have its value for us as a useful 
 corrective of conceit. We ought to be proud of 
 our country; but we need not be vain about it. 
 Indeed, it would be difficult for the most pa- 
 26 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 triotic of us to find any satisfaction in the fig 
 ure of the typical American which apparently 
 exists in the mind of most Europeans, and which 
 seems to be a composite photograph of the back 
 woodsman of Cooper, the negro of Mrs. Stowe, 
 and the Mississippi river-folk of Mark Twain, 
 modified perhaps by more vivid memories of 
 Buffalo Bill s Wild West. Surely this is a strange 
 monster; and we need not wonder that foreign 
 ers feel towards it as Voltaire felt toward the proph 
 et Habakkuk, whom he declared to be " capa 
 ble of anything." 
 
 It has seemed advisable to quote here what 
 the Parisian journalist said of us, not because 
 he himself is a person of consequence, indeed, 
 he is so obscure that there is no need even to 
 mention his name, but because he has had the 
 courage to attempt what Burke declared to be 
 impossible, to draw an indictment against a 
 whole nation. It would be easy to retort on 
 him in kind, for, unfortunately, and to the 
 grief of all her friends, France has laid herself 
 open to accusations as sweeping and as violent. 
 It would be easy to dismiss the man himself as 
 one whose outlook on the world is so narrow 
 that it seems to be little more than what he can 
 get thru a chance slit in the wall of his own self- 
 sufficiency. It would be easy to answer him in 
 either of these fashions, but what is easy is rarely 
 27 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 worth while; and it is wiser to weigh what he 
 said and to see if we cannot find our profit in it. 
 Sifting the essential charges from out the 
 mass of his malevolent accusation, we find this 
 Frenchman alleging first, that we Americans 
 care chiefly for making money; second, that we 
 are hostile to art and to all forms of beauty; and 
 thirdly, that we are devoid of ideals. These 
 three allegations may well be considered, one by 
 one, beginning with the assertion that we are 
 mere money-makers. 
 
 II 
 
 Now, in so far as this Frenchman s belief is 
 but an exaggeration of the saying of Napoleon s, 
 that the English were a nation of shopkeepers, 
 we need not wince, for the Emperor of the 
 French found to his cost that those same Eng 
 lish shopkeepers had a stout stomach for fight 
 ing. Nor need we regret that we can keep shop 
 profitably, in these days when the doors of the 
 bankers vaults are the real gates of the Temple 
 of Janus, war being impossible until they open. 
 There is no reason for alarm or for apology so 
 long as our shopkeeping does not cramp our 
 muscle or curb our spirit, for, as Bacon declared 
 three centuries ago, " walled towns, stored arse 
 nals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots 
 28 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery and the 
 like, all this is but a sheep in a lion s skin, except 
 the breed and disposition of the people be stout 
 and warlike." 
 
 Even the hostile French traveler did not ac 
 cuse us of any flabbiness of fiber; indeed, he 
 declaimed especially against our " conquering 
 appetite," which seemed to him scandalous "in 
 a new people with no hereditary predisposition 
 toward war." But here he fell into a common 
 blunder; the United States may be a new na 
 tion altho as a fact the stars-and -stripes is now 
 older than the tricolor of France, the union- 
 jack of Great Britain and the standards of 
 those new-comers among the nations, Italy and 
 Germany, the United States may be a new 
 nation, but the people here have had as many 
 ancestors as the population of any other country. 
 The people here, moreover, have "a hereditary 
 predisposition toward war," or at least toward 
 adventure, since they are, every man of them, 
 descended from some European more venture 
 some than his fellows, readier to risk the perils 
 of the Western Ocean and bolder to front the 
 unknown dangers of an unknown land. The 
 warlike temper, the aggressiveness, the imperial 
 istic sentiment, these are in us no new develop 
 ment of unexpected ambition; and they ought 
 not to surprize any one familiar with the way in 
 29 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 which our forefathers graspt this Atlantic coast 
 first, then thrust themselves across the Alle- 
 ghanies, spread abroad to the Mississippi, and 
 reacht out at last to the Rockies and to the Pa 
 cific. The lust of adventure may be danger 
 ous, but it is no new thing; it is in our blood, 
 and we must reckon with it. 
 
 Perhaps it is because "the breed and disposi 
 tion of the people" is "stout and warlike" that 
 our shopkeeping has been successful enough to 
 awaken envious admiration among other races 
 whose energy may have been relaxt of late. 
 After all, the arts of war and the arts of peace 
 are not so unlike; and in either a triumph can 
 be won only by an imagination strong enough to 
 foresee and to divine what is hidden from the 
 weakling. We are a trading community, after 
 all and above all, even if we come of fighting 
 stock. We are a trading community, just as 
 Athens was, and Venice and Florence. And like 
 the men of these earlier commonwealths, the men 
 of the United States are trying to make money. 
 They are striving to make money not solely to 
 amass riches, but partly because having money 
 is the outward and visible sign of success, be 
 cause it is the most obvious measure of accom 
 plishment. 
 
 In his talk with Tolstoi our French critic re 
 vealed an unexpected insight when he asserted 
 30 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 that the passion of American life was not so 
 much the use of money as a delight in the con 
 quest of it. Many an American man of affairs 
 would admit without hesitation that he would 
 rather make half a million dollars than inherit 
 a million. It is the process he enjoys, rather 
 than the result; it is the tough tussle in the open 
 market which gives him the keenest pleasure, 
 and not the idle contemplation of wealth safely 
 stored away. He girds himself for battle and 
 fights for his own hand; he is the son and the 
 grandson of the stalwart adventurers who came 
 from the Old World to face the chances of the 
 new. This is why he is unwilling to retire as 
 men are wont to do in Europe when their for 
 tunes are made. Merely to have money does 
 not greatly delight him altho he would regret 
 not having it; but what does delight him un 
 ceasingly is the fun of making it. 
 
 The money itself often he does not know what 
 to do with; and he can find no more selfish use 
 for it than to give it away. He seems to recog 
 nize that his making it was in some measure due 
 to the unconscious assistance of the community 
 as a whole; and he feels it his duty to do some 
 thing for the people among whom he lives. It 
 must be noted that the people themselves also 
 expect this from him; they expect him sooner 
 or later to pay his footing. As a result of this 
 
 v/ 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 pressure of public opinion and of his own lack 
 of interest in money itself, he gives freely. In 
 time he comes to find pleasure in this as well; 
 and he applies his business sagacity to his bene 
 factions. Nothing is more characteristic of mod 
 ern American life than this pouring out of private 
 wealth for public service. Nothing remotely re 
 sembling it is to be seen now in any country of 
 the Old World; and not even in Athens in its 
 noblest days was there a larger-handed lavish- 
 ness of the individual for the benefit of the com 
 munity. 
 
 Again, in no country of the Old World is the 
 prestige of wealth less powerful than it is here. 
 This, of course, the foreigner fails to perceive; 
 he does not discover that it is not the man who 
 happens to possess money that we regard with 
 admiration but the man who is making money, 
 and thereby proving his efficiency and indirectly 
 benefiting the community. To many it may 
 sound like an insufferable paradox to assert 
 that nowhere in the civilized world to-day is 
 money itself of less weight than here in the 
 United States; but the broader his opportunity 
 the more likely is an honest observer to come 
 to this unexpected conclusion. Fortunes are 
 made in a day almost, and they may fade away 
 in a night; as the Yankee proverb put it pithily, 
 "it s only three generations from shirt-sleeves 
 32 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 to shirt-sleeves." Wealth is likely to lack some 
 thing of its glamor in a land where well-being 
 is widely diffused and where a large proportion 
 of the population have either had a fortune and 
 lost it, or else expect to gain one in the immedi 
 ate future. 
 
 Probably also there is no country which now 
 contains more men who do not greatly care for 
 large gains and who have gladly given up money- 
 making for some other occupation they found 
 more profitable for themselves. These are the 
 men like Thoreau in whose Walden, now 
 half a century old, we can find an emphatic decla 
 ration of all the latest doctrines of the simple life. 
 We have all heard of Agassiz, best of Ameri 
 cans, even tho he was born in another republic, 
 how he repelled the proffer of large terms for 
 a series of lectures, with the answer that he had 
 no time to make money. Closely akin was the 
 reply of a famous machinist in response to an in 
 quiry as to what he had been doing, to the ef 
 fect that he had accomplisht nothing of late, 
 "we have just been building engines and mak 
 ing money, and I m about tired of it." There 
 are not a few men to-day in these toiling United 
 States who hold with Ben Jonson that "money 
 never made any man rich, but his mind." 
 
 But while this is true, while there are some 
 men among us who care little for money, and 
 33 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 while there are many who care chiefly for the 
 making of it, ready to share it when made with 
 their fellow-citizens, candor compels the ad 
 mission that there are also not a few who are 
 greedy and grasping, selfish and shameless, and 
 who stand forward, conspicuous and unscrupu 
 lous, as if to justify to the full the aspersions, 
 which foreigners cast upon us. Altho these men 
 manage for the most part to keep within the letter 
 of the law, their morality is that of the wrecker and 
 of the pirate. It is a symptom of health in the 
 body politic that the proposal has been made to 
 inflict social ostracism upon the criminal rich. 
 We need to stiffen our conscience and to set up 
 a loftier standard of social intercourse, refusing 
 to fellowship with the men who make their 
 money by overriding the law or by undermining it, 
 just as we should have declined the friendship 
 of Captain Kidd laden down with stolen treasure. 
 In the immediate future these men will be 
 made to feel that they are under the ban of pub 
 lic opinion. One sign of an acuter sensitive 
 ness is the recent outcry against the acceptance 
 of "tainted money" for the support of good 
 works. Altho it is wise always to give a good 
 deed the credit of a good motive, yet it is im 
 possible sometimes not to suspect that certain 
 large gifts have an aspect of " conscience money." 
 Some of them seem to be the result of a desire 
 34 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 to divert public attention from the evil way in 
 which the money was made to the nobler man 
 ner in which it is spent. They appear to be the 
 attempt of a social outlaw to buy his peace with 
 the community. Apparently there are rich men 
 among us, who, having sold their honor for a price, 
 would now gladly give up the half of their for 
 tunes to get it back. 
 
 Candor compels the admission also that by 
 the side of the criminal rich there exists the 
 less noxious but more offensive class of the idle 
 rich, who lead lives of wasteful luxury and of 
 empty excitement. When the French reporter 
 who talked with Tolstoi called us Americans 
 "avid of pleasure" it was this little group he 
 had in mind, as he may have seen the members 
 of it splurging about in Paris, squandering and 
 self-advertizing. Altho these idle rich now ex 
 hibit themselves most openly and to least ad 
 vantage in Paris and in London, their foolish 
 doings are recorded superabundantly in our 
 own newspapers; and their demoralizing in 
 fluence is spread abroad. The snobbish report 
 of their misguided attempts at amusement may 
 even be a source of danger in that it seems to 
 recognize a false standard of social success or 
 in that it may excite a miserable ambition to 
 emulate these pitiful frivolities. But there is no 
 need of delaying longer over the idle rich; they 
 35 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 are only a few, and they have doomed them 
 selves to destruction, since it is an inexorable 
 fact that those who break the laws of nature 
 can have no hope of executive clemency. 
 
 Patience a little; learn to wait, 
 Years are long on the clock of fate. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE second charge which the wandering Pari 
 sian journalist brought against us was that we 
 ignore the arts and that we despise disinter 
 ested beauty. Here again the answer that is 
 easiest is not altogether satisfactory. There is 
 no difficulty in declaring that there are Ameri 
 can artists, both painters and sculptors, who 
 have gained the most cordial appreciation in 
 Paris itself, or in drawing attention to the fact 
 that certain of the minor arts, that of the sil 
 versmith, for one, and for another, that of the 
 glass-blower and the glass-cutter, flourish in 
 the United States at least as freely as they do 
 anywhere else, while the art of designing in 
 stained glass has had a new birth here, which 
 has given it a vigorous vitality lacking in Eu 
 rope since the Middle Ages. It would not be 
 hard to show that our American architects are 
 now undertaking to solve new problems wholly 
 unknown to the builders of Europe, and that 
 36 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 they are often succeeding in this grapple with 
 unprecedented difficulty. Nor would it take 
 long to draw up a list of the concerted efforts 
 of certain of our cities to make themselves more 
 worthy and more sightly with parks well planned 
 and with public buildings well proportioned and 
 appropriately decorated. We might even in 
 voke the memory of the evanescent loveliness of 
 the White City that graced the shores of Lake 
 Michigan a few years ago; and we might draw 
 attention again to the Library of Congress, a 
 later effort of the allied arts of the architect, the 
 sculptor and the painter. 
 
 But however full of high hope for the future 
 we may esteem these several instances of our 
 reaching out for beauty, we must admit if we 
 are honest with ourselves that they are all 
 more or less exceptional, and that to offset this 
 list of artistic achievements the Devil s Advo 
 cate could bring forward a damning catalog of 
 crimes against good taste which would go far 
 to prove that the feeling for beauty is dead here 
 in America and also the desire for it. The 
 Devil s Advocate would bid us consider the 
 flaring and often vulgar advertisements that 
 disfigure our highways, the barbaric ineptness 
 of many of our public buildings, the squalor of 
 the outskirts of our towns and villages, the hid- 
 eousness and horror of the slums in most of 
 37 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 our cities, the negligent toleration of dirt and 
 disorder in our public conveyances, and many 
 another pitiable deficiency of our civilization 
 present in the minds of all of us. 
 
 The sole retort possible is a plea of confession 
 and avoidance, coupled with a promise of re 
 formation. These evils are evident and they 
 cannot be denied. But they are less evident to 
 day than they were yesterday; and we may 
 honestly hope that they will be less evident to 
 morrow. The bare fact that they have been ob 
 served warrants the belief that unceasing ef 
 fort will be made to do away with them. Once 
 aroused, public opinion will work its will in 
 due season. And here occasion serves to deny 
 boldly the justice of a part of the accusation 
 which the French reporter brought against us. 
 It may be true that we "ignore the arts," al- 
 tho this is an obvious overstatement of the case; 
 but it is not true that we "despise beauty." 
 However ignorant the American people may 
 be as a whole, they are in no sense hostile to 
 ward art as certain other peoples seem to be. 
 On the contrary, they welcome it; with all their 
 ignorance, they are anxious to understand it; 
 they are pathetically eager for it. They are so 
 desirous of it that they want it in a hurry, only 
 too often to find themselves put off with an 
 empty imitation. But the desire itself is indis- 
 
 38 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 putable; and its accomplishment is likely to be 
 helpt along by the constant commingling here 
 of peoples from various other stocks than the 
 Anglo-Saxon, since the mixture of races tends 
 always to a swifter artistic development. 
 
 It is well to probe deeper into the question 
 and to face the fact that not only in the arts but 
 also in the sciences we are not doing all that 
 may fairly be expected of us. Athens was a 
 trading city as New York is, but New York 
 has had no Sophocles and no Phidias. Florence 
 and Venice were towns whose merchants were 
 princes, but no American city has yet brought 
 forth a Giotto, a Dante, a Titian. It is now 
 nearly threescore years and ten since Emerson 
 delivered his address on the American Scholar, 
 which has well been styled our intellectual 
 Declaration of Independence, and in which he 
 expressed the hope that "perhaps the time is 
 already come . . . when the sluggard intel 
 lect of this continent will look from under its 
 iron lids and fulfil the postponed expectation of 
 the world with something better than the exer 
 tions of a mechanical skill." Nearly seventy 
 years ago was this prophecy uttered which still 
 echoes unaccomplisht. 
 
 In the nineteenth century in which we came 
 to maturity as a nation, no one of the chief 
 leaders of art, even including literature in its 
 39 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 broadest aspects, and no one of the chief leaders 
 in science, was native to our country. Perhaps 
 we might claim that Webster was one of the 
 world s greatest orators and that Parkman was 
 one of the world s greatest historians; but prob 
 ably the experts outside of the United States 
 would be found unprepared and unwilling to 
 admit either claim, however likely it may be 
 to win acceptance in the future. Lincoln is in 
 disputably one of the world s greatest states 
 men; and his fame is now firmly establisht 
 thruout the whole of civilization. But this 
 is all we can assert; and we cannot deny that 
 we have given birth to very few indeed of the 
 foremost poets, dramatists, novelists, painters, 
 sculptors, architects or scientific discoverers of 
 the last hundred years. 
 
 Alfred Russell Wallace, whose renown is 
 linkt with Darwin s and whose competence 
 as a critic of scientific advance is beyond dis 
 pute, has declared that the nineteenth century 
 was the most wonderful of all since the world 
 began. He asserts that the scientific achieve 
 ments of the last hundred years, both in the dis 
 covery of general principles and in their prac 
 tical application, exceed in number the sum 
 total of the scientific achievements to be credited 
 to all the centuries that went before. He con 
 siders, first of all, the practical applications, 
 40 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 which made the aspect of civilization in 1900 
 differ in a thousand ways from what it had been 
 in 1 80 1. He names a dozen of these practi 
 cal applications: railways, steam navigation, the 
 electric telegraph, the telephone, friction-matches, 
 gas-lighting, electric lighting, the photograph, 
 the Roentgen rays, spectrum analysis, anes 
 thetics, and antiseptics. It is with pride that an 
 American can check off not a few of these util 
 ities as being due wholly or in large part to the 
 ingenuity of one or another of his countrymen. 
 But his pride has a fall when Wallace draws 
 up a second list not of mere inventions but of 
 those fundamental discoveries, of those fecun 
 dating theories underlying all practical applica 
 tions and making them possible, of those prin 
 ciples " which have extended our knowledge or 
 widened our conceptions of the universe." Of 
 these he catalogs twelve; and we are pained to 
 find that no American has had an important 
 share in the establishment of any of these broad 
 generalizations. He may have added a little 
 here and there; but no single one of all the twelve 
 discoveries is mainly to be credited to any Amer 
 ican. It seems as if our French critic was not so 
 far out when he asserted that we were terri 
 bly practical." In the application of principles, 
 in the devising of new methods, our share was 
 larger than that of any other nation. In the 
 
y 
 
 AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 working out of the stimulating principles them 
 selves, our share was less than "a younger 
 brother s portion." 
 
 It is only fair to say, however, that even tho 
 we may not have brought forth a chief leader of 
 art or of science to adorn the wonderful cen 
 tury, there are other evidences of our practical 
 sagacity than those set down by Wallace, evi 
 dences more favorable and of better augury for 
 our future. We derived our language and our 
 laws, our public justice and our representative 
 government from our English ancestors, as we 
 derived from the Dutch our religious toleration 
 and perhaps also our large freedom of educa 
 tional opportunity. In our time we have set an 
 example to others and helpt along the progress 
 of the world. President Eliot holds that we 
 have made five important contributions to the 
 advancement of civilization. First of all, we 
 have done more than any other people to further 
 peace-keeping, and to substitute legal arbitra 
 tion for the brute conflict of war, Second, we 
 have set a splendid example of the broadest re 
 ligious toleration, even tho Holland had first 
 shown us how. Thirdly, we have made evident 
 the wisdom of universal manhood suffrage. 
 Fourthly, by our welcoming of new-comers from 
 all parts of the earth, we have proved that men 
 belonging to a great variety of races are fit for 
 42 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 political freedom. Finally, we have succeeded 
 in diffusing material well-being among the whole 
 population to an extent without parallel in any 
 other country in the world. 
 
 These five American contributions to civili 
 zation are all of them the result of the practi 
 cal side of the American character. They may 
 even seem commonplace as compared with the 
 conquering exploits of some other races. But 
 they are more than merely practical; they are 
 all essentially moral. As President Eliot in 
 sists, they are " triumphs of reason, enterprize, 
 courage, faith and justice over passion, self 
 ishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Be 
 neath each of these developments there lies a 
 strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral and 
 social purpose. It is for such work that multi 
 tudinous democracies are fit." 
 
 IV 
 
 A "STRONG ethical sentiment," and a strenu 
 ous moral purpose" cannot flourish unless they 
 are deeply rooted to idealism. And here we 
 find an adequate answer to the third assertion 
 of Tolstoi s visitor, who maintained that we 
 are "hostile to all idealism." Our idealism may 
 be of a practical sort, but it is idealism none 
 the less. Emerson was an idealist, altho he 
 43 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 was also a thrifty Yankee. Lincoln was an 
 idealist, even if he was also a practical poli 
 tician, an opportunist, knowing where he wanted 
 to go, but never crossing a bridge before he 
 came to it. Emerson and Lincoln had ever a 
 firm grip on the facts of life; each of them kept 
 his gaze fixt on the stars, and he also kept 
 his feet firm on the soil. 
 
 There is a sham idealism, boastful and shabby, 
 which stares at the moon and stumbles in the 
 mud, as Shelley and Poe stumbled. But the basis 
 of the highest genius is always a broad com 
 mon sense. Shakspere and Moliere were held 
 in esteem by their comrades for their under 
 standing of affairs; and they each of them had 
 money out at interest. Sophocles was entrusted 
 with command in battle; and Goethe was the 
 shrewdest of the Grand Duke s counselors. 
 The idealism of Shakspere and of Moliere, of 
 Sophocles and of Goethe, is like that of Emer 
 son and of Lincoln; it is unfailingly practical. 
 And thereby it is sharply set apart from the 
 aristocratic idealism of Plato and of Renan, 
 of Ruskin and of Nietzsche, which is founded 
 on obvious self-esteem and which is sustained 
 by arrogant and inexhaustible egotism. True 
 idealism is not only practical, it is also liberal 
 and tolerant. 
 
 Perhaps it might seem to be claiming too 
 44 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 much to insist on certain points of similarity 
 between us and the Greeks of old. The points 
 of dissimilarity are only too evident to most of 
 us; and yet there is a likeness as well as an 
 unlikeness. Professor Butcher has recently as 
 serted that "no people was ever less detacht 
 from the practical affairs of life" than the Greeks, 
 "less insensible to outward utility; yet they re 
 garded prosperity as a means, never as an end. 
 The unquiet spirit of gain did not take posses 
 sion of their souls. Shrewd traders and mer 
 chants, they were yet idealists. They did not 
 lose sight of the higher and distinctively human 
 aims which give life its significance." It will 
 be well for us if this can be said of our civiliza 
 tion two thousand years after its day is done; 
 and it is for us to make sure that "the unquiet 
 spirit of gain" shall not take possession of our 
 souls. It is for us also to rise to the attitude 
 of the Greeks, among whom, as Professor Butcher 
 points out, "money lavisht on personal enjoy 
 ment was counted vulgar, oriental, inhuman." 
 
 There is comfort in the memory of Lincoln and 
 of those whose death on the field of Gettys 
 burg he commemorated. The men who there 
 gave up their lives that the country might live, 
 had answered to the call of patriotism, which 
 is one of the sublimest images of idealism. There 
 is comfort also in the recollection of Emerson, 
 45 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 and in the fact that for many of the middle years 
 of the nineteenth century he was the most popu 
 lar of lecturers, with an unfading attractiveness 
 to the plain people, perhaps, because, in Lowell s 
 fine phrase, he "kept constantly burning the 
 beacon of an ideal life above the lower region of 
 turmoil." There is comfort again in the knowl 
 edge that idealism is one manifestation of imag 
 ination, and that imagination itself is but an in- 
 tenser form of energy. That we have energy 
 and to spare, no one denies; and we may reckon 
 him a nearsighted observer who does not see 
 also that we have our full share of imagination, 
 even tho it has not yet exprest itself in the 
 loftiest regions of art and of science. The out 
 look is hopeful, and it is not true that 
 
 We, like sentries are obliged to stand 
 
 In starless nights and wait the appointed hour. 
 
 The foundations of our commonwealth were 
 laid by the sturdy Elizabethans who bore across 
 the ocean with them their portion of that imag 
 ination which in England flamed up in rugged 
 prose and in superb and soaring verse. In two 
 centuries and a half the sons of these stalwart 
 Englishmen have lost nothing of their ability 
 to see visions and to dream dreams, and to put 
 solid foundations under their castles in the air. 
 The flame may seem to die down for a season, 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 but it springs again from the embers most un 
 expectedly, as it broke forth furiously in 1861. 
 There was imagination at the core of the little 
 war for the freeing of Cuba, the very attack 
 on Spain, which the Parisian journalist cited to 
 Tolstoi as the proof of our predatory aggressive 
 ness. We said that we were going to war for 
 the sake of the ill-used people in the suffering 
 island close to our shores; we said that we 
 would not annex Cuba; we did the fighting that 
 was needful; and we kept our word. It is 
 hard to see how even the most bitter of critics 
 can discover in this anything selfish. 
 
 There was imagination also in the sudden 
 stopping of all the steamcraft, of all the rail 
 roads, of all the street-cars, of all the incessant 
 traffic of the whole nation, at the moment when 
 the body of a murdered chief magistrate was 
 lowered into the grave. This pause in the work 
 of the world was not only touching, it had a 
 large significance to any one seeking to under 
 stand the people of these United States. It was 
 a testimony that the Greeks would have appre 
 ciated; it had the bold simplicity of an Attic 
 inscription. And we would thrill again in sym 
 pathetic response if it was in the pages of Plu 
 tarch that we read the record of another in 
 stance: When the time arrived for Admiral 
 Sampson to surrender the command of the 
 47 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 fleet he had brought back to Hampton Roads, 
 he came on deck to meet there only those of 
 ficers whose prescribed duty required them to 
 take part in the farewell ceremonies as set forth 
 in the regulations. But when he went over 
 the side of the flagship he found that the boat 
 which was to bear him ashore was manned by 
 the rest of the officers, ready to row him them 
 selves and eager to render this last personal 
 service; and then from every other ship of the 
 fleet there put out a boat also manned by of 
 ficers, to escort for the last time the commander 
 whom they loved and honored. 
 
 As another illustration of our regard for the 
 finer and loftier aspects of life, consider our 
 parks, set apart for the use of the people by 
 the city, the state and the nation. In the cities 
 of this new country the public playgrounds have 
 had to be made, the most of them, and at high 
 cost, whereas the towns of the Old World have 
 come into possession of theirs for nothing, more 
 often than not inheriting the private recreation- 
 grounds of their rulers. And Europe has little 
 or nothing to show similar either to the reserva 
 tions of certain states, like the steadily enlarging 
 preserves in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, 
 48 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 or to the ampler national parks, the Yellowstone, 
 the Yosemite and the Grand Canyon of the Colo 
 rado, some of them far larger in area than one 
 at least of the original thirteen states. Over 
 coming the pressure of private greed, the people 
 have ordained the preservation of this natural 
 beauty and its protection for all time under the 
 safe guardianship of the nation and with free ac 
 cess to all who may claim admission to enjoy it. 
 In like manner many of the battlefields, where 
 on the nation spent its blood that it might be 
 what it is and what it hopes to be, these have 
 been taken over by the nation itself and set apart 
 and kept as holy places of pilgrimage. They are 
 free from the despoiling hand of any individual 
 owner. They are adorned with monuments re 
 cording the brave deeds of the men who fought 
 there. They serve as constant reminders of the 
 duty we owe to our country and of the debt 
 we owe to those who made it and who saved it 
 for us. And the loyal veneration with which 
 these fields of blood have been cherisht here in 
 the United States finds no counterpart in any 
 country in Europe, no matter how glorious may 
 be its annals of military prowess. Even Waterloo 
 is in private hands; and its broad acres, enricht 
 by the bones of thousands, are tilled every year 
 by the industrious Belgian farmers. Yet it was 
 a Frenchman, Renan, who told us that what 
 49 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 welds men into a nation, is "the memory of 
 great deeds done in common and the will to ac 
 complish yet more." 
 
 According to the theory of the conservation of 
 energy, there ought to be about as much virtue 
 in the world at one time as at another. Accord 
 ing to the theory of the survival of the fittest, 
 there ought to be a little more now than there 
 was a century ago. We Americans to-day have 
 our faults, and they are abundant enough and 
 blatant enough, and foreigners take care that 
 we shall not overlook them; but our ethical 
 standard however imperfectly we may attain 
 to it is higher than that of the Greeks under 
 Pericles, of the Romans under Caesar, of the 
 English under Elizabeth. It is higher even 
 than that of our forefathers who establisht 
 our freedom, as those know best who have 
 most carefully inquired into the inner history 
 of the American Revolution. In nothing was 
 our advance more striking than in the different 
 treatment meted out to the vanquisht after the 
 Revolution and after the Civil War. When 
 we made our peace with the British the native 
 tories were proscribed, and thousands of loyal 
 ists left the United States to carry into Canada 
 the indurated hatred of the exiled. But after 
 Lee s surrender at Appomattox, no body of 
 men, no single man indeed, was driven forth 
 50 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 to live an alien for the rest of his days; even tho 
 a few might choose to go, none were compelled. 
 This change of conduct on the part of those 
 who were victors in the struggle was evidence 
 of an increasing sympathy. Not only is section 
 alism disappearing, but with it is departing the 
 feeling that really underlies it, the distrust of 
 those who dwell elsewhere than where we do. 
 This distrust is common all over Europe to 
 day. Here in America it has yielded to a friendly 
 neighborliness which makes the family from 
 Portland, Maine, soon find itself at home in 
 Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard for us to 
 hate anybody, especially since we have dis- 
 establisht the devil. We are good-natured and 
 easy-going; Herbert Spencer even denounced 
 this as our immediate danger, maintaining that 
 we were too good-natured, too easy-going, too 
 tolerant of evil; and he insisted that we needed 
 to strengthen our wills to protest against wrong, 
 to wrestle with it resolutely, and to overcome 
 it before it is firmly rooted. 
 
 VI 
 
 WE are kindly and we are helpful; and we are 
 
 fixt in the belief that somehow everything will 
 
 work out all right in the long run. But nothing 
 
 will work out all right unless we so make it 
 
 5 1 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 work; and excessive optimism may be as cor 
 rupting to the fiber of the people as "the Sab 
 bathless pursuit of fortune," as Bacon termed 
 it. When Mr. John Morley was last in this 
 country he seized swiftly upon a chance allu 
 sion of mine to this ingrained hopefulness of 
 ours. "Ah, what you call optimism," he cried, 
 "I call fatalism." But an optimism which is sol 
 idly based on a survey of the facts cannot fairly 
 be termed fatalism; and another British stu 
 dent of political science, Mr. James Bryce, has 
 recently pointed out that the intelligent native 
 American has and by experience is justified 
 in having a firm conviction that the majority 
 of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right. 
 
 Then he suggested a reason for the faith that 
 is in us, when he declared that no such feeling 
 exists in Europe, since in Germany the gov 
 erning class dreads the spread of socialism, in 
 France the republicans know that it is not im 
 possible that Monarchism and Clericalism may 
 succeed in upsetting the Republic, while in 
 Great Britain each party believes that the other 
 party, when it succeeds, succeeds by mislead 
 ing the people, and neither party supposes that 
 the majority are any more likely to be right than 
 to be wrong. 
 
 Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce were both here in 
 the United States in the fall of 1904, when we 
 52 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 were in the midst of a presidential election, one 
 of those prolonged national debates, creating 
 incessant commotion, but invaluable agents of 
 our political education, in so far as they force 
 us all to take thought about the underlying prin 
 ciples of policy, by which we wish to see the govern 
 ment guided. It was while this political cam 
 paign was at its height that the French visitor 
 to the Russian novelist was setting his notes in 
 order and copying out his assertion that we Ameri 
 cans were mere money-grubbers, "systematically 
 hostile to all idealism." If this unthinking 
 Parisian journalist had only taken the trouble 
 to consider the addresses which the chief speak 
 ers of the two parties here in the United States 
 were then making to their fellow-citizens in the 
 hope of winning votes, he would have discovered 
 that these practical politicians, trained to per 
 ceive the subtler shades of popular feeling, were 
 founding all their arguments on the assumption 
 that the American people as a whole wanted to 
 do right. He would have seen that the appeal 
 of these stalwart partisans was rarely to prejudice 
 or to race-hatred, evil spirits that various ora 
 tors have sought to arouse and to intensify in 
 the more recent political discussions of the French 
 themselves. 
 
 An examination of the platforms, of the let 
 ters of the candidates, and of the speeches of the 
 53 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 more important leaders on both sides revealed 
 to an American observer the significant fact 
 that "each party tried to demonstrate that it 
 was more peaceable, more equitable, more sin 
 cerely devoted to lawful and righteous behavior 
 than the other;" and "the voter was instinc 
 tively credited with loving peace and righteousness, 
 and with being stirred by sentiments of good-will 
 toward men." This seems to show that the heart 
 of the people is sound, and that it does not throb 
 in response to ignoble appeals. It seems to show 
 that there is here the desire ever to do right and 
 to see right done, even if the will is weakened a 
 little by easy-going good-nature, and even if the 
 will fails at times to stiffen itself resolutely to 
 make sure that the right shall prevail. 
 
 "Liberty hath a sharp and double edge fit 
 only to be handled by just and virtuous men," 
 so Milton asserted long ago, adding that "to 
 the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief 
 unwieldy in their own hands." Even if we 
 Americans can clear ourselves of being "bad 
 and dissolute," we have much to do before we 
 may claim to be "just and virtuous." Justice 
 and virtue are not to be had for the asking; 
 they are the rewards of a manful contest with 
 selfishness and with sloth. They are the re 
 sults of an honest effort to think straight, and 
 to apply eternal principles to present needs. 
 54 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 Merely to feel is only the beginning; what re 
 mains is to think and to act. 
 
 A British historian, Mr. Frederic Harrison, 
 who came here to spy out the land three or 
 four years before Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce 
 last visited us, was struck by the fact and 
 by the many consequences of the fact that 
 " America is the only land on earth where caste 
 has never had a footing, nor has left a trace." 
 It seemed to him that "vast numbers and the 
 passion of equality tend to low averages in 
 thought, in manners, and in public opinion, 
 which the zeal of the devoted minority tends 
 gradually to raise to higher planes of thought 
 and conduct." He believed that we should solve 
 our problems one by one because "the zeal for 
 learning, justice and humanity" lies deep in 
 the American heart. Mr. Harrison did not say 
 it in so many words, but it is implied in what 
 he did say, that the absence of caste and the 
 presence of low averages in thought, in man 
 ners, and in public opinion, impose a heavier 
 task on the devoted minority, whose duty it is 
 to keep alive the zeal for learning, justice and 
 humanity. 
 
 Which of us, if haply the spirit moves him, 
 
 may not elect himself to this devoted minority? 
 
 Why should not we also, each in our own way, 
 
 without pretence, without boastfulness, without 
 
 55 
 
AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 bullying, do whatsoever in us lies for the at 
 tainment of justice and of virtue? It is well to 
 be a gentleman and a scholar; but after all it is 
 best to be a man, ready to do a man s work in 
 the world. And indeed there is no reason why 
 a gentleman and a scholar should not also be 
 a man. He will need to cherish what Huxley 
 called "that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism 
 for veracity, which is a greater possession than 
 much learning, a nobler gift than the power of 
 increasing knowledge." He will need also to 
 remember that 
 
 Kings have their dynasties, but not the mind; 
 Caesar leaves other Cassars to succeed, 
 But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind. 
 
 (1905-) 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE 
 BRITISH 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 MANY of those who take an interest in ob 
 serving social complexities must have 
 noticed a curious divergence in the opinions held 
 by the French and by the British about the people 
 of the United States. Reasoning from certain 
 of the obvious facts the French come to one con 
 clusion, and reasoning from other facts equally 
 obvious the British have arrived at an opinion 
 almost diametrically opposite. The French, re 
 calling the Spanish settlements in the South and 
 their own exploration of the Mississippi Valley 
 in the eighteenth century, and observing the im 
 mense immigration from Germany and from 
 Scandinavia in the nineteenth, are inclined to 
 think of the United States as populated by a 
 chance conglomeration of unrelated human be 
 ings with no unity of tradition and with no com 
 mon core of ideals. The British, on the other 
 hand, knowing that the beginnings of the United 
 States are to be found partly in New England 
 and partly in Virginia, and seeing that we speak 
 the English language and have transplanted the 
 common law of England, are unable to conceive 
 of us as anything but English. 
 
 59 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 The theory of the French seems to be shared 
 by most of the other Latin nations, as we had 
 occasion to discover at the outbreak of our little 
 war with Spain. Apparently the Latins, all of 
 them, Italians as well as French and Spanish, 
 looked upon the inhabitants of the United States 
 as a motley horde of mongrels with no pride of 
 nationality and with no cohesive interests; and 
 they held therefore that we were likely to be de 
 feated easily by the pureblooded population of 
 the Iberian peninsula. Of course, the edu 
 cated man of the Latin races would have had to 
 admit if the question had been forced on his 
 attention that the Spanish were not really a 
 pureblooded stock; and if he was pusht to the 
 wall the further confession might have been wrung 
 from him that there are now no nationalities 
 having a right to pride themselves on purity of 
 descent, the Spanish, perhaps, the least of all, 
 since their land had been held in turn by the 
 Celts and by the Romans, by the Goths and 
 Vandals, and even by the Arab invaders from 
 Africa. What is more, the educated man of the 
 Latin countries is well aware that inbreeding is 
 debilitating to a nation and that there is rein- 
 vigoration and new life in the commingling of 
 varied human stocks. 
 
 The theory held by the British is exactly the 
 opposite of that held by the French. It is exem- 
 60 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 plified in the essay written about us by Matthew 
 Arnold a quarter of a century ago, before he paid 
 his first visit to this country. His assumption 
 was that the Americans were at bottom expatri 
 ated Englishmen, modified only a little by the 
 passage across the Atlantic. The scholarly Brit 
 ish critic had often declared that the inhabitants 
 of Great Britain could be sharply distinguisht 
 into an upper class, a middle class, and a lower 
 class; and he seems to have assumed that as we 
 had no upper class and no lower class, the Ameri 
 can people were therefore the counterparts of 
 the British middle class, no more and no less. 
 The extent of Matthew Arnold s blunder in re 
 gard to us, as a result of his initial assumption 
 of this identity between the British and the Ameri 
 cans, can be gaged best by recalling his own 
 characterization of the several classes in Eng 
 land, "an aristocracy materialized and null, 
 a middle class purblind and hideous, a lower 
 class crude and brutal." In his later writings 
 there is some evidence that he began to suspect 
 that his assumption was not as indisputable as 
 he had supposed. But it is a fallacy which lurks 
 in the opinions of nearly all British critics who 
 have occasion to talk about us and which often 
 endures even after they have paid us the oblig 
 atory visit. As Mr. Howells has suggested with 
 his customary acuteness, the British fail to under- 
 61 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 stand us chiefly "because they can never under 
 stand that we are not still a sort of Englishmen- 
 in-error, who would be willingly set right if we 
 could without too great publicity." 
 
 Perhaps it is because the British have ever ac 
 cepted us as closely akin to themselves that they 
 have been free with the searching reproofs which 
 are not uncommon in the strict privacy of the 
 family circle. Even when their intentions are 
 most kindly, they permit us to perceive that they 
 suppose us to be sorry for our separation. Even 
 when they are broad-minded enough to see that 
 we were right in 1776 and that their own rulers 
 were wrong, even when they are acute enough 
 to feel that we were then really fighting the bat 
 tles of liberalism and making possible more swiftly 
 the full freedom they themselves now enjoy, 
 even when they have attained to this wisdom, 
 they are inclined nevertheless to deplore the sep 
 aration itself. It is very hard indeed for them 
 to understand that the independence of the United 
 States seems to us the beginning of a new era, 
 and that we simply cannot conceive of ourselves 
 as still subjects of a king, even if we know that 
 a constitutional monarchy such as exists in Great 
 Britain conserves to the individual perhaps as 
 much of the essence of liberty as our own demo 
 cratic republic. 
 
 They would be surprized to discover that some 
 62 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 of us, revering Washington as the Father of His 
 Country, are ready also with a grateful regard 
 for George III, as a sort of Stepfather of the 
 United States, since we might not have been 
 stirred to independence if that able monarch 
 had not been as arbitrary as he was and as ob 
 stinate. They are therefore capable, in all kind 
 ness, of suggesting a reunion of the United States 
 with the United Kingdom, such as Lord Rose- 
 bery proposed as a consummation to be striven 
 for in the future. And here at once we catch a 
 glimpse of the gulf that yawns between a Brit 
 ish subject and an American citizen. It was with 
 the utmost good will toward America that the 
 former British prime-minister was moved to 
 make this suggestion, never suspecting that to 
 an American what he proposed was simply un 
 thinkable. However cordial toward the Brit 
 ish the feelings of an American may be, he never 
 regrets the Revolution, and he never wishes to 
 undo its results. Not only does he never desire 
 to turn back the clock of Time, but the possi 
 bility of such a step is not present in his mind. 
 He would reject it instantly if it happened to oc 
 cur to him; but then this never does happen. 
 He would refuse to take the proposal seriously, 
 if any well-meaning Englishman should insist 
 on discussing it. He feels instinctively that there 
 was no price too high to pay for certain of the 
 
 63 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 results of the American Revolution. He would 
 accept as a matter of course the statement made 
 by Mr. Howells after Lord Rosebery had lookt 
 forward to a possible political reunion of the two 
 nations that speak English: "Simply to have 
 thrown down and cast out their fetish of personal 
 loyalty, denied their grotesque idolatry of sover 
 eign-worship, not to mention getting rid of a titled 
 aristocracy and a state-church, is worth all that 
 our seven years struggle for independence cost 
 us." 
 
 Here indeed is the real line of cleavage between 
 the two great empires that possess the English 
 language as a birthright. The presence of a 
 personal sovereign is the outward and visible 
 sign that caste is still supreme in the British 
 Empire. The external abuses of the feudal 
 system have been abolished in Great Britain, 
 one by one, until those that still linger are almost 
 harmless; but the inner spirit survives to this late 
 day and even now its manifestations are abun 
 dant in almost every part of the social structure 
 of the British Isles. There is still alive the fic 
 tion that the king rules, and that the army of 
 the empire is His Majesty s army. There is 
 still a willing acceptance of a titled aristocracy, 
 and also of an upper house the vast majority of 
 whose members sit there by the right of birth 
 merely, without regard to their individual merits. 
 64 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 No doubt the British people could change these 
 things, speedily and without violence, if they 
 really desired to get rid of this inheritance from 
 feudalism. But they have not got rid of it; and 
 this is evidence enough that they do not wish to 
 do so. The British see no reason to abolish a 
 state of affairs which the American people look 
 at with amazed wonder as a survival of the 
 Dark Ages. A native American finds it wholly 
 impossible to understand the mental attitude of 
 a certain man of letters in London, who justified 
 his ingrained Toryism by the assertion that he 
 simply would not be ruled by his equals. 
 
 We Americans care less for the opinion of 
 foreigners about us than we did before the Civil 
 War revealed to us our own strength. We know 
 that the French view, that we are only a motley 
 horde of the sweepings of Europe, is absurd. 
 We see also that the British assumption in regard 
 to us, that we are only " Englishmen-in-error," 
 when once we have come to understand it, is 
 equally absurd. And yet the British are our "kin 
 across the sea," and "blood is thicker than water," 
 and we are also "the subjects of King Shakspere," 
 and we have the same language for our mother- 
 tongue. In politics, in public morals and in 
 private morals, in our attitude toward the most 
 of the pressing questions of the day, we are far 
 more closely related to the British than we are 
 65 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 either to the French or to the Germans, how 
 ever much we may have profited by the labors 
 of the leading minds of France and of Germany. 
 Yet we have cast out the last vestiges of the feudal 
 system of which the British are still preserving 
 at least the empty shell; and we have absorbed 
 not only millions of men from continental Eu 
 rope but also many of the ideas of continental 
 Europe which have not appealed to the British. 
 In most matters of the highest importance we 
 are very like the British; but in some matters 
 of high importance we are very unlike them. 
 
 Perhaps we may be aided in the attempt to 
 distinguish between the British and the Ameri 
 cans if we begin by an attempt to set forth the 
 more salient differences between the French 
 people and the two peoples that speak English. 
 The most obvious distinction is that the people 
 which speaks French, having inherited from the 
 Celts a hatred of hypocrisy, are inclined to boast 
 of their vices, whereas the peoples which speak 
 English are wont to boast of their virtues, and 
 often with as little warrant. Then, furthermore, 
 the French are a logical race, intelligent, orderly 
 in their mental processes, clear-minded and thoro- 
 going; they are inclined to be radicals in the 
 application of any theory which has captivated 
 their intellect. The British and the Americans 
 are less intelligent, and less logical; they are 
 66 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 rarely radical or merely theoretical; they are 
 prone to be practical, to be opportunists. The 
 language which the French speak, which they 
 have made what it is and which represents and 
 reveals their characteristics, is clear, sharp, pre 
 cise, exact; and as a result it is unpoetic and hos 
 tile to all vague suggestion or mysticism. On 
 the other hand, the English language is large, 
 loose, free, energetic, vigorous, like the two 
 peoples whose mother-tongue it is. French is 
 seen at its best in prose, whereas English is su 
 preme in poetry. English tragedy is, on the whole, 
 far superior to English comedy, whereas French 
 comedy is, on the whole, far superior to French 
 tragedy. There is obvious significance in the 
 fact that the greatest name in the history of 
 French dramatic literature is that of Moliere, 
 the melancholy man who is the master of comedy, 
 while the greatest name in the history of Eng 
 lish dramatic literature is that of Shakspere, a 
 humorist also it is true, but above all others the 
 master of tragedy. 
 
 Moreover, the chief characteristic of the two 
 peoples that speak English is individuality, 
 whereas the French are governed by the social 
 instinct. The individual Frenchman is likely 
 to lack initiative ; he does not expect to think for 
 himself or to act for himself; he looks to tradi 
 tion and to the social organism to tell him what 
 67 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 to do. The individual Anglo-Saxon has a super 
 abundance of initiative; he is like the smith in 
 Scott s story, he "fights for his own hand." In 
 French society the unit is the family; and in 
 Great Britain and the United States it is the in 
 dividual. An Englishman or an American mar 
 ries to please himself; but a Frenchman, even if 
 he strives to please himself in his marriage, seeks 
 also not to displease his parents and his relatives. 
 In England and in America a wedding unites 
 two individuals; in France it unites two families. 
 Among the peoples that speak English it is al 
 most impossible to conceive of a strong man acting 
 on the motive which governed the Duke of Saint 
 Simon in the days of Louis XIV when he declined 
 to wed an orphan, because he did not wish to be 
 without the social support of a father-in-law. 
 
 While the social instinct which governs the 
 French insistently is far less potent among the 
 English-speaking peoples, its workings are more 
 in evidence in the United States than in Great 
 Britain. For one example only, the English 
 man likes to build about his suburban acre a 
 brick wall tipt with broken glass, whereas the 
 American often does not put even a wire fence or 
 a low hedge about his home, but lets his grounds 
 run into those of his neighbor indistinguishably. 
 Among the British we find individualism run 
 ning over into eccentricity often. It was one of 
 68 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 the shrewdest British observers, Walter Bagehot, 
 who askt whether the inhabitants of the United 
 Kingdom were not "above all other nations 
 divided from the rest of the world, insular both 
 in situation and in mind." It was a German 
 philosopher, Novalis, who declared a century 
 earlier that "every Englishman is an island." 
 No doubt this insularity has its advantages; it 
 leads to an undoubting pride and to an imper 
 turbability of temper, that may be sources of 
 strength to a nation, stiffening its self-reliance. 
 But the disadvantages are indisputable also; and 
 we Americans need not regret that we are less 
 insular than our kin across the sea. We seem 
 to be a little more hospitable to ideas from other 
 countries; we are apparently more responsive 
 to the social appeal; we are a little more sympa 
 thetic and perhaps a little less self-sufficient. 
 Even if we are to the full as conceited, we are 
 somewhat more willing to learn from others. 
 
 The ingenious French philosopher, M. Le 
 Bon, commenting on the motto of the Revolution, 
 "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," declared 
 that the real difference between the French and 
 the British lay in the fact that the French were 
 enamored of Equality and cared little for Liberty, 
 while the British insisted on Liberty and never 
 gave a thought to Equality. And when I once 
 quoted this to Mr. Rudyard Kipling, he instantly 
 69 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 added his own comment to the effect that what 
 the American really preferred was Fraternity; 
 "He is a good fellow himself, and he expects 
 you to be one." This spontaneous suggestion 
 seems to be a recognition that friendliness, a 
 regard for one s fellow creatures, the social 
 instinct, in short, may be more often lookt for 
 among us Americans than among our British 
 cousins. 
 
 The liking for liberty, the excessive individu 
 ality, the habit of fighting for his own hand, all 
 tend to develop in the British a certain hardness. 
 Two centuries ago the * Plaindealer of Wycher- 
 ley was a popular play, its hero being sympathetic 
 to British audiences; and Manly is frankly brutal 
 in word and deed. The same desire to give pain 
 is visible in the long history of British literary 
 criticism, from Gosson s School of Abuse to 
 Pope s Dunciad and from the quarterly re 
 viewers of a century ago to the violent vulgarity 
 of the Saturday Review to-day. 
 
 In this, as in not a few other aspects, Doctor 
 Johnson is typical of the less pleasant qualities of 
 his race; he was a broad-shouldered brute, arro 
 gant and offensive and ever ready to trample on 
 anybody who was weaker than himself. It is 
 characteristic of him that he was proud of the 
 letter he wrote to his friend and benefactress, 
 Mrs. Thrale, on her second marriage, a letter 
 70 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 absolutely indefensible, ungrateful and ungentle- 
 manly, coarse and rough, and above all carefully 
 phrased to convey the utmost of insult to a woman 
 from whom he had received only kindness. Con 
 trast Johnson with Franklin, his urbane American 
 contemporary, who is quite as typically a man of 
 the eighteenth century. Or in the nineteenth cen 
 tury again contrast the scolding Carlyle with the 
 gentle Emerson. Carlyle is a burly bully, a 
 peasant with genius, malignantly envious of all 
 the rival authors of his time and ever ready to 
 pour out his scorn on his betters. Emerson is a 
 gentleman, low-voiced, courteous and kindly, and 
 yet stalwart in his sturdy manliness. 
 
 The French proverb tells us that every man 
 has the qualities of his faults and the faults of his 
 qualities; and what is true of the individual is no 
 less true of the race. In other words, the fault 
 is often only the excess of the quality; and it is 
 impossible to deny that there are certain com 
 pensating advantages to be found in this least 
 agreeable characteristic of the British. It seems 
 to be responsible in part for their steady insistence 
 on their rights and for their refusal to be overrid 
 den. Their devotion to liberty and their exces 
 sive individualism have made them far swifter 
 to denounce abuses than the more sympathetic 
 and more tolerant Americans. 
 
 The chronic protester is not a pleasant person- 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 ality; but he performs a most useful function; 
 he is the watch-dog of liberty, the price of which 
 is eternal vigilance. The kindliness and the 
 social feeling of the Americans tend to make them 
 shrink from protest against trifling abuses and 
 unimportant infringements of public rights. The 
 individuality of the British, on the other hand, 
 their bull-headed harshness, tend to make an act 
 of protest congenial to them. Before a petty 
 infraction of right the long-suffering Americans 
 are inclined to submit with a laugh, admitting 
 that the joke is on them, whereas the British fail 
 to see the joke and rise up in their wrath. They 
 refuse to pay an overcharge; and if they are com 
 pelled by circumstances, they appeal the case, 
 or they write to the Times. And when enough 
 letters have been written to the Times, public 
 opinion is aroused at last; and then the matter is 
 quickly settled. If the hotels of Europe are now 
 cleaner than they were half a century ago, with 
 larger towels and wash-basins, with better sani 
 tary conveniences, our thanks are due to two 
 generations of travelers from the British Isles 
 who were unceasing in complaint whenever they 
 failed to find what they wanted and when they 
 did find what they did not want. 
 
 So far we have seen that the Americans 
 differ from the British, first and foremost in that 
 we have ever been free from feudalism which 
 72 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 still keeps alive in the British Isles the caste 
 system and the pervading snobbishness that 
 necessarily accompanies it; and, second, that 
 our individualism is more restrained than theirs 
 by the social instinct. Perhaps this last difference 
 is due in part at least to the commingling here of 
 many other stocks than the Anglo-Saxon, even 
 if the Anglo-Saxon stock still supplies the social 
 framework. As Walt Whitman wrote on the 
 occasion of the three hundredth anniversary 
 of the founding of the city of Santa Fe older 
 than any of the towns first settled by the Eng 
 lish we have been inclined "tacitly to abandon 
 ourselves to the notion that our United States 
 have been fashioned from the British Isles only, 
 and essentially form a second England only; * 
 and the poet added that "many leading traits 
 of our future national personality, and some of the 
 best ones, will certainly prove to have originated 
 from other than British stock." It is not with 
 out significance that the most distinguisht of 
 American painters and the most prominent of 
 American sculptors are both of them of French 
 descent, La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, and that 
 perhaps the most popular of American compo 
 sers is of Portuguese descent, Sousa. 
 
 If we Americans were of a purely British stock, 
 we should not be what we are at least if we may 
 judge by the record of the Australians, who have 
 73 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 accomplisht nothing as yet in literature or in art 
 or in science. The Australians are now more in 
 number than we were when we separated our 
 selves from Great Britain; and yet they have 
 not produced a single man of eminence. Indeed, 
 it may be doubted whether one American in ten 
 can mention the name of a single native Aus 
 tralian or has ever read a single volume by a 
 native Australian author. The Australians seem 
 to afford an extreme example of the disadvantages 
 of inbreeding, whereas we Americans reveal the 
 advantages of a commingling of stocks, which 
 has quickened our sluggish British blood. 
 
 We have not only been swift to assimilate the 
 foreigner himself, we have also been receptive 
 to foreign ideas. In his Remarks on a National 
 Literature, published four score years ago, 
 Channing urged Americans to study French and 
 German to get out of narrowly British influence. 
 It is well to remember that the Transcendental 
 movement had its origin, not in Great Britain, 
 but in Germany, and also that the later Ameri 
 can novelists, especially Mr. Howells and Mr. 
 James, sought their models, not in Great Britain, 
 but in France or in Russia. More or less com 
 plete translations of Balzac, of Turgenef, and of 
 Tolstoi, were undertaken in the United States 
 long before a like effort was made in the British 
 Isles. American painters (even tho they may 
 74 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 sometimes settle in London to sell their pictures) 
 are likely to go to Paris to learn the technic of 
 their craft; and if architecture is to-day a living 
 art in the United States with a host of ardent 
 practitioners wrestling new problems as best 
 they can, one reason may be found in the train 
 ing and in the stimulus which returning students 
 have brought back from Paris. And as the 
 American goes to France for instruction in art, 
 so he goes to Germany for training in science. 
 It is not at Oxford or at Cambridge that the 
 graduates of our American colleges matriculate, 
 when they wish to pursue their studies further, 
 but at Berlin and at the other German univer 
 sities. If a number of American students are 
 now at Oxford on Rhodes scholarships this is 
 simply because they have been paid to go there; 
 and the result of their studying there is still highly 
 problematic. 
 
 Perhaps it is to be credited to the influence of 
 Paris and Berlin, altho it may be due from free 
 dom from caste and to relaxing of insularity, 
 but whatever the cause there is a wide differ 
 ence between the attitude of the American pub 
 lic toward art and science and the attitude of the 
 British public. Here is where Matthew Arnold s 
 mistake is most obvious and here is where the 
 gulf is widest between the American people and 
 the British middle class. We have defects of our 
 75 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 own, but they are not the special defects of the 
 British middle class. Of course, a Philistine is 
 a Philistine the world over; he sets up the gates 
 of Gath wherever he goes, and he worships Baal 
 no less in the new world than in the old. But 
 none the less is the American Philistine quite un 
 like the British Philistine whom Arnold detested 
 and denounced. The American Philistine may 
 not see the light any more clearly than his Brit 
 ish cousin, but he is willing enough to accept it 
 when it is revealed to him. He may be ignorant 
 but he is not hostile. Now, if we can believe 
 Arnold himself, the British Philistine is forever 
 sinning against light, shutting his eyes to it and 
 despising it. 
 
 As an evidence of this difference, take the con 
 sideration paid to education in Great Britain 
 and in the United States. Here the whole pub 
 lic is interested in education, and believes in it, 
 and is willing to be taxt for it. There the pub 
 lic seems to be profoundly uninterested, except 
 in so far as education intertwines itself with sec 
 tarian strife and becomes an issue in partisan 
 politics. The one note which recurs again and 
 again in the reports of the Mosely Educational 
 Commissioners is that of surprize at the esteem 
 in which education was held in America; and 
 in private conversation the members of that com 
 mission often declared that nothing of the sort 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 could be said about England. In Great Britain 
 there is not even now anything that can properly 
 be called an educational system; and practical 
 men seem to care little for thoroness of training. 
 A friend of mine in London told me a few 
 years ago that his son was to be an engineer, going 
 straight from Eton into the works of a firm of 
 world-wide reputation. I askt if the lad was 
 not to study at all in any technical school; and 
 the father answered that the managers of the 
 works preferred to take him untaught and break 
 him in themselves. This hostility of practical 
 men in Great Britain toward scientific prepara 
 tion is significant; it seems to imply either a 
 narrowness of outlook on the part of the managers 
 of the works, or else hidden deficiencies on the 
 part of the technological schools. Here in the 
 United States the entire graduating class of a 
 technological school is often engaged in advance 
 by a single company. The British seem to exalt 
 the practical far above the theoretical, and even 
 to feel a certain contempt for the latter. We 
 Americans strive to unite the two as best we can, 
 knowing by experience that the man of scientific 
 education can always sooner or later pick up for 
 himself the practice of the shop, whereas the 
 man with only a shop-training will be heavily 
 handicapt when he may later seek to attain to the 
 higher levels of his profession. We cannot re- 
 77 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 frain from wondering sometimes if the British 
 practicality and dislike of logic is not carried a 
 little too far and if they are not inclined to think 
 the acceptance of theory too high a price to pay 
 for efficiency. 
 
 A score of years ago Colonel Higginson sug 
 gested that the American had "an added drop 
 more of nervous fluid" than an Englishman; 
 and Matthew Arnold pickt out the saying as 
 an unfortunate instance of American boastful- 
 ness, whereupon Colonel Higginson promptly 
 retorted that it was not a boast at all, but a plain 
 statement of a fact, which might be either for 
 tunate or unfortunate, as the future should de 
 termine. It is easy to conceive of circumstances 
 in which the possession of " an added drop more of 
 nervous fluid" might be a serious disadvantage. 
 It is, of course, easier still to see that it is more 
 likely to be an advantage. But no one com 
 petent to express an opinion will contradict 
 Colonel Higginson s assertion and deny that the 
 American has "an added drop more of nerv 
 ous fluid" than the Englishman, whether this 
 is likely to prove a bane or a boon. That keen 
 student of social characteristics, Walter Bagehot, 
 would have insisted unhesitatingly that it was a 
 bane, for he always maintained that the success 
 ful working of the British constitution, with its 
 legal fictions and its hollow shams of all sorts, 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 was possible only because the British people as 
 a whole was slow and stolid. 
 
 To our possession of the added drop Colonel 
 Higginson ascribed our " specific levity," the 
 lightness of touch to be noted in our literature. 
 He pointed out that even in literary criticism the 
 British seemed to consider boxing as the only 
 manly art and to scorn the more adroit methods 
 of the fencer. "It is a curious fact," so he de 
 clared, "that as the best American manners in 
 cline to the French, and not the English model, 
 so the tendency of American literary style is to 
 the finer methods, quicker repartees, and more 
 delicate turns" of the Parisian masters of fence. 
 If this is admitted the cause is to be sought not 
 only in conscious acceptance of French standards 
 in these matters, but also in the American avoid 
 ance of British harshness, in the relaxing of in 
 sularity and in the readier response to the social 
 instinct. Here again the examples that recur to 
 the mind at once are Carlyle and Emerson, the 
 one growling and destructive, the other courteous 
 and stimulating. Perhaps this superior refine 
 ment, most unexpected in a country of pioneers, 
 is the result of the "added drop of nervous fluid"; 
 and perhaps, like that drop, it may be a possession 
 for which we shall have to pay sooner or later. 
 
 The "specific levity" which the American often 
 has, and which his British cousin is far less likely 
 79 
 
THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 to have, assumes various disguises. It masquer 
 ades as the " American joke," which the for 
 eigner fails to take. It underlies the American 
 sense-of-humor, which is so portentous and so 
 baffling to the foreigner. It is an element in 
 the good humor which accounts for the tolerance 
 and the sympathy that observant travelers from 
 Europe are swift to perceive. It sustains that 
 omnipresent optimism which is one of the recog 
 nized characteristics of the American and which 
 is almost wholly lacking in our kin across the 
 sea. It may even be accountable in some meas 
 ure for the friendliness of our social intercourse 
 and for our casual confidence in our fellow-man. 
 Altho undue introspection may be as unwhole 
 some for a nation as it is for an individual, yet it 
 is well that we should try to discover the reasons 
 for the opinions which foreigners hold of us. It 
 is well that we should take stock of ourselves 
 from time to time, casting up our accounts and 
 charging up to profit and loss on the balance- 
 sheet of the race. Of course, we must admit in 
 advance that any conclusion we may arrive at is 
 but temporary whether it concerns our neighbors 
 or ourselves. Professor William James has de 
 clared he is speaking of religion, but what he 
 says is as true in other fields of human interest 
 "that the safe thing is surely to recognize that 
 all the insights of creatures of a day like ourselves 
 80 
 
v/ 
 
 THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH 
 
 must be provisional. The wisest of critics is an 
 altering being, subject to the better insight of the 
 morrow, and right at any moment only up to 
 date and on the whole." 
 
 There is a double difficulty in comparing the 
 characteristics of two nationalities, due to the 
 fact that they are both of them in constant proc 
 ess of modification, a process more evident and 
 more rapid here in the United States, but still 
 obvious enough in Great Britain. Altho the 
 English-speaking race is mainly of Teutonic 
 origin, it has been subjected to all sorts of influ 
 ences in the long centuries before the American 
 Revolution and in the century and a third since 
 that fortunate event, until it is now no longer 
 easy for the two peoples that compose it always 
 to understand one another as it is so needful that 
 they should, for the best interests of both. Using 
 the same language, inheriting the same law, ruled 
 by the same political traditions, they are alike 
 and unlike; and perhaps the final word in regard 
 to their relation to each other was written many 
 years ago by that historian of the Winning of 
 the West, who is now the President of the United 
 States and who declared in his first volume that 
 "Americans belong to the English race only in 
 the sense in which Englishmen belong to the 
 German." 
 
 (1905-) 
 
 81 
 
"BLOOD IS THICKER THAN 
 WATER" 
 
" BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 ANY one who considers curiously the shift 
 ing international relations of the past hun 
 dred years is likely to find not a few interesting 
 facts. He will note that Austria, which was the 
 sole enemy of Italy thruout the most of the nine 
 teenth century, was the ally of Italy in the final 
 years of that period. He will remark that 
 Russia, attackt twice by France, once under 
 Napoleon I and again under Napoleon III, was 
 the sole ally of the Third Republic at the end of 
 the nineteenth century. He will observe that 
 the French and the English, foes for five hundred 
 years, fought side by side in the Crimean war, 
 and that thereafter they speedily resumed their 
 former attitude of mutual suspicion. And finally 
 he will have to record that the United States, hav 
 ing had only three European wars in its century 
 and a quarter of independent existence, seemed 
 to have no friend among the nations of the world 
 when it entered upon the third of these wars, that 
 against Spain, except Great Britain against which it 
 had waged the two others, and with which it had 
 been again on the very verge of war less than forty 
 years earlier. Perhaps in the future no event 
 85 
 
U BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 that happened at the end of the nineteenth cen 
 tury will seem more significant than the growth 
 of friendly feeling between the two peoples who 
 speak the English language and who were sepa 
 rated violently in the eighteenth century. 
 
 Never before in the history of the world has 
 the spectacle been seen of two great nations 
 possessing the same language and inheriting the 
 same political traditions. Never before has a 
 colony, having achieved its independence, over 
 taken and surpast the mother-country, in size 
 and in resources, in population and in power. 
 Colonies have been able to set up for themselves, 
 as a rule, only when the parent-nation was falling 
 into its final weakness. But in the present case, 
 the expansion of the British Empire, or at least 
 a large part of this, has taken place since the 
 United States declared their independence, and 
 while they were also engaged in their own expan 
 sion. The political traditions of the English- 
 speaking race have been transplanted in America 
 without having been uprooted in the British 
 Isles; and the stock has now two branches, both 
 of them flourishing, one British and the other 
 American. It was an English historian, the late 
 John Richard Green, who declared more than 
 a score of years ago that the future history of 
 the English-speaking race was thereafter to be 
 unrolled rather on the shores of the Hudson and 
 86 
 
of the mighty Mississippi than by the banks of 
 the Tweed and of the tiny Thames. 
 
 Nothing in the extraordinary nineteenth cen 
 tury is more extraordinary than the increase in 
 the number of those who speak English, who are 
 ruled by English law, and who cherish English 
 political ideals. Probably it is not too much to 
 say that the history of the twentieth century will 
 be influenced more by the peoples who speak 
 English than by the peoples who speak any other 
 tongue. The course of events in the hundred 
 years that lie before us will depend, in large 
 measure, upon the British and the Americans, 
 and more especially upon the greater or less 
 cordiality which shall exist between the two 
 nations. If Great Britain and the United States 
 choose to act together they can work their will, 
 for there is not likely to be built up any combina 
 tion of nations able to withstand them. If they 
 quarrel with each other and neutralize their com 
 bined weight, then it will not be so difficult for 
 the other peoples to have their own way. Any 
 attempt is interesting, therefore, to consider con 
 scientiously the feelings of the British toward 
 the Americans and of the Americans toward the 
 British. 
 
 There is no need now to dwell at length on the 
 points of likeness and of unlikeness discoverable 
 between the British and the Americans, for these 
 
we all know more or less accurately. But it 
 may be well to note that the British do not under 
 stand these differences as clearly as we do. They 
 are in the habit of saying that they do not look 
 upon us Americans as foreigners; and their in 
 tent is obviously friendly, even tho the result may 
 be dangerous. For if they do not consider us 
 foreigners, how do they consider us? As kin 
 across the sea? in other words as moved by 
 exactly the same motives and feelings as they 
 are? Now, altho we Americans are far more 
 closely related to the British than we are to the 
 people of any other nationality, we are not at all 
 British in our motives and our feelings. We are 
 very far from being British; and it is the begin 
 ning of wisdom for the British themselves to 
 understand this fundamental fact, once for all. 
 They are so proud of being British that they do 
 not perceive how any other people can fail to 
 regret not being British; and out of kindness of 
 heart they are willing to overlook our casual di 
 vergencies from British standards; they are 
 ready to welcome us into the fold, from which we 
 broke out a century and a quarter ago. They 
 do not see that we base our pride on being Ameri 
 can, that is to say on being not British; and they 
 need to get it into their heads that we have not 
 the slightest desire to be British. Herein we 
 differ sharply from the Canadians and from 
 88 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 the other Colonials, who persist in calling Great 
 Britain "home" even tho they may never have 
 set foot on the British Isles. 
 
 National pride is ever a source of national 
 strength, however absurd it may seem to those 
 who do not belong to that particular nation; 
 and even national boastfulness may have some 
 hidden advantage of its own. As Mr. Howells 
 has pointed out, all the nations of the earth are 
 guilty of the same self-praise: "They all take 
 credit to themselves nationally for virtues which 
 belong rather sparingly to the whole of humanity; 
 they speak of English fairness, and German 
 honesty, and American independence, and they 
 really make themselves believe that other peo 
 ples are destitute of the qualities which they 
 severally arrogate to themselves. In the mean 
 time the other nations affect to smile at a vanity 
 which they could not imaginably indulge; but 
 in fact they are only waiting their turn in the 
 international scalp-dance to celebrate themselves 
 with the same savage sincerity." 
 
 Until quite recently our attitude toward them, 
 and their attitude toward us, was not unlike that 
 of the Scotch engineer of the ocean-steamer 
 toward the captain, when he said, "He s ma 
 friend, but I dinna like him!" Even now 
 ,orobably nothing would take the average Eng 
 lishman more by surprize than to discover the 
 
tolerant contempt with which he is regarded by 
 the average American, as an old fogy, or in our 
 own expressive phrase as a "back number." 
 Probably also the average American would be 
 equally astonisht if he should discover that the 
 average Englishman is likely to consider him a 
 little too sharp in business matters, too ready to 
 indulge in what the British would call "Yankee 
 tricks." But it is wholesome for each of them 
 to perceive clearly the image of himself that is 
 reflected in the eyes of the other. The ties of 
 blood which bind the British and the Americans 
 are disadvantageous in so far as they may lend 
 to any disagreement the aspect of a family quarrel, 
 bitterer always than any dispute between those 
 who are wholly unrelated to each other. As George 
 Eliot once suggested, only those near and dear to 
 us know how to inflict the blow that hurts most. 
 It is scarcely a paradox to say that the possession 
 of a common language has often been an obstacle 
 to a better feeling between Great Britain and 
 the United States, since it has insured a wider 
 and a swifter diffusion of journalistic recrimina 
 tion. It is not difficult for newspapers on either 
 side of the Atlantic to throw stones; but one 
 nation or the other may be called upon suddenly 
 to pay for the broken windows. And not merely 
 are the newspapers at fault, but also the men 
 of letters, who cross the Atlantic and set down 
 90 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 the record of the things they have seen. What 
 wandering Germans or French might write 
 mattered little to us, but we were hurt by the 
 unfriendly tone of British travelers, like Mrs. 
 Trollope and Captain Marryat. We cared noth 
 ing about the adverse report of Maurice Sand, 
 for example, while we resented the ungrateful 
 caricaturing of Charles Dickens. 
 
 It may be admitted that we Americans were a 
 little too thin-skinned half a century ago. But 
 our British cousins were quite as touchy; they 
 winced when Emerson etched their portraits in 
 his austere study of English Traits ; and they 
 cried out in great pain at certain innocent re 
 marks of the gentle Hawthorne, altho the very 
 title of his book on England Our Old Home 
 was proof of the friendliness of his attitude. 
 Their protests drew from Hawthorne a letter to 
 his publisher in which he asserted that "the 
 monstrosity of their self-conceit is such that any 
 thing short of unlimited admiration impresses 
 them as malicious caricature." Of course, the 
 British are not peculiar in this self-conceit; we 
 Americans have our full share also; in their turn 
 the French and the Germans are as richly en 
 dowed with it; and now even the Japanese seem 
 likely to acquire it. Quite possibly, indeed, a 
 lack of this self-conceit might be evidence of 
 some weakness in the fiber of the nation. 
 
 9 1 
 
With every desire to hold the scales even, it is 
 impossible not to feel that British travelers in 
 the United States have been far more blameworthy 
 than American travelers in Great Britain. There 
 was a frank vulgarity in the books of Dickens, 
 of Mrs. Trollope and of Captain Marryat, which 
 finds no echo in the books of Irving, of Emerson and 
 of Hawthorne. Consider how cordial is the ap 
 preciation of England in Bracebridge Hall ; and 
 then recall the fact that in the Sketch-Book, 
 publisht more than four score years ago, the gra 
 cious Irving was moved to utter a warning that 
 the offensive tone of British writers toward 
 America was certain to work harm, in that it 
 would tend to destroy the friendly feeling of the 
 United States toward Great Britain, a friendli 
 ness of which the mother-country would as 
 suredly feel the need in the future. 
 
 The warning was not heeded; and we can 
 find the same contemptuous arrogance in several 
 generations of British authors. It is obtruded 
 in Sydney Smith s famous passage assuring us 
 that nobody in Europe knew any American 
 author, or painter or inventor. It is perceptible 
 in Matthew Arnold s unfortunate remark that 
 we Americans were reading the works of "a 
 native author named Roe" altho at that very 
 moment the British were reading the works of a 
 native author named Haggard, and the French 
 92 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 were reading the works of a native author named 
 Ohnet. Difficult, indeed, is it for an English 
 man not to assume the meridian of Greenwich 
 as the basis of all measurements, literary no less 
 than geographic. Courteous as Matthew Arnold 
 was by nature, there are not a few passages in his 
 several papers on America in which we are re 
 minded of Thackeray s description of "that ex 
 ceedingly impertinent and amusing demi-nod of 
 recognition which is practised in England only, 
 and only to perfection by university men, and 
 which seems to say, Confound you, what do 
 you do here? " 
 
 This contemptuous arrogance of Great Britain 
 toward the United States was sustained by a 
 comprehensive ignorance. In the preface to the 
 Pathfinder Cooper records that when a man- 
 of-war was to be built on Lake Ontario a hun 
 dred years ago, the British sent out frames and 
 blocks, as tho there was no timber in Canada; 
 and they provided also water-casks and all the 
 requisite apparatus for distilling salt-water. And 
 half a century later the wife of Hamilton Fish 
 at dinner in London was asked by the wife of a 
 British cabinet minister, what were the Great 
 Lakes of America? "Of course, I know Wen- 
 ham Lake," she added; "but what are the 
 others?" Now, Wenham Lake is a pond some 
 where in New England, the ice from which used 
 93 
 
to be exported to England. Ignorance as deep- 
 rooted as this is explicable only by a total lack 
 of interest; and this ignorance the many volumes 
 put forth by three generations of British trav 
 elers did little or nothing to clear away. Not 
 until Mr. Bryce prepared his searching study 
 of the American commonwealth was there pub- 
 lisht any book of British authorship which could 
 help the writer s fellow-subjects to understand 
 the citizens of the republic across the water. 
 
 While there was in Great Britain a contemp 
 tuous arrogance toward America sustained by an 
 uninterested ignorance, there was in the United 
 States, a state of feeling not so easy to define, 
 since its elements were almost contradictory. 
 There was a pride in the mother-country and a 
 deference for the island-home of the race. There 
 was a disappointment, constantly renewed, at 
 the British failure to appreciate us, to encourage 
 our youthful efforts, to understand us. There 
 was also an inherited hostility toward the foe we 
 had twice fought; and there was even a certain 
 rancor toward the government which had im 
 prest thousands of our seamen, which had wan 
 tonly burnt the Capitol at Washington, and 
 which had wickedly let loose the redskins to 
 scalp women and children along our borders. 
 
 In the schoolbooks of history placed in the 
 hands of British boys, the two wars with the 
 94 
 
United States are dismissed briefly, whereas 
 the full succession of events is recorded at length 
 in the schoolbooks placed in the hands of Ameri 
 can boys. For a century every generation here 
 grew up in the knowledge that the only European 
 foe we had ever fought was Great Britain; and 
 however impartially and dispassionately the facts 
 might be presented, they spoke for themselves, 
 and they did not speak in favor of the British. 
 How much weight is to be attached to this tra 
 dition of hostility handed down from sire to son, 
 it is difficult to declare; but there is no denying 
 that it had a weight of its own. An inherited 
 unfriendliness like this would be softened by 
 time; and it would be softened also by the in 
 fluence of English literature, which was ever at 
 work, bringing home to us the kinship of the 
 two peoples, if this benign influence had not been 
 counteracted to some extent by the offensive 
 attitude taken by many contemporary British 
 authors, from Sydney Smith to Thomas Carlyle. 
 In fairness to the British, it must needs be 
 noted that they could find not a little justification 
 for their disparaging opinions in the bombastic 
 boastfulness of many of our politicians and of 
 many of our newspapers. Tall talk about mani 
 fest destiny was not fitted to win friends for us 
 abroad, while at home it was certain to encourage 
 foolish visions of conquest. As one who was a 
 95 
 
schoolboy when the Civil War began, I can 
 testify that we were wont to look at the map of 
 North America with an unthinking wonder why 
 the United States had not already gone down 
 and conquered Mexico and gone up and captured 
 Canada and the rest of British America. It was 
 one of the indirect benefits of the Civil War, 
 that our schoolboys are to-day free from these 
 foolish visions. It was one of the accompanying 
 evils of the Civil War that the unexpected atti 
 tude of Great Britain during the long years of that 
 strenuous combat revived and intensified the hos 
 tility of the American people toward the British. 
 Only those who are now old enough to recall 
 the outbreak of that bitter struggle, can know 
 how sharp was our disappointment here at the con 
 duct of our kin across the sea. There was com 
 mercial rivalry, no doubt, and there was inter 
 national jealousy, of course; but, after all, and 
 despite what we might say ourselves, slavery was 
 at the core of the conflict; and we felt justified 
 in hoping for the sympathy of the British in our 
 grapple with that mighty evil. Instead of sym 
 pathy we were greeted with insult. The Times 
 and the Saturday Review and Punch were rivals 
 in virulent abuse. In all the House of Commons 
 there were only four friends of the Union, as I 
 was told, a quarter of a century ago in London, by 
 one of the four, the late Lord Houghton. Our 
 
" BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 commerce was swept from the sea by ships built 
 in Great Britain, armed in Great Britain and 
 manned mainly by British subjects. And less 
 than a year before the battle of Gettysburg, 
 Gladstone, then a member of the cabinet, de 
 clared in a speech at Newcastle that the leaders 
 of the South had "made an army; they are 
 making, it appears, a navy; and they have made 
 what is more than either, they have made a 
 nation." 
 
 No part of the function of a true poet is more 
 important than his power to voice the feeling of 
 the people in moments of intense national emo 
 tion; and no poet has ever more satisfactorily 
 accomplisht this much of his duty than Lowell 
 in the second series of the Biglow Papers. It 
 was in the first winter of the war, not long after 
 the taking of the Trent and the giving up of 
 Mason and Slidell, that Lowell sent forth the 
 stinging stanzas of Jonathan to John. 
 
 We know we ve got a cause, John, 
 
 Thet s honest, just, an true; 
 We thought t would win applause, John, 
 
 Ef nowheres else, from you. 
 Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess 
 
 His love of right," sez he, 
 "Hangs by a rotten fiber o cotton: 
 
 There s natur in J. B., 
 Ez wal z in you an me!" 
 
 97 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 Shall it be love, or hate, John ? 
 
 It s you thet s to decide; 
 Ain t your bonds held by Fate, John, 
 
 Like all the world s beside? 
 Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess 
 
 Wise men forgive," sez he, 
 "But not forgit; an some time yit 
 
 Thet truth may strike J. B., 
 Ez wal ez you an me!" 
 
 The firm wisdom of Lincoln settled the Trent 
 affair; and the statesmanlike sagacity of a later 
 British cabinet made possible a settlement of the 
 Alabama claims; but time alone could efface in 
 America the memory of ill-will, swiftly revived 
 by any mention of the name of either of these 
 British ships. The payment of the Alabama 
 award was evidence of British repentance; and 
 after a while the author of the Biglow Papers 
 went to London as American Minister to do 
 what he could to foster a friendly feeling. At 
 last, more than thirty years after the seizure of 
 the Trent, came the Venezuela message; and 
 then it was most unexpectedly made evident that 
 the British attitude toward America had changed 
 completely. The language of the American 
 government was not only lacking in diplomatic 
 courtesy, it was needlessly blunt. Coming from 
 any European country, it would have been met 
 with prompt defiance. Coming from the United 
 States, the British government disregarded the 
 98 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 discourtesy and made friendly advances. For 
 the first time in the long history of the interna 
 tional relations of Great Britain and the United 
 States, the British recognized the tie of blood 
 between the two peoples. 
 
 Conscious of their own friendliness, the Brit 
 ish were rudely shockt by the obvious unfriendli 
 ness of the Americans, as revealed by the una 
 nimity with which Congress voted the money 
 Cleveland had askt for. This shock was prob 
 ably useful, in so far as it forced the British to 
 consider the various causes of the antagonistic 
 feeling obviously existing in the United States. 
 To discover that they were not greatly liked over 
 here was a disagreeable surprize; and it was 
 wholesome that they should be made to ask 
 themselves whether there was any reason why 
 they should be liked by us, or, indeed, by any 
 other country. All peoples are prone to let their 
 intense national pride veil from them the fact 
 that there is rarely any cause why one nation 
 should really like another nation. Every nation 
 is so acutely aware of its own fine qualities that 
 it fails to appeciate the fact that other peoples 
 are far swifter to see its defects. 
 
 The same chastening experience befell us, 
 half-a-dozen years later, when we undertook to 
 free Cuba from the misgovernment of the Span 
 ish. Firmly convinced of the disinterestedness 
 99 
 
of our intentions, we were taken aback to dis 
 cover that every nation of continental Europe 
 discredited our motives, distrusted us, and dis 
 liked us. In our isolation we found only one 
 friend; and that was our one former enemy. 
 Just how much actual help we got from Great 
 Britain in the course of the Spanish war may 
 not be known for the generation or two after 
 which diplomatic secrets become public property; 
 but we may gage the importance of this help 
 by recalling the shrill protests evoked from our 
 adversary and from the many friends of our ad 
 versary. This aid and comfort was the more 
 significant in that it came from the head rather 
 than from the heart, since Lord Salisbury was 
 devoid of all sentimental sympathy for us or for 
 our ways. Even if he was unexpugnably an 
 aristocrat, he was also a statesman with an eye 
 to the future; and he saw no profit in siding with 
 a dying nation. He found that the time had 
 come to make a friend of the lusty young people 
 on the far side of the Western Ocean. 
 
 It is a curious characteristic of human nature 
 that we are inclined to like those whom we have 
 helpt, as we are also inclined to dislike those 
 whom we have injured. So long as the British 
 were injuring us, as they did when they were im 
 pressing pur seamen and when they were allow 
 ing Alabamas to escape from their ports, they 
 100 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER " 
 
 could not fail to dislike us. But no sooner had 
 they lent us their aid than their feelings changed 
 about, and they began to like us, and to find good 
 reason for their liking. They began to claim us 
 as kin across the sea; and the saying that "blood 
 is thicker than water," which had fallen from the 
 mouth of an American sailor long ago as he went 
 to the aid of a British ship, found a frequent 
 echo on their lips. 
 
 Then came their own hour of trial when the 
 war with the Boers revealed their unexpected 
 weakness, and they lookt to us confidently for 
 a return of the sympathy which they had shown 
 during the Cuban struggle. They were disap 
 pointed that the manifestations of this sympathy 
 were not more abundant; and they would have 
 been greatly grieved had they suspected how 
 strongly public opinion in the United States held 
 their case to be contaminated by the private greed 
 of a gang of unscrupulous speculators. That 
 they did not suspect this was evident to all Ameri 
 cans who happened to be in England at the time, 
 and more especially to those who chanced to hear 
 one verse of a topical song in a London theater, 
 in which the singer confidently asserted that if 
 John Bull found any long difficulty in dealing 
 with the Boers, Yankee Doodle would gladly 
 come over and lend him a helping hand. Added 
 evidence of their fraternal cordiality could be 
 
 101 
 
U BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 found also in the fact that at one of the music- 
 halls the men in khaki, whose evolutions formed 
 part of a patriotic spectacle, paraded under two 
 flags, the union-jack and the stars-and-stripes. 
 
 Altho there is one street in New York so 
 thickly crowded with the agencies of British in 
 surance companies that it has been nicknamed 
 the English Channel," nevertheless the flag of 
 the Empire is seldom seen in the United States, 
 whereas the flag of the Union is frequently flung 
 to the breeze in Great Britain. Every visitor 
 to London of late years must have remarkt the 
 frequency of the houses in Regent Street flying 
 the star-spangled banner. Some of these flags 
 float over British shops seeking the trade of 
 American travelers; and some of them are signs 
 of the "American invasion" and serve to draw 
 attention to the fact that the wares vended beneath 
 them are made on this side of the Atlantic. There 
 is scarcely a block in all the length of Regent 
 Street in which there is not at least one shop for 
 the sale of American goods, silverware and shoes, 
 typewriters and sewing-machines, dress-patterns 
 and phonographs. 
 
 Perhaps it was this American invasion, per 
 haps it was the internal weakness disclosed by 
 the stress of the Boer war, perhaps there were 
 other reasons of all sorts, but whatever the cause, 
 there was then to be observed a breach in the 
 102 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 stolid and imperturbable self-sufficiency of the 
 British, and an unforeseen and unprecedented 
 willingness to wonder whether there were not 
 leaks in the ship of state and rifts in the social 
 organism. The British started in to take stock 
 of themselves, doubting and anxious. They were 
 eager to prove to themselves and to others that 
 they had not really fallen behind in the march of 
 progress. It was at this time that an old friend 
 of mine in London, a tory of the strictest sect, 
 insisted on showing me over an electric-light 
 plant in which he had an interest. He lookt at 
 me curiously when he said, "I don t believe you 
 have anything better than that in the States?" 
 And I was too ignorant of such things to answer 
 him; but I felt sure that ten years earlier it would 
 not have entered his head to suggest the possi 
 bility that anything British could be inferior to 
 anything American. 
 
 The founding of the Rhodes scholarships 
 revealed a survival of the belated belief that Ox 
 ford alone possesses the secret of learning, but the 
 sending of the Moseley Commission to this coun 
 try was the result of the new British doubt 
 whether all was for the best in their educational 
 condition. Nothing could be more agreeable 
 to an American than the tone of the report of 
 that Commission, for it was the proper tone of 
 one strong man speaking of another strong man, 
 103 
 
whom he respects and from whom he may fairly 
 hope to learn something of profit to himself. 
 
 The only certain basis for cordiality is respect 
 and understanding; and here we Americans are 
 more fortunate than our British cousins. How 
 ever much we may at times misjudge them, at 
 least we know them far better than they know us. 
 We know them better, because we have always 
 been in the habit of reading their books, and 
 they have not even yet acquired the habit of 
 reading ours. It may be that they are not greatly 
 to be censured for this, since it is comparatively 
 recently that we have begun to write many 
 books which were worth while for a foreigner to 
 read. But if it was not their fault, it is at least 
 their misfortune, that they do not know us thru 
 our authors as we know them thru theirs. It 
 is one of the prime functions of fiction to explain 
 the nations of the world to one another; and a 
 countless host of uninspired novelists have set 
 before us clearly every British characteristic, re 
 corded with serene honesty, so that we Americans 
 have only ourselves to blame if we fail to profit 
 by the opportunity to see the British as they see 
 themselves. 
 
 Our own life has not yet been set forth with 
 
 the same abundance, altho of late a beginning 
 
 has been made. From lack of interest in us or 
 
 because, naturally enough, they preferred to 
 
 104 
 
read about themselves, the British have shown 
 as yet no great relish for the more truthful tales 
 in which the every-day life of the American people 
 is faithfully mirrored. Their taste has been taken 
 rather by the more highly colored stories which 
 depict the humorous eccentricities of frontier- 
 life and by the more exciting romances which deal 
 emotionally with the exceptionally violent phases 
 of our civilization. In the years that are coming 
 they may learn to appreciate the more delicate 
 portrayal of the commonplaces of existence over 
 here the commonplaces which reveal the aver 
 age man as he is naturally and normally. And 
 it is this average man, natural and normal, whom 
 it behooves the foreigner to get acquainted with, 
 if he wishes to be in a position to understand 
 us. 
 
 There are signs that the British are slowly 
 enlarging their acquaintance with contemporary 
 American fiction, and that they are opening their 
 eyes to other aspects of American literature, 
 altho the old attitude of lordly condescension 
 and of complacent ignorance is still to be observed 
 only too often in the pages of their literary reviews. 
 Certainly they were hearty enough in their in 
 stant appreciation of the lasting value of Captain 
 Mahan s analysis of the Influence of Sea-Power ; 
 and they recognized promptly the significance of 
 the fact that this explanation of the source of 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 British strength was due to the acuteness of an 
 American. The old insular self-sufficiency is 
 yielding to a growing consciousness of the worth 
 of American historical investigators. It was a 
 departure from their former practice when an 
 American scholar was asked to discuss the In 
 quisition in one of the volumes of the Cambridge 
 History; but it was an even franker acknowledg 
 ment of the solidarity of scholarship when an 
 American was invited to prepare one of a British 
 series of twelve volumes narrating the history of 
 England itself, and when another American was 
 requested to contribute the chapters on the War 
 of 1812 for a composite History of the British 
 Navy. 
 
 To record these instances of appreciation is 
 to make clear that the British have at last aban 
 doned the attitude of intolerant isolation, which 
 once upon a time permitted them to reprint 
 Everett s translation of Buttmann s Greek Gram 
 mar with a careful omission of the "Mass." 
 which followed "Cambridge" at the end of the 
 American translator s preface. It is true, how 
 ever, that it is not yet twenty years since a New 
 York man of letters, who was askt by a leading 
 London publisher to suggest American books 
 which it would be profitable to reprint in London, 
 called attention to Professor Lounsbury s His 
 tory of the English Language, a work which 
 106 
 
" BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 combines solid scholarship and vigorous com 
 mon sense; and the London publisher himself 
 was delighted with the book, but his literary 
 advisers at home dissuaded him from importing 
 it, on the ground that the British public would 
 not accept an American history of the English 
 language. That these literary advisers then mis 
 judged the British public, or that the British pub 
 lic has now relaxt its prejudices, would seem to 
 be shown by the wide sale of an American diction 
 ary of the English language recently distributed 
 in Great Britain by the aid of the London 
 Times. 
 
 Not only do the British fail to profit by the 
 opportunity of understanding us, which lies 
 ready to their hands in the American branch of 
 English literature, but they also fail to perceive 
 the real facts of our political condition. And 
 here the fault is not theirs, but ours. We are al 
 together too fond of the " literature of exposure," 
 as it has been aptly termed. There is a curious 
 contradiction in the American character which 
 permits us to be unfailingly optimistic, altho at 
 the same time we delight in painting ourselves 
 a more uniform black than would be becoming 
 even to a nation of devils. Of course, we ourselves 
 discount the startling revelations of this literature 
 of exposure; but we have no right to be surprized 
 or aggrieved that foreigners are inclined to ac- 
 107 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 cept it at its face value. We know that our po 
 litical institutions do not work badly on the whole, 
 and that the only serious breakdown has been in 
 the government of our cities. But we are wont 
 to talk against our politicians as tho they were 
 all alike; and it is no wonder that transatlantic 
 critics fail to find any good in any part of our 
 government. Herein our practice is diametric 
 ally opposed to that of the British, who are prone 
 to minimize their scandals and prompt to hush 
 them up. Altho this may deceive them into 
 thinking themselves better than other peoples, 
 it tends to deceive others also. 
 
 In this respect, more especially, do we owe an 
 inestimable debt to Mr. Bryce, who has provided 
 the British with a clear analysis of our political 
 machinery. The more respectful manner in 
 which the British now discuss political move 
 ments in the United States is probably due in 
 great part to the information placed at their com 
 mand by Mr. Bryce, altho it may be ascribed also 
 in some measure to the discovery, made by the 
 Tories and by the Liberal-Unionists at the time 
 when Gladstone brought in his Home-Rule Bill, 
 that the written constitution of the United 
 States is really more conservative and less liable 
 to sudden and violent change than the unwritten 
 constitution of the United Kingdom. It may be 
 due possibly also to a growing perception,- which 
 108 
 
" BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 we find Matthew Arnold attaining after he had 
 lived among us for a while, that the institutions 
 of the American people really fit them, whereas 
 the institutions of the British people are many of 
 them outworn survivals now no longer adjusted 
 to existing conditions. 
 
 With increasing friendliness has come increas 
 ing interest; and with increasing interest will 
 come increasing knowledge. Friendliness, in 
 terest, knowledge, these are the three strands 
 out of which the bonds of a more perfect under 
 standing must be twisted. The interest of each 
 people in the other is now fairly equal, but knowl 
 edge is more abundant in the United States than 
 in Great Britain, and friendliness is more evident 
 in Great Britain than in the United States. Good 
 feeling will grow here in America, no doubt, now 
 that the temper of our kin across the sea has be 
 come more cordial. We shall recognize the com 
 forting fact that the attitude of the British has 
 changed for the better and once for all. Per 
 haps the day will not long be delayed when they 
 will recognize the fact that the historian of the 
 English people was right when he declared a 
 score of years ago that the headship of the peoples 
 who have the English language as their common 
 possession is no longer with the inhabitants of 
 the island where the stock developt its speech 
 and affirmed its character, but has past now to 
 109 
 
"BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER" 
 
 the newer and larger land which cherishes kin 
 dred ideals, and which already possesses a popu 
 lation outnumbering that of the mother-country 
 two to one. 
 
 (1905.) 
 
 no 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD- 
 EAGLE 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 WHEN Joseph Rodman Drake wrote his 
 impassioned lyric on the American Flag 
 he ended it with this resonant outburst: 
 
 And fixt as yonder orb divine, 
 
 That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, 
 
 Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine, 
 The guard and glory of the world. 
 
 But his friend, Fitz-Greene Halleck, proposed 
 instead four lines of his own authorship, which 
 the younger poet accepted in place of his original 
 draft: 
 
 Forever float that standard sheet! 
 
 Where breathes the foe but falls before us? 
 With Freedom s soil beneath our feet, 
 
 And Freedom s banner streaming o er us? 
 
 Drake s modesty was unfortunate; his own 
 quatrain is far finer than his friend s, with its 
 magniloquent mendacity. The poem was written 
 in 1819, only six years after the British had burnt 
 the Capitol at Washington. With the disgraceful 
 routs not infrequent in the wretched war of 1812 
 "3 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 yet fresh in the memory of men, there was crass 
 stupidity in the sonorous inquiry : 
 
 "Where breathes the foe but falls before us?" 
 
 Perhaps the explanation for Halleck s forced 
 boastfulness may be found in the fact that his 
 Americanism was too recent not to be perfervid, 
 since his father is said to have been a tory con 
 tractor during the Revolution. Possibly, how 
 ever, this vainglory was not personal to the poet 
 but characteristic of the American people at that 
 period. Students of our history are surprized 
 at the extraordinary outflowering of national 
 conceit, which revealed itself all over the United 
 States in the first third of the nineteenth century 
 a conceit almost inconceivable to-day, since it 
 seemed to be based not on actual accomplish 
 ment, but almost altogether on a magnificent be 
 lief in the future. This conceit and this boast- 
 fulness were not without curious inconsistencies; 
 for one, the celebration of the battle of Bunker 
 Hill as tho it had been an actual triumph of our 
 arms; and for another, the adoption of a national 
 lyric, which commemorated a trying episode of 
 an invasion of our soil. In those remote days 
 of the republic when increasing responsibility 
 had not sobered its youthful self-assertion, tall 
 talk was abundant. Often and boldly did the 
 eagle soar into the blue empyrean, screaming 
 114 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 shrilly as it rose on high. These ancestors of 
 ours, four score years ago, may have quoted 
 with delight Scott s inquiry: 
 
 Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 This is my own, my native land? 
 
 But they failed to put the proper emphasis on 
 "to himself hath said." They were not speaking 
 to themselves; they were talking out loud; and 
 they wanted to let the whole world know that they 
 were citizens of no mean city. 
 
 If we consider it a little more carefully, we 
 may find that this attitude was not due solely to 
 exuberance of youthful brag; it was not mere 
 vanity and vexation of spirit, signifying nothing. 
 It may seem characteristic of these youthful 
 states in those early days, but it is not without 
 analogs among other peoples and at other periods. 
 It has a certain similarity to Hugo s high-flown 
 hymns of praise to Paris, as the city of eternal 
 illumination and as the seething brain of all 
 Europe. However inferior in expression, it is 
 not without its likeness to Shakspere s superb 
 eulogy of his own island: 
 
 This royal throne of kings, this scepterd isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise. 
 This fortress built by nature for herself 
 
 "5 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 Against infection and the hand of war, 
 This happy breed of men, this little world, 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea. 
 
 It might even be likened to that long pean to 
 the glory of Rome, which reechoes from page to 
 page in Livy s history of the city by the Tiber. 
 And it has its points of similarity to the praise of 
 Italy in Vergil s Georgics, which Ronsard imi 
 tated with freedom in his Hymn to France. 
 Our self-satisfaction may have been more flagrant 
 and more flamboyant; it may even have been 
 less obviously justified; but it did not differ in 
 kind from that which we can find at one time or 
 another in men of every other race. 
 
 This habit of self-assertive boastfulness is 
 both primitive and puerile. Primitive it is be 
 yond all question, and we find it flourishing in 
 the remotest past. Primeval humanity was wont 
 to vaunt its own daring feats unhesitatingly and 
 unceasingly. The truly bold man was a brag 
 gart, even if the coward was also a boaster. The 
 stalwart warriors of the Norse legends were 
 abundant and blatant in laudation of their own 
 exploits. The Homeric heroes vied with one 
 another in self-praise, just as the Pawnee, in 
 Cooper s story, tied to the stake, insulted his foes 
 with the list of the many Sioux whose scalps he 
 had taken. In the later middle ages the feudal 
 chiefs were only a little less ready to bedeck them- 
 116 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 selves with laurel; and they listened gladly to 
 the hireling minstrel whose copious chant re 
 counted their mighty deeds. Puerile this habit 
 is also, or at least boyish. The youth of our own 
 time indulge in it, even when they are attaining 
 almost the full stature of a man. Consider the 
 taunting lyrics which hurtle to and fro across 
 the football field, the partisans of each college 
 rhythmically asserting its own certainty of vic 
 tory, even when the sturdy young players 
 themselves may feel that they are but a forlorn 
 hope. Bring back to mind the rattling stanzas 
 in which the young graduate promises that his 
 future son shall follow in his own footsteps and 
 aid in vanquishing the eight or the nine or the 
 eleven of the rival institution of learning, "as 
 his daddy used to do." 
 
 Yet if this habit of self-laudation has endured 
 thru the ages, we may rest assured that there is 
 a good reason for it, and that it has a utility of 
 its own. It must serve a purpose of some sort, 
 or it would have died out long ago. And this 
 utility suggests itself, when we note that, nowa 
 days at least, the boastfulness is no longer strictly 
 personal. It is mainly collective; it is to be as 
 cribed not to the individual, but to the group of 
 which the individual is a member. If we ex 
 amine these undergraduate lyrics we discover 
 at once that the college youths are not really 
 117 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 praising themselves; they are only vociferating 
 their loyalty to the institution they love. Altho 
 they brag bravely enough when they are assembled 
 together, they would be ashamed, one and all, 
 to make any exaggerated claim each for himself 
 as a separate person. Apparently the habit of 
 boastfulness is a survival of an early clan-instinct, 
 probably wholesome once upon a time, and possi 
 bly even necessary to nerve every member of the 
 tribe to conflict and to encourage him to make 
 the utmost effort for the martial success on which 
 the existence of the group depended. Brag was 
 a real stimulus of loyalty and devotion and self- 
 sacrifice. It supplied the needful excitement of 
 patriotic ecstasy. Diodorus tells us that when the 
 Gauls accept battle "they sing the feats of their 
 ancestors and celebrate their own valor," seeking 
 to insult and humiliate their opponent and to 
 " diminish the courage of his heart by their words." 
 To-day we observe it as the survival of an in 
 stinct, which aided self-preservation and which 
 as first personal has now become communal. Ad 
 vancing civilization has made modesty about his 
 own accomplishments the distinguishing mark 
 of a gentleman; but it has not yet succeeded in 
 getting this principle accepted by the group as it 
 has been accepted by the individual. Sister 
 colleges and rival cities and competing nations 
 still keep up this outworn custom, however prim- 
 118 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 itive and however puerile the more enlightened 
 may know it to be. 
 
 To many of us this habit of vaunting our own 
 valor and all our other virtues seems like a sur 
 vival of the unfittest. It is a relic of savagery, 
 like the custom of wearing rings in the ears, al 
 ready abandoned by most men and by many 
 women. It is pitiful and it is foolish, like the 
 Chinese device of painting on their shields dread 
 ful dragons and other awe-inspiring monsters, 
 in the belief that this will strike fear into the souls 
 of their enemies. But there is something to be 
 said on the other side; if you persist in asserting 
 that you have a certain quality, you are, as a 
 matter of fact, more likely to acquire it, and also 
 more likely to make others believe that you pos 
 sess it. The method of achieving these results 
 may be distasteful to many of us; yet the results 
 are achieved somehow and they are worth achiev 
 ing. It is an interesting topic of speculation 
 how far what we know as spread-eagleism in the 
 United States and whatever are the equivalents 
 of spread-eagleism in other nations may be 
 a necessary accompaniment of patriotism. Just 
 as there are souls who cannot get religion without 
 shouting, so there are true patriots whose fervor 
 thirsts for the waving of "Old Glory," who fight 
 all the better for the belief that one Englishman 
 is as good as three Frenchmen, and who are 
 119 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 moved to self-devotion by the assertion that Paris 
 is the lighthouse of civilization. Antiquity 
 held that to be a vice, which Christianity has ele 
 vated into a virtue under the name of humility," 
 so Renan asserted; and, perhaps, in this respect 
 as in others we moderns are not quite so Christian 
 as we profess to be. 
 
 The man who is speaking for Buncombe may 
 be violent and he may be absurd without being 
 insincere. And if his turgid oratory really is a 
 stimulus to patriotic fervor, then is his high-flown 
 rhetoric not in vain. One of the shrewdest of 
 contemporary French critics, M. Emile Faguet, 
 not long ago dwelt on the duty of persuading a 
 nation "to love itself, deeply, warmly, energet 
 ically. The cult of himself is not to be recom 
 mended to any individual; but to a people the 
 cult of itself must be presented as a duty. Even 
 if patriotism was not a duty, it would be a ne 
 cessity, so long as there are - other countries 
 wherein it has not gone out of fashion." Belief 
 in the brotherhood of man, in the solidarity of 
 humanity, is likely to be more and more potent 
 in the immediate future; it is certain to soften 
 the asperities of international intercourse; but 
 it must not be allowed to weaken our devotion 
 to our own national ideal or our confidence that 
 we have a mission not entrusted to other peoples. 
 
 The dislike which the Jew of old had for the 
 
 I2O 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 Gentile, and which the Greek had for the bar 
 barian, was a source of strength to the Hebrew 
 people and to the Greek race. The Roman had a 
 kindred feeling of hostile contempt toward all 
 who were not citizens of the great republic; and 
 this belief did its share in making the legions irre 
 sistible. Even after the empire had been built 
 on the ruin of the republic and after the Latins 
 had long been borrowing the philosophy of the 
 Greeks, there was widespread distaste for the 
 doctrine of the brotherhood of humanity, when 
 Seneca declared it in the reign of Nero. It 
 seemed to many of the most enlightened men of 
 those days to be a new-fangled theory, pernicious 
 and quite contrary to the old Roman tradition. 
 Here we may see a survival of an earlier senti 
 ment, when every stranger was by that fact an 
 enemy. The same feeling lingers even now in 
 the nooks and corners of Europe. It finds ex 
 pression in the anecdote of the British lout, be 
 holding a man he had never seen before and 
 promptly proposing to " eave arf a brick at 
 im." Perhaps there may be a faint echo of this 
 self-righteous attitude even in the noble Re 
 cessional of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, or at least 
 in a single stanza of it: 
 
 If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
 
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe 
 Such boastings as the Gentiles use, 
 121 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 Or lesser breeds without the Law- 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget lest we forget! 
 
 In the harmless banter now bandied to and 
 fro between the chief cities of the United States, 
 New York taking pleasure in projecting sar 
 casms on Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago, 
 and these cities promptly returning every merry 
 missile on the volley, in this interchange of 
 humorous chaff, we can find proof of the ameliora 
 tion of modern manners, since these bloodless 
 duels are the analogs of the bitter rivalries of old 
 which used to result in deadly conflicts, long pro 
 tracted and often renewed. The cities of medi 
 eval Italy not only praised themselves incessantly, 
 but they were also prolific in abuse of all rival 
 communities. Even to-day the American vis 
 itor may be astonished, as he is amused, to dis 
 cover that the Sienese still keep alive a keen sense 
 of injury for the insults proffered and for the in 
 iquities performed by the Florentines five cen 
 turies ago. 
 
 Time was when the attitude of every people 
 toward every other people, and more especially 
 toward its own particular rival, was not only 
 hostile but also suspicious. They were ever 
 ready to believe the worst that might be said 
 against those whom they hated; and they be 
 lieved this without any evidence, or even against 
 122 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 all evidence. The Trojans feared the Greeks 
 even bearing gifts. The Romans had no con 
 fidence in the good faith of the Carthaginians, 
 altho we have now no reason to suppose that the 
 Latins were really any more scrupulous or any 
 more conscientious than their African enemies. 
 The French in the last century were loud in the 
 denunciation of the perfidy of Albion, in spite of 
 the fact that the British pride themselves more 
 particularly on their straightforward plain- 
 dealing. The British themselves hold the Rus 
 sians to be especially untrustworthy; and one 
 London politician had the bad manners to point 
 a remark about Russia by citing the adage that 
 "he who would sup with the devil must have a 
 long spoon." 
 
 A hundred and fifty years ago the British 
 were in the habit of heaping their hostile con 
 tempt upon the Dutch, who had taught them 
 agriculture and seamanship, and who had once 
 swept the English channel with a broom at the 
 masthead of the flagship of their fleet. It needs 
 to be noted that the influence of this British at 
 titude toward Holland can be detected even in 
 the veracious history of New Amsterdam written 
 by the worthy Diedrich Knickerbocker. This is 
 due, no doubt, to the fact that the gentle Irving, 
 who hated nobody and who despised no race, 
 had been nourisht on the British classics of an 
 123 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 earlier generation. Perhaps it is one of the more 
 obvious advantages of our many commingled 
 stocks that this note of contemptuous hostility 
 is almost entirely absent from international dis 
 cussion here in the United States; and the same 
 cause may be responsible also for our compara 
 tive freedom from suspicion as to the motives 
 and intentions of our neighbors. And yet we 
 may as well confess that if our immediate neigh 
 bors were our aggressive rivals, we also might 
 fall from grace. After all, the wit was telling 
 the truth when he declared that " civilization is 
 the lamb s skin in which barbarism masquer 
 ades." 
 
 Just as the Romans used to express freely their 
 low opinion of Punic faith, so the French are 
 now lavish in their denunciation of British hy 
 pocrisy. The islanders resent this bitterly; and 
 they are swift to deny that there is any founda 
 tion for the charge. Now and again, it is true, 
 a Londoner of an acuter intelligence than his 
 fellows is moved to consider the accusation seri 
 ously and to account for it as best he can. Mr. 
 Bernard Bosanquet, for one, has explained that 
 the absence of logic in his countrymen, their dis 
 like for theory and their direct practicality cause 
 "the English mind to be set down, perhaps un 
 justly, as both utilitarian and hypocritical," 
 since "it drives sincerely at its objects, and does 
 124 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 not care to give them a form in which they are 
 obviously reconcilable with one another. And 
 a tissue of unreconciled sincerities has all the 
 appearance of a gigantic hypocrisy." These 
 unreconciled sincerities are abundant, the ap 
 palling condition of Piccadilly at night, the pre 
 vention of vivisection and the promotion of field 
 sports, (including pigeon-shooting with all its 
 wanton cruelty), the alliance of Beer and the 
 Bible on which the Conservative party relies for 
 support, the firm retention of Egypt with the re 
 peated declaration that the British occupation 
 is only temporary, and many another flagrant 
 inconsistency which it is needless now to catalog. 
 And if these irreconcilable sincerities so im 
 press an Englishman, how much more flagrant 
 must they appear to a Frenchman, governed 
 by logic and insisting upon a consistent social 
 organization. The French may be excused for 
 considering this "tissue of irreconcilable sinceri 
 ties" to be hypocrisy, pure and simple, made 
 even more offensive by the imperturbable as 
 sumption that the British rule their conduct 
 according to a loftier standard than any other 
 people. And this French distrust is the price 
 the British are called upon to pay for their boast 
 ing. If they were not puft up with pride be 
 cause of their belief in their own superior morality, 
 perhaps that virtue might not be under suspicion. 
 I2 5 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 The roar of the British lion when it is vaunting 
 its virtue, is no more grateful to alien ears than 
 the scream of the American eagle or than the 
 crowing of the Gallic cock. Probably it was 
 some chance echo of this roar which moved Sir 
 Leslie Stephen to declare that he hated "all 
 patriotic sentiments; they mean vulgar brag." 
 
 Perhaps we Americans, having a more inti 
 mate acquaintance with our kin across the sea 
 than is possest by their former foes across the 
 channel, are able to reconcile some of their in 
 sincerities. We cannot deny the evidence, but 
 we can understand the explanation which de 
 prives the facts of some part of the weight they 
 seem to carry. It may be that the British are 
 not altogether wrong in thinking that their moral 
 standard is really higher than that of some other 
 races, even if there yawns a wide gap between 
 their preaching and their practice. It is probable, 
 after all, that they really know themselves better 
 than any foreigner can know them; and it is 
 even possible that their self-praise is not alto 
 gether misplaced. "I believe that the opinion 
 a man has of himself (if he be accustomed to self- 
 analysis) is of more worth than that of all the 
 rest of the world"; and what Lowell said of a 
 man, may very well be true also of a nation. 
 
 Of course, it would be absurd to maintain that 
 the British are accustomed to "self -analysis." 
 126 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 Nor do they relish it when it is attempted by a 
 critic as keen as Matthew Arnold, who tried in 
 vain to force them to gaze on their own image 
 in his highly polished mirror. Even now they 
 might find profit in weighing the words of wisdom 
 scattered thru the disinterested studies of com 
 petent observers from abroad. As we Americans 
 took to heart certain of the warnings contained 
 in Tocqueville s Democracy in America/ and 
 in Mr. Bryce s American Commonwealth, so 
 the British might have considered more carefully 
 Emerson s English Traits and Taine s Notes 
 on England. It was an Englishman, John 
 Stuart Mill, who said that "even the pleasure of 
 self-appreciation, in the great majority, is mainly 
 dependent upon the opinion of others"; and he 
 added there is not "to most men any proof so 
 demonstrative of their own virtue or talent as 
 that people in general seem to believe in it." 
 
 But people in general are moved to doubt when 
 we dwell complacently on our own virtues or 
 when we proclaim our own talents vociferously. 
 What the Lion or the Eagle insists on shouting 
 thru the megaphone fails to carry conviction to 
 the listening foreigner; and it is by the reverber 
 ating assertions of the loud-voiced that the na 
 tions of the earth are tempted to judge one another, 
 since the speech of the wiser among us is never 
 shrill. Unfortunately for every nation, those 
 127 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 who have the full knowledge needful for a just 
 valuation of its merits and its demerits rarely 
 possess also the equally necessary disinterested 
 ness, while those who may have the proper de 
 tachment of mind are likely to lack adequate 
 information. Now and again a man of insight, 
 who has traveled in many lands and who has 
 kept his mind open as well as his eyes, is able 
 to make comparisons of national characteristics, 
 instructive to the people of both countries. Rob 
 ert Louis Stevenson, for example, started in life 
 with the advantage of being a Scot and of having 
 his full share of the shrewdness of that stock. 
 So keenly did he feel the need for a better under 
 standing between nations that he once humor 
 ously suggested a law requiring "the people of 
 one country to be educated in another." 
 
 In the same letter he tried to set up in parallel 
 columns the virtues and the vices of the English 
 and the French, asserting that they "made a 
 balance." Here is his little table: 
 
 THE ENGLISH THE FRENCH 
 
 Hypocrisy. Free from hypocrisy. 
 
 Good stout reliable friends. Incapable of friendship. 
 
 Dishonest to the root. Fairly honest. 
 
 Fairly decent to women. Rather indecent to women. 
 
 He added the comment that "the Americans 
 hold the English faults, dishonesty and hypocrisy, 
 perhaps not as strongly, but still to the exclusion 
 128 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 of others. It is strange that such defects should 
 be so hard to eradicate after a century of separ 
 ation." 
 
 Stevenson, as it happened, was well fitted for 
 an international comparison like this. If other 
 observers of other nationalities, equally well 
 equipt and equally disinterested, were to act on 
 this hint of his and were to attempt to draw up 
 a balance-sheet of the virtues and vices of all the 
 chief races, the result might be as valuable as it 
 would be interesting. Probably it would be very 
 surprizing also, since the total number of good 
 points awarded to each of the leading peoples 
 would certainly be found to vary far less than 
 would be anticipated by any one who had not 
 given thought to the problem, but who had held 
 carelessly the common conviction that his own 
 race was unquestionably foremost in all the 
 qualities which are needed to make a nation 
 great. 
 
 It would be possible to make out a list of ten 
 qualities since the decimal system is one of the 
 most useful of modern tools, which a race 
 must possess in some measure if it aspires to a 
 high place among civilized states. Any one at 
 tempting such a list would be forced to set down 
 Physical Courage, first of all, since it is most 
 obviously indispensable to independent national 
 existence. Next might come three allied quali- 
 129 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 ties also essential to a prolonged national life, 
 Patriotism (which must include loyalty and 
 the faculty of co-operation), Self -sacrifice, and 
 Justice (which must include the respect for law). 
 After these there might be set down another 
 group of three, not so closely allied and on the 
 whole perhaps not quite so important, Honesty, 
 Energy and Intelligence. And to make up the 
 ten, three more would have to be added, 
 Thoroness, Tenacity and Sympathy. This list 
 pretends to no scientific precision; and the 
 qualities included may not have each of them 
 the fittest name. Determination, for example, 
 might be a better word than Tenacity; and 
 Toleration might be substituted for Sympathy. 
 
 It may well be that these are not really the ten 
 essential qualities of a great people and that a 
 more satisfactory list could be drawn up without 
 difficulty by some one else better fitted for the 
 task. But it will serve as a suggestion, which 
 is its sole purpose. And then the further sug 
 gestion may be advanced that the chief peoples 
 of our Western civilization are the Austro-Hun- 
 garians, the British, the French, the Germans, 
 the Italians, the Russians, the Scandinavians, 
 the Spaniards, the Swiss, and the inhabitants of 
 these United States. The arrangement is alpha 
 betical; and the list itself is only tentative. It is 
 open to obvious objection; and yet it may possi- 
 130 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 bly be as serviceable as any other. It gives us 
 ten peoples or races or states, as the case may 
 be; and we have already a list of ten qualities 
 or characteristics highly important to any nation. 
 Let us then go one step further and suggest a 
 marking system under which ten is the maximum 
 number of points to be assigned to any one 
 quality. 
 
 Now, if we could find a disinterested and well 
 equipt citizen of each of these ten states, if we 
 could get him to accept this list of ten qualities 
 needed by every race, and then if we could per 
 suade him to assign to every state, including his 
 own, the exact mark which he thought this state 
 was entitled to receive for its share of every one 
 of these qualities, if we could do this, the re 
 sulting table would be curious, to say the least. 
 And it would be very instructive also, containing 
 not a few surprizes for most of us. With ten 
 observers and ten qualities and with ten as the 
 maximum for any single quality, the total number 
 of points attainable by each of the ten peoples 
 would be one thousand. But we may guess that 
 no total would exceed perhaps seven hundred 
 and that none would fall below six hundred. In 
 other words, there would be no very great di 
 vergence between the nation which received the 
 most points and that which received the fewest. 
 
 And one reason for this is plain. However 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 well equipt the observers might be and however 
 disinterested, no one of them could be expected 
 to overcome his native bias absolutely. Every 
 one of them would tend to overmark his own 
 state, and even to overmark also the states 
 which had similar characteristics to his own. 
 We may be pretty certain that the Latins would 
 each of them more or less over-reward their 
 fellow-Latins, and that the Teutons would in 
 like manner assign points a little too liberally 
 to their fellow-Teutons. But the Latins would 
 probably undermark the most of the Northern 
 peoples; and the Teutons would undermark the 
 most of the Southern races. Thus there would 
 be approximate justice, one personal equation 
 tending to correct the other. And however dis 
 satisfied we might be with the total number of 
 marks assigned to us, and with our position com 
 pared with each of the other states, there would 
 be profit in our discovering what competent 
 and unprejudiced observers chosen from nine 
 other peoples had decided to be our virtues and 
 our vices. Our virtues can take care of them 
 selves, and perhaps the less we dwell on them 
 the better. But our vices had best be made 
 known to us as soon as possible, that we may 
 overcome them if we can. The struggle itself 
 will be helpful, even if Renan was right in assert 
 ing that "every nation of us goes thru history 
 132 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 carrying with it some essential vice which must 
 destroy it at last." 
 
 Just as we should probably be surprized to see 
 how little the totals would vary (however differ 
 ently each of them might be made up), so we 
 should certainly be astonisht to find an almost 
 absolute equality between the states as regards 
 one of the qualities, and that the very quality 
 upon the possession of which every people plumes 
 itself most particularly. This quality is Physical 
 Courage; and it is pride in this which led the 
 American bard to ask "Where breathes the foe 
 but falls before us?" which made the British 
 historian boast about "the thin red line," and 
 which has tempted the French to quote frequently 
 the Italian praise of their onslaught la juria 
 jrancese. The instinctive feeling that this one 
 quality is absolutely essential to national existence 
 and that a race without Physical Courage is 
 doomed to lose its independence and almost its 
 individuality, has led every people to set this in 
 the forefront of its national virtues. Yet the 
 possession of Physical Courage by a nation is 
 like the possession of two legs and two arms by 
 a man; it is to be taken for granted; it is nothing 
 to brag about. Every people must have it or 
 they cease to be a nation. Without it they sink 
 swiftly to the sad condition of the lowly dwellers 
 in the Valley of the Nile, down-trodden tillers 
 133 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 of the scanty soil for scores of centuries, ever 
 ruled by aggressive aliens of more stalwart stocks. 
 
 Whenever Physical Courage begins to be un 
 common, then the career of the nation is nearing 
 its end. Tacitus recorded a saying of his time, 
 that only those Roman troops were really good 
 who were not Roman; and this might have made 
 it clear to him that the days of the Empire were 
 already numbered. The barbarians were even 
 then making ready to break in and to capture the 
 Capitol. And it is well also to remember that 
 civilization has no monopoly of mere bravery. 
 Indeed, the disregard of death is often a character 
 istic of the lower races. The bard of the British 
 Empire recognized this amply when he wrote 
 " Here s to you, Fuzzy- Wuzzy; you re a first-rate 
 fighting man!" 
 
 Just as every people must have Physical Cour 
 age in a high degree as a condition precedent to 
 independent existence, so it must also have a full 
 assortment and a fair proportion of every other 
 of the ten needful qualities. The very fact that a 
 nation survives is evidence enough that it pos 
 sesses a sufficient share of these qualities, since 
 without them it would have been crowded aside 
 and crusht down. This is another reason why 
 the totals awarded to each of the ten chief peoples 
 by an international tribunal of disinterested ex 
 perts would not greatly vary. This is a reason 
 
THE SCREAM OF THE SPREAD-EAGLE 
 
 also why every disinterested expert is likely to 
 indulge in a smile whenever there falls on his 
 ears the roar of the Lion, the crow of the Cock, or 
 the scream of the Eagle. 
 
 (1906.) 
 
 135 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 EVERY one who is interested in observing 
 the workings of human nature must have 
 noted with amusement the fact that the several 
 nations are swift to resent any criticism of their 
 manners and customs when this is proffered by a 
 foreigner, altho they listen without anger to an 
 animadversion far more stringent when this is 
 made by a native. But a little reflection supplies 
 at once an easy explanation of this apparent in 
 consistency. What the stranger may say against 
 us we resent sharply, because we are inclined to 
 believe him too ignorant to have a right to an 
 opinion about us, whereas we cannot help cred 
 iting one of ourselves with a knowledge of all 
 the extenuating circumstances which mitigate 
 the severity of his adverse judgment. Further 
 more, whenever a man from another country says / 
 anything we do not like, we are inclined to assume 
 that his motive is envy, or contempt, or at least 
 hostility of some sort; but we find it possible 
 to believe in the good-will of a fellow-citizen even 
 if he insists on picking out the darkest spots ij 
 our national life. 
 
 It is not whose ox is gored that makes the differ 
 ence, but rather whose bull does the goring. 
 139 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 Here, for example, is a very vigorously exprest 
 opinion of England as it was in 1870: "a com 
 munity where political forms, from the monarchy 
 down to the popular chamber, are mainly hol 
 low shams disguising the coarser supremacy of 
 wealth, where religion is mainly official and 
 political and is ever too ready to dissever itself 
 alike from the spirit of justice, the spirit of char 
 ity, and the spirit of truth, and where literature 
 does not as a rule permit itself to discuss serious 
 subjects frankly and worthily, a community, 
 in short, where the great aim of all classes and 
 orders with power is by dint of rigorous silence, 
 fast shutting of the eyes and stern stopping of 
 the ears, somehow to keep the social pyramid 
 on its apex, with the fatal result of preserving 
 for England its glorious fame as a paradise for 
 the well-to-do, a purgatory for the able, and a 
 hell for the poor." 
 
 Now if this had been penned and publisht 
 by a Frenchman of distinction or by an American 
 of prominence, the British would have waxt 
 indignant and they would have denounced the 
 calumniator, bidding him to look to himself and 
 to open his eyes to the condition of his own 
 country. But, as it happened, this scathing in 
 dictment of their whole social organization evoked 
 no shrill protest in Great Britain because the 
 man who wrote it was an Englishman of distinc- 
 140 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 tion and of prominence, Mr. John Morley, a 
 future cabinet-minister and a future biographer 
 of the most popular of prime-ministers. Indeed, 
 the narrator of Gladstone s career could have 
 found a warrant for this cutting analysis of insular 
 civilization in a letter of Gladstone himself, 
 a letter in which he asserted that "the English 
 race (I am a pure Scotchman myself) are a great 
 fact in the world, and I believe will so continue; 
 but no race stands in greater need of discipline 
 in every form, and, among other forms, that which 
 is administered by criticism vigorously directed 
 to canvassing their character and claims." And 
 then Gladstone softened a little and added that, 
 "under such discipline I believe they are capable 
 of a great elevation and of high performance." 
 
 Here Gladstone revealed his statesmanlike 
 insight. Every race stands in constant need of 
 criticism. As it will crossly dismiss the criticism 
 of foreigners, however acute and however valid, 
 there is a more imperative duty imposed on its 
 own members, to criticize themselves, and to 
 keep on pointing out the symptoms of ill-health 
 in the body politic. Altho it may be congenial 
 to a few spirits ever out of sympathy with their 
 environment, the task is not grateful, but it is 
 useful, and it may even be necessary. In the 
 recently publisht correspondence of Taine, 
 there is a letter (written to Albert Sorel in the 
 141 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 darkest days of the black year, 1870, when France 
 was at the mercy of the Germans), in which the 
 great French critic, a devoted lover of his native 
 land, as these letters prove in every page, declares 
 that when peace shall come, it will be the duty 
 of men like himself to try to make his fellow- 
 countrymen understand the causes of their 
 calamity; it will be their duty to give lectures and 
 to write articles, "instructive and disagreeable." 
 
 In one of the early years of the twentieth cen 
 tury an anonymous Englishman, engaged in busi 
 ness in New York, declared that it was painful 
 to notice the difference in the manners of employ 
 ees in British and American shops and offices; 
 and an American editor, recording this declara 
 tion, asserted that all Americans notice this differ 
 ence when they return from abroad. One of these 
 home-coming travelers voiced his opinion in a 
 letter to a newspaper, in which he inquired 
 plaintively: "What ails the manners of New 
 York?" Then he ventured the startling declara 
 tion, that, when he came home to the city of his 
 birth after an absence of ten years in Europe, he 
 found here "a people compared to whom the 
 Berserkers were Chesterfields and the Tatars a 
 race of Talleyrands." 
 
 This last alliterative sentence is perhaps not so 
 completely annihilating as its author intended 
 when he polisht it up, since the public morality 
 142 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 and the private morals of Talleyrand and of 
 Chesterfield do not commend themselves as 
 worthy models for American imitation, whereas 
 there was a hearty manliness about the Berserkers 
 and the Tatars, a masterful directness which 
 healthy Americans cannot fail to appreciate. 
 But however unfortunate the phrase, there is 
 no mistaking the intention of the writer, and his 
 desire to denounce the social atrocities of his 
 native city. And altho the bulk of this denuncia 
 tion is launcht more specifically against New 
 York and the New Yorkers, there is a willing 
 ness on the part of most of the denouncers to 
 enlarge their target to include the whole United 
 States and all the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 In many cases the accusation insists that our 
 manners are much worse than they used to be, 
 and that we have fallen from the high standard 
 transmitted to us by the last generation, or by 
 some generation preceding that. Now here, if 
 nowhere else, it is easy to make a stand and re 
 pulse the groundless charge. There is no basis 
 whatever for any belief that our manners have 
 ever been any better than they are now. Or at 
 least there has never been a time when our man 
 ners were not being assailed, and when the asser 
 tion was not frequent that they were steadily de 
 generating. It is with our manners as it is with 
 our servants every age shrilly expresses its dis- 
 143 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 satisfaction with those it knows best. When 
 Adam, in As You Like It, proffered his savings 
 to his young master, Orlando lookt back re 
 gretfully to a period when such conduct was not 
 uncommon : 
 
 O good old man, how well in thee appears 
 The constant service of the antique world, 
 When service sweat for duty, not for meed! 
 Thou art not for the fashion of these times, 
 Where none will sweat but for promotion. 
 
 Shakspere wrote these lines more than three 
 centuries ago; and the sentiment exprest in 
 them echoes to-day in many an essay on the serv 
 ant question. So it is more than half a century 
 now that Lowell put on paper the remark of one 
 of the older inhabitants of Cambridge, who was 
 something of a Jeremiah in his octogenarian 
 vigor, to the effect that "My children say, Yes, 
 sir, and No, sir ; my grandchildren, Yes and 
 No ; and I am every day expecting to hear 
 Blank your eyes! for an answer when I ask a 
 service of my great-grandchildren. Why, sir, 
 I can remember when more respect was paid 
 to Governor Hancock s lackey at commencement 
 than the Governor and all his suite get now!" 
 
 Perhaps the worthy old gentleman, born in 
 
 the last quarter of the eighteenth century, would 
 
 not have found it easy to answer a question or two 
 
 as to why Governor Hancock should have a lackey, 
 
 144 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 and as to why any special respect should be paid 
 to this lackey. What seemed to the octogenarian 
 as a loss of manners might be explained as a gain 
 in manliness. But the evidence is abundant that 
 from the very beginning, from July 4, 1776, 
 American manners have been sadly unsatis 
 factory to American conservatives as well as to 
 the most of such foreigners as rashly adventured 
 themselves amongst us. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope, Captain Marryat and Charles 
 Dickens have left us the record of their impres 
 sions; and their record is fatal to any belief that 
 there has been deterioration of late years. How 
 ever bad our manners may be now, they cannot 
 be worse than they were when these three lower- 
 middle-class British novelists were shockt by 
 our lack of repose and distinction. There is 
 some consolation to be found for our sad estate 
 in taking down Tuckerman s book on America 
 and Her Commentators, as instructive as it is 
 amusing; and in assuring ourselves by a perusal 
 of its pages that we are at least no worse now than 
 foreigners found us in the earlier decades of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 It is in that unforgetable essay of Lowell s * On 
 a Certain Condescension in Foreigners which 
 was written just after the close of the Civil War, 
 and which might well be required as the basis 
 of an examination-paper from every wandering 
 145 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 Briton and Gaul and Teuton who proposes to 
 survey us from a car-window, as a preparation 
 for a book about us it is in this paper of Lowell s 
 that we find the best summary of the attitude of 
 the ordinary European traveler toward America 
 and the Americans : 
 
 "But whatever we might do or leave undone, 
 we were not genteel, and it was uncomfortable 
 to be continually reminded that tho we should 
 boast that we were the Great West till we were 
 black in the face, it did not bring us an inch 
 nearer to the world s West End. That sacred 
 inclosure of respectability was tabooed to us. 
 The Holy Alliance did not inscribe us on its 
 visiting-list. The Old World of wigs and orders 
 and liveries would shop with us; but we must 
 ring at the area-bell, and not venture to awaken 
 the more august clamors of the knocker. Our 
 manners, it must be granted, had none of those 
 graces that stamp the caste of Vere de Vere, in 
 whatever museum of British antiquities they may 
 be hidden. In short, we were vulgar." 
 
 It is this ingrained European belief that we are 
 not genteel, that we are vulgar, which underlies 
 Matthew Arnold s complaint that Americans 
 lack distinction, and which sustains the detes 
 tation so shrilly exprest by Ruskin who was 
 himself the son of a liquor-dealer, and who was 
 wholly devoid of the self-restraint and the ur- 
 146 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 banity which have been held to mark the con 
 duct of a true gentleman. It is this belief that in 
 spired Kenan s fear that the Americanizing of 
 the modern world might mean the vulgarizing 
 of that world. A belief so widely held must have 
 some justification; and it is wholesome for us to 
 ask ourselves now and again what this justifica 
 tion may be. Are foreigners right or wrong, 
 when they express their dread of our influence? 
 In their eyes, our manners are bad; and in the eyes 
 also of many Americans who have been to Europe 
 and who have lingered there fascinated by the 
 indubitable charm of an Old World civilization. 
 Are our manners in America really as vile as 
 they seem to these observers contrasting them 
 with the standards of Europe? 
 
 The question is not easy to answer; but we 
 may be helpt to a solution by remembering 
 that the standard of Europe in so far as there 
 is any uniformity over there is not final, and 
 that it is the result of feudal tradition. It is a 
 codification of the practices of countries still con 
 serving the habits of an aristocratic social organ 
 ization and still governed by the idea of caste, 
 stanchly rejecting the theory of democracy, and 
 absolutely hostile to any practical application of 
 the idea of human equality. When the English 
 man engaged in business in New York complained 
 of the absence of civility in America, perhaps 
 147 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 what he really meant was that he found here 
 a lack of the servility which is customary in Eng 
 land and which seems to most Americans un 
 manly and detestable. 
 
 The Englishman who has money expects to 
 find his inferiors cringing before him; and in 
 his own country his expectation is rarely disap 
 pointed. When he happens to come over here, 
 he fails to find it and he misses it. Even when 
 he is devoid of haughtiness and when he tries 
 to be condescending, he does not elicit the re 
 sponse he has expected. The explanation is to 
 be found in the fact that whether he intends it or 
 not, he assumes the attitude of a superior; and 
 this is something that the ordinary American re 
 sents instantly and righteously. It was a queen, 
 Carmen Sylva, who declared that "princes are 
 brought up to be affable to every man; and every 
 man should be brought up like a prince." But 
 until every man is brought up like a prince, affa 
 bility may take on the less agreeable disguise of 
 condescension; and, as Robert Louis Stevenson 
 shrewdly remarkt, "the pleasures of condescen 
 sion are strangely one-sided." 
 
 American social usages may differ from Eu 
 ropean without in reality being inferior, how 
 ever vociferously the Europeanized Americans 
 assert this inferiority. Especially different is 
 the relation of master and servant, and that of 
 148 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 buyer and seller in a shop. As to this latter, 
 the British assumption seems to be that by his 
 mere possession of money to spend the purchaser 
 is raised to a superior caste and is thereby en 
 titled to be treated with flattering adulation. 
 The American assumption is that buyer and 
 seller are two equal parties to a bargain by which 
 both hope to profit, and that they meet on the 
 level ground of self-interest and common cour 
 tesy. 
 
 Perhaps actual discourtesy is rather more com 
 mon in London shops than in those of New York. 
 Possibly Mr. Hopkinson Smith went to an ex 
 treme when he suggested that "if you go into an 
 English store the proprietor will take it for 
 granted that you have come to crack his safe"; 
 but the American traveler in London is lucky if 
 he has not been exposed to the surly resentment 
 of a shopkeeper in whose store he may have failed 
 to make a purchase. Nothing more surprizes 
 intelligent British travelers in the United States, 
 and nothing pleases them more, than the open 
 hospitality of American stores of the better class, 
 in which any visitor is welcomed and in which 
 no visitor is annoyed by importunities to become 
 a purchaser. In this respect even the more im 
 portant establishments of Paris are not yet on 
 the plane of the best of the great shops of our 
 chief American cities. 
 
 149 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 The more familiar an impartial observer may 
 be with the social usages and habits of Great 
 Britain and of the continent of Europe, the less 
 emphatic will be his feeling that the foreign stand 
 ard is really superior to the American; and the 
 more inclined he will be to explain away certain 
 apparent disadvantages of our attitude as the 
 price we pay for what we hold in high esteem- 
 equality and democracy, manliness and self- 
 respect. The fault that such an observer will 
 be most likely to find is not with the American 
 standard of manners itself, but rather with our 
 failure to attain the standard that we accept. 
 
 The American theory of manners, if one may 
 attempt to formulate its basis, is founded not on 
 any artificial distinctions of social position, but 
 on the simple relation of man to man. Under 
 neath it lies our belief in equality of right and 
 in the accompanying duty of granting to others, 
 spontaneously and ungrudgingly, all the rights 
 that we claim for ourselves. In Europe, bad 
 manners, whether of the upper or the lower classes, 
 generally spring from a lack of sympathy. In > 
 America, bad manners are caused by want of / 
 thought; they are the result of carelessness more/ 
 than of wilfulness. The American is so busy 
 minding his own business that he has no time to be 
 as regardful of the rights of others as he knows 
 he ought to be. He does not mean to be rude; 
 150 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 and if his attention is called to it, he mends his 
 manners, even if only for the moment. The 
 American is profoundly good-natured and good 
 nature is an integral element of good manners. 
 The carnival gaiety of an election-night crowd 
 in any American city, no matter how bitter may 
 have been the preceding canvass, finds no paral 
 lel in any other country in the world; it is an 
 expression of that good-humored toleration which 
 is a chief characteristic of the American people 
 and which every intelligent foreigner notes al 
 most immediately upon his arrival here. 
 
 The spirit which animates an American crowd, 
 the self-restraint and the self-respect that it re 
 veals, will not be found in corresponding gather 
 ings in the great cities of Europe. The feeling 
 for order, the respect for the rights of others, is 
 shown in actions like our automatic dropping into 
 line before a ticket-window, a result rarely at 
 tained in Europe except under police supervision. 
 In the United States we believe that who comes 
 first should be served first, whereas in Great 
 Britain only too often every man fights for the 
 best place, willing enough that the devil should 
 take the hindmost. Even when an American 
 crowd is scrambling forward tumultuously, in 
 apparent disregard of everything, this disregard 
 is only apparent. In the very thick of the rush 
 for the cars of the Brooklyn Bridge, if a woman 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 or a child happened to stumble the crowd would 
 part instantly and helping hands would be out 
 stretched on every side. Even if a paper bag of 
 oranges or apples broke an effort would be made 
 to recover them and to return them to the owner. 
 In other words, the American is not so intent on 
 his own business that he cannot be recalled to 
 his duty to his fellows; and he is willing 
 enough to give practical expression to his sym 
 pathy, if only his attention can be aroused for 
 the need of it. 
 
 No doubt there is a brusqueness and a care 
 lessness of others which we feel to be far too fre 
 quent, but which have at heart no real discourtesy, 
 or at least no intention of discourtesy. A great 
 city, with its thronging thousands, has no time 
 for the minor courtesies of a less hurried exist 
 ence; and we have no right to expect that those 
 who rush past us in the streets should give us the 
 greeting which is grateful and appropriate when 
 we pass another party high up in the lonely paths 
 of the Swiss mountains. Nor have we any right 
 to expect to find in a modern mercantile com 
 munity the exquisite punctilio which lingers in 
 those belated lands where the duel is not yet 
 disestablisht. There is certain to be enforced 
 courtesy wherever a man must answer with his 
 life for any casual affront. 
 
 In the territory of the ready trigger politeness 
 152 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 is excessive, even if it is only external. In her 
 Bits of Gossip Rebecca Harding Davis has 
 recorded an experience of her father in the South 
 more than half a century ago. As he was walk 
 ing thru the village street one morning he ob 
 served that a man was following him rapidly, 
 with a pistol in his hand. Naturally enough he 
 started back, whereupon the man with the pistol 
 thanked him courteously, proffering the simple 
 explanation: "It is the gentleman on the other 
 side of the street that I wish to shoot." Then 
 the trigger was pulled, and the man on the other 
 side of the street fell dead, with a bullet in his 
 heart; and Mrs. Davis adds that "during the 
 next six months more than thirty men were shot 
 on the same grassy highway." 
 
 "Different times, different manners," as the 
 French phrase it; and in giving up the practice 
 of the duello we have surrendered also a few of 
 the more elaborate forms of politeness which 
 accompanied it, with the obvious advantage that 
 our good manners now, even if they are some 
 what diminisht, are founded not on any fear of 
 the fatal consequences of a lapse from good- 
 breeding, but on a self-respect which is strong 
 enough to respect others also. A self-respect 
 which is so feeble as to resemble self-assertion 
 is a constant foe to easy intercourse. Indeed, 
 self-assertion is one of the most offensive aspects 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 of that self-consciousness which needs to be 
 curbed and brought under control before man 
 is fit for association with his fellows. And here 
 we have an explanation of certain of the less 
 pleasant peculiarities of American life, due to the 
 presence here of countless thousands of foreigners, 
 who have not yet risen to a full appreciation of 
 American standards. 
 
 Coming from countries where they and their 
 forebears have been down-trodden for centuries, 
 these immigrants find themselves here suddenly 
 free from all interference; and it is small wonder 
 that at first they do not know what to do with 
 their unexampled liberty. They take a long 
 breath and look about them; and often they 
 seem to believe that the only way in which they 
 can attain to a realizing sense of their new-found 
 freedom is by self-assertion. Very likely, in 
 deed, this is a necessary step in their recognition 
 of their own manhood, however offensive may 
 be its immediate manifestations. With many 
 this first step is taken swiftly; and they are then 
 ready to take a second and to act on the American 
 theory that equality does not mean only that you 
 are as good as the other man, but also and es 
 pecially that the other man is just as good as 
 you are. 
 
 Sometimes they refuse to grasp this, or are 
 unable to understand it and to see its full sig- 
 154 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 nificance. Some of them therefore remain in 
 this first stage, suspicious and aggressive; but 
 even here the case is not helpless, for the children 
 of these recalcitrants go to the common schools 
 and are molded into Americans by the pressure 
 of their school-fellows, perhaps more than by the 
 direct guidance of the teachers. And the kinder 
 garten with its sweet spirit of forbearance and 
 of tender yielding must influence many and make 
 them ready for the more emphatic training of 
 the schools. Then what the children learn in 
 kindergarten and in school, what they see with 
 their eager young eyes, what they hear with their 
 eager young ears, they take home to their parents ; 
 and we behold the strange spectacle of the elders 
 learning manners from their own young. The 
 process is slow, no doubt; but it is unceasing, and 
 it is certain of success at last. 
 
 However deficient American manners may 
 seem to us in the minor urbanities, however un 
 couth we must confess them to be now and again, 
 there is no reason for despair, or even for any 
 deep dissatisfaction. Our manners are different 
 from those which obtain in England and in France; 
 but who shall say that they are really inferior? 
 Our manners are different, because we ourselves 
 are different. We admit the difference readily 
 enough, but never by any chance have we any 
 temptation to admit inferiority. And if the con- 
 *55 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 trast of American manners with European man 
 ners seems sometimes to be to our disadvantage, 
 this is often because the contrast is unfairly made. 
 The average American with all his casual im 
 perfections is set up beside the best that Europe 
 has to show. And this in itself is a compliment 
 to our social organization and an evidence of its 
 success. As our society is not stratified by caste, 
 there is nobody here to compare with the Euro 
 pean gentleman except the average American. 
 
 The European definition of a gentleman may 
 be based on birth or on breeding or on occupation; 
 and all of these are distinctions external to the 
 man himself. The American girl, when she was 
 told in England that "gentlemen were men who 
 did not work," answered promptly that we had 
 men who did not work in America also, and that 
 we called them tramps. The American definition 
 of a gentleman is not founded on any external 
 test; it is based on the quality of the man himself, 
 whatever his antecedents; it is rooted in his own 
 self-respect and in his respect for others. Davy 
 Crockett said that Andrew Jackson was a per 
 fect gentleman, because he set the whisky-jug 
 on the table "and lookt the other way," This 
 nice feeling for the feeling of others is one ele 
 ment of the character of a gentleman, as we 
 recognize it; and another element is exprest in 
 Lowell s assertion that the Westerner "has, at 
 156 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 least, that first quality of a gentleman, that he 
 stands squarely on his own feet, and is as uncon 
 scious as a prairie." 
 
 To say these things is not to say that our 
 manners are perfect or that they cannot be im 
 proved. No American who has ever had occa 
 sion to consider the subject carefully is likely to 
 be at all boastful on behalf of his fellow-citizens. 
 Even if manners in the great cities of America 
 are not conspicuously inferior to manners in the 
 great cities of Europe, we ought not to be sat 
 isfied, and we ought to strive for a superiority 
 which our easier circumstances would seem to 
 demand from us. We ought to bear in mind 
 always that good manners are the small change 
 with which a man may pay his way thru the 
 world. Even if our casual discourtesies are due 
 not so much to innate rudeness as to thought 
 less carelessness, there is all the more reason why 
 we should take to heart the advice contained in 
 the letter of an English nobleman to his sons : 
 
 "Before you speak, let your mind be full of 
 courtesy; the civility of the hat, a kind look, or a 
 word from a person of honor, has bought that 
 service which money could not. And he that 
 can gain or preserve a friend, and the opinion of 
 civility, for the moving of the hat, or a gentle look, 
 and will not, is sillily severe: spare not to spend 
 that which costs nothing; be liberal of them, but 
 157 
 
AMERICAN MANNERS 
 
 be not prodigal, lest they become too cheap. I 
 remember Sir Francis Bacon calls behavior the 
 garment of the mind; it is well resembled, and 
 rightly expresses the behavior I would have in 
 proportion to a garment. It must be fit, plain 
 and rich, useful and fashionable. I should not 
 have advised you to such a regard of your outside, 
 the most trifling part of man, did I not know 
 how much the greatest part of the world is guided 
 by it, and what notable advantages are gained 
 thereby, even upon some very wise men, the re 
 quest of an acceptable person being seldom, or 
 at least unwillingly, denied." 
 
 158 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 IT is one of the most markt peculiarities of 
 this new century that we are all engaged in 
 an effort to learn more about the rest of the world. 
 The Germans are curious about the French, the 
 French are trying to understand the British; 
 and we Americans are striving to find out wherein 
 we differ from the Europeans in general. We 
 want to see ourselves as others see us, and to 
 see others as they see themselves. We are spy 
 ing out the secrets of the other nationalities in 
 the hope that we may learn more about our own 
 essential Americanism. The enterprise is in 
 teresting and the result cannot but be instructive, 
 if we make use of all the means of comparison 
 which lie open to us. And in this discussion of 
 national differences and of racial distinctions, 
 perhaps nothing is more helpful than the consid 
 eration of national and racial types of humor. 
 
 Show me what a man laughs at, and I will tell 
 you what manner of man he is. The deepest 
 thinker, seeking to solve this problem of national 
 individuality, would profit by a comparison of 
 the comic papers that flourish in the several 
 countries. He will find himself possest of precious 
 161 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 information after he has set over against each other 
 the Kladderadatsch of the Germans and the 
 Charivari of the French, the British Punch or 
 The London Charivari and the American Life 
 and Puck. Perhaps this comparison of humor 
 ous weeklies is of more immediate significance 
 even than a contrasting of the great masters of the 
 comic, of the creator of Falstaff with the creator 
 of Tartufje, of the chronicler of Mr. Pickwick 
 with the chronicler of Tom Sawyer. 
 
 But, first of all, we must make again the need 
 ful distinction between two qualities often con 
 founded because we have no fit names to keep 
 them apart. We must again remind ourselves 
 that humor is one thing and quite another that 
 precious gift we have to call the sense-of-humor. 
 Humor, itself, is positive; it is what makes us 
 laugh. The sense-of-humor is negative; and by 
 its possession we prevent others from laughing 
 at us. The two gifts are as separate as may be; 
 and they are not often to be found in the same 
 man. More than one positive humorist, who has 
 moved the world to inextinguishable mirth, has 
 not had the negative ability which would restrain 
 him from making himself ridiculous. In other 
 words, the profest humorist is sometimes so lack 
 ing in the sense-of-humor that he takes himself 
 too seriously, as Dickens did when he aired in 
 public his private quarrel with the mother of his 
 162 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 children. Probably there are few situations more 
 annoying and more humiliating than that in 
 which a man finds himself when he discovers that 
 he who has made his fellows laugh again and 
 again has at last given them cause to laugh at 
 him, rather than with him. 
 
 This invaluable sense-of-humor is an individual 
 possession; it is in no ways national or racial. 
 This negative quality can be found among the 
 French and the Germans, as well as among the 
 British and the Americans. But positive humor 
 varies from one language to another. The 
 witz of Berlin could be born only on the banks 
 of the Spree; and the esprit of Paris flourishes 
 best by the borders of the Seine. The "wheeze" 
 of the London music-hall may fall flat in New 
 York, just as the rapid-fire patter of the American 
 variety-show may evoke only a blank stare in 
 England. After all, the jest s prosperity lies in 
 the ear of him that hears it. There is no profit 
 in making a joke that is not taken; and no inter 
 national clearing-house has yet been establisht 
 for exchanging the merry jests of the several 
 peoples. Often a quip which past current in 
 the land of its birth is nailed to the counter as 
 spurious when it ventures to cross the sea. 
 
 As George Eliot suggested, "a difference of 
 taste in jests is a great strain on the affections"; 
 and it may yet happen that a nation will see a 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 cause of war in the refusal of some other nation 
 to accept its merry jests at their face value. 
 The English insist that it needs a surgical oper 
 ation to get a joke into the head of a Scotchman; 
 but the Scotchman who happens to have the 
 sense-of-humor can retort that the knife is needed 
 only for an English joke and that the Scotch 
 have a pawky wit of their own. So we Ameri 
 cans sometimes complain that the British are 
 slow on the trigger in their apprehension of 
 humor; but it is only our American humor that 
 the British are sluggish in appreciating, not their 
 own, and also not the bolder and deeper humor 
 which has universal currency because it does not 
 bear the mint-mark of any one people. A friend 
 of mine declares that explaining a joke to an Eng 
 lishman is like trying to write on blotting paper; 
 but it is only a very American joke which the 
 Englishman needs to have expounded thus pain 
 fully. 
 
 In every country where the inhabitants have 
 discovered the hygienic value of laughter, most 
 of the merry jests which amuse them are local 
 and temporary; and only a few are universal and 
 durable in their appeal to the risibilities of man 
 kind. What seems to us funny here to-day 
 quite possibly will not seem funny to us here to 
 morrow; and it may not seem funny even now 
 to anybody else anywhere else. Americans are 
 164 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 as prone to this ephemeral and evanescent joking 
 as any other people; and we have no right to 
 expect any other people to be amused by that 
 which amuses us. We ought to reserve our dis 
 pleasure until we find the foreigner unmoved to 
 mirth by those finer specimens of our humor 
 which transcend the accidents of American life 
 and attain to the universality of abiding human 
 nature. For example, we are fully justified in 
 pitying any individual or any people who fails 
 to see the fun in the early pages of Tom Sawyer 
 recording how that type of the eternal boy let 
 the contract for whitewashing his aunt s fence. 
 But perhaps we have no right really to look down 
 on those who do not laugh at the Jumping Frog, 
 since that masterpiece of narrative is more em 
 phatically American in its method, in the imper 
 turbable gravity with which an impossible happen 
 ing is set forth. 
 
 Many of the best jokes made by Americans 
 might have been made by foreigners; that is to 
 say, they are not essentially American; they have 
 little or no flavor of the soil. They are American 
 specimens of humor and not specimens of Ameri 
 can humor. When Colonel Higginson declared 
 that Mr. Henry James was not a true cosmopolitan 
 "because a true cosmopolitan is at home even 
 in his own country," the witty remark had a 
 point and a polish which may be described as 
 
 165 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 French in its felicity and which recalls to mem 
 ory Voltaire s assertion that the English hanged 
 an admiral now and then merely "to encourage 
 the others." When Mr. Choate described woman 
 as "an after-thought and a side-issue," he was 
 uttering a witticism that might be attributed to 
 any of the British wits, to Douglas Jerrold or to 
 Sydney Smith. There was even a French dex 
 terity in his answer to an impertinent question, 
 that if he could not be himself, he "would like 
 to be Mrs. Choate s second husband." Indeed, 
 it was perhaps this Gallic subtlety which was 
 disconcerting to the casual Englishman who 
 happened to hear the smart saying, and who 
 promptly askt, "Ah but who was Mrs. Choate s 
 second husband?" And this recalls the com 
 ment of another Englishman on another witti 
 cism made by an American, altho not character 
 istically American. The British stranger had 
 quoted to him the clever remark that "the true 
 purpose of the Waldorf-Astoria is to supply ex- 
 clusiveness to the masses." He listened solemn 
 ly; he pondered gravely; and then a smile ir 
 radiated his face, "I see, exclusiveness to them 
 asses! good, very good indeed!" 
 
 One of the wittiest of Americans was the late 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, whose talk was con 
 tinually lightened by flashes of fun. Yet many 
 of his cleverest sayings were lacking in any es- 
 166 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 sential Americanism. When Matthew Arnold 
 made his first visit to America, Aldrich invited 
 the best talkers in Boston to dine with him and 
 put Dr. Holmes on the right of his distinguished 
 guest. The genial autocrat began dilating whim 
 sically upon the possibility of meeting unex 
 pected people. "What would you do," he askt 
 at large, "if you were to meet a cannibal on 
 Beacon Street?" And Aldrich promptly re 
 sponded, "I think I should stop to pick an ac 
 quaintance." This was a merry jest that might 
 have been made by a clever Briton, by Sheridan 
 or by W. S. Gilbert. Again, when we were once 
 chatting about a certain London man of letters 
 who has read voluminously, putting abundant 
 information into his many books and yet not 
 growing in wisdom himself, Aldrich summed up 
 the case by saying, "he is like a gas-pipe, no 
 richer for all the illumination it has conveyed." 
 This might have been said by a Frenchman, 
 by Voltaire or Beaumarchais. Now and again 
 Aldrich s clever things had a suggestion of his 
 native land in their unabasht exaggeration. 
 He was once going to see Lawrence Barrett, and 
 as he approacht the theater, he saw a festoon 
 of arc-lights suspended over the entrance, and 
 his quick comment was, "I see Barrett has hung 
 up his footlights to dry ! " When the tax-assessors 
 raised the valuation of a country-house he once 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 had on the New England coast, where only a 
 thin carpet of soil covered the rocks, Aldrich de 
 clared that if his tax was not reduced he would 
 "roll up the place and carry it away!" 
 
 Lowell appreciated this imaginative enlarge 
 ment of the mere fact, and he liked to think that 
 it was not uncommon in New England. He 
 once quoted the remark of a Yankee rustic that 
 a certain negro was so black "that charcoal made 
 a chalk-mark on him." In his own writing 
 Lowell often exemplified this same magnifying 
 power of overstatement for humorous effect, as 
 when he declared that Carlyle was "forever call 
 ing down fire from heaven when he couldn t 
 lay his hand on the match-box." When Mark 
 Twain was staying at the Bear-and-Fox Inn of 
 the Onteora Club, the rooms of which were 
 divided off only by walls of burlap, he com 
 plained that the partitions were so thin that he 
 could "hear the young lady in the next room 
 change her mind." The late W. R. Travers once 
 took the only vacant place in a Fifth Avenue 
 omnibus, letting his son sit on his knee; and when 
 a pretty girl got in and had to stand, he said, 
 "J-Jack, g-g-get up and let that young lady 
 have your s-s-seat." 
 
 An imaginative exaggeration, a trick of mag 
 niloquent overstatement, is distinctly character 
 istic of American humor; and yet we can find 
 168 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 the same inflated distortion of the fact in not a 
 few foreigners. The Travers joke might have 
 been made by Charles Lamb, for example, whose 
 humor is often very American in its savor, and 
 who described himself "a matter-of-lie man." 
 And when we remember that Lamb also had an 
 impediment in his speech, we almost wonder how 
 it was that the Englishman did not anticipate the 
 American s retort when a friend met him after 
 his removal to New York and told him that he 
 stuttered more than he had done in Baltimore: 
 "New York is a b-b-bigger place." The re 
 mark of Mark Twain about the young lady chang 
 ing her mind is similar in its essential quality to 
 a quip of Richard Brinsley Sheridan s. At a 
 country-house he had unwillingly agreed to take 
 an elderly lady for a walk and he was delighted 
 when a sudden shower prevented their going out. 
 After the rain ceased, the lady caught him sneak 
 ing thru a side door. "It has cleared up, Mr. 
 Sheridan," she said. "Y-yes," he responded, 
 "it has cleared up enough for one but not enough 
 for two." 
 
 Sheridan was an Irishman, and this ingenious 
 excuse, for all its American flavor, may be a speci 
 men of Hibernian readiness. Perhaps this might 
 even be taken as evidence in behalf of Mr. Taft s 
 suggestion that the humor of the American race 
 owes much to the plentiful infusion of the Irish 
 169 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 in our population. The suggestion is interesting 
 and it may be valid; but it overlooks the fact that 
 Celtic fun is rooted in melancholy, and flowers 
 out of sadness, whereas the American is more \ 
 light-hearted and care-free. We are optimistic 
 almost to the verge of fatalism, while the Irish 
 have ever a tear near the smile. Thackeray 
 pointed out that the rollicking and boisterous 
 tales of Lever and of Lover are fundamentally 
 sorrowful, even if they are superficially laughter- 
 provoking. This is not true of American humor 
 ous narratives, which may be grim enough at 
 times, but which are only infrequently melancholy. 
 There is no underlying sadness in the robust fun 
 of the earlier Southern comic story-tellers, in 
 Judge Longstreet s l Georgia Scenes, for example, 
 altho there may be not a little of the crude violence 
 and hard coldness of Smollett. There is scant 
 melancholy in John Phoenix or in Artemus 
 Ward, in Petroleum V. Nasby or in Orpheus 
 C. Kerr, in Frank R. Stockton, or in Joel Chand 
 ler Harris. As for Josh Billings, he is primarily 
 a wit rather than a humorist, a maker of maxims, 
 a follower of La Rochefoucauld rather than of 
 Rabelais, as the London Spectator showed when 
 it translated some of his aphorisms out of his 
 misfit orthography: "It is easy to be a fool; 
 many a man is a fool and doesn t know it." 
 It is true, of course, that there was a strain of 
 170 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 sadness in Lincoln, one of the foremost of Ameri 
 can humorists and one of the most typical. And 
 Mark Twain s fun is sustained by the deep seri 
 ousness of a strong nature, wherein pathos and 
 humor are intertwined. His tale of the Blue Jay, 
 for example, has a pathetic aspect, if we care so 
 to consider it; and there is manly emotion firmly 
 controlled in many a chapter of Huckleberry 
 Finn and Pudd nhead Wilson. But, after all, 
 pathos is not melancholy; and Mark Twain has 
 less of the sadness of Lincoln than he has of the 
 unshakable commonsense of Franklin. In the 
 beginning the author of Innocents Abroad was 
 a follower of John Phoenix; and the account of 
 his ascent of Vesuvius is quite in the manner of 
 the more elementary makers of comic-copy for 
 the newspapers. Only after he had captured the 
 ear of the public by this easy fun-making was it 
 that Mark Twain found himself and that his 
 genius ripened until he outgrew absolutely the 
 journalistic laugh-makers with whom he was 
 classed at first. And then he revealed at last the 
 richness of his gift, which now gives him his as 
 sured position in the greater group headed by 
 Cervantes and by Moliere. 
 
 Mark Twain s humor is characteristically 
 American in that it is founded on good humor. 
 It represents a more advanced stage of civiliza 
 tion even than that of Cervantes, who callously 
 171 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 involved his noble hero in unshrinking practical 
 jokes, which seem to us now quite unworthy of 
 him. In primitive communities the sense of 
 fun is ill-developt and it is aroused most easily 
 by physical misadventure. To the savage the 
 simplest retort is the swift hurtling of the stone- 
 ax. If that reaches its aim, it accomplishes its 
 purpose more satisfactorily than the keenest 
 epigram. Even now the uncivilized among us, 
 who laugh over the crude comic-supplements of 
 the Sunday papers, take delight in the misfor 
 tunes of hapless caricatures of our common 
 humanity. In most of these figures of fun there 
 is really little American humor, but only the un 
 hesitating brutality of an earlier stage of human 
 progress. Such contorted parodies of mankind 
 have no right to exist in the era of the telephone 
 and the electric light and the aeroplane; they are 
 survivals from the stone-age, when our remote 
 ancestors had not yet forgotten the tricks in 
 herited from progenitors accustomed to hang 
 suspended by their prehensile tails from the 
 boughs of the forest primeval. 
 
 American humor, the humor that is truly typi 
 cal of the American race, is not cold-hearted, 
 even tho it can be grim on occasion. Grim it 
 certainly is, now and again, grim in spite of its 
 geniality. Consider, for example, John Hay s 
 Mystery of GilgaP: 
 
 172 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 They carved in a way that all admired, 
 Till Blood drawed iron at last, and fired. 
 It took Seth Bludso twixt the eyes, 
 Which caused him great surprize. 
 
 They piled the stiffs outside the door; 
 They made, I reckon, a cord or more. 
 Girls went that winter, as a rule, 
 Alone to spellin -school. 
 
 Grimness there is again in Eugene Field s 
 Little Peach : 
 
 Under the turf where the daisies grew 
 They planted John and his sister Sue, 
 And their little souls to the angels flew, 
 Boo hoo! 
 
 What of that peach of the emerald hue, 
 Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew? 
 Ah, well, its mission on earth is thru. 
 Adieu! 
 
 But the grimness of American humor is only - 
 occasional, and its geniality is almost always 
 more evident. Indeed, geniality and imaginative 
 exaggeration may be taken as the chief of its 
 essential qualities. The latter characteristic can 
 be found in Benjamin Franklin almost as freely 
 as it is discoverable in Mark Twain. There is 
 the same playful irony that we note in the Stolen 
 White Elephant to be seen a century earlier in 
 the letter which Franklin wrote to a London 
 newspaper in 1765, gravely declaring that "the 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 very tails of the American sheep are so laden with 
 wool, that each has a little car or wagon to sup 
 port and keep it from trailing on the ground." 
 It is in this same letter that Franklin commented 
 on an assertion which had appeared in the Brit 
 ish newspapers to the effect that the Canadians 
 were making preparations for the cod and whale 
 fishery in the Upper Lakes. "Ignorant people 
 may object that the Upper Lakes are fresh, and 
 that cod and whales are salt-water fish; but let 
 them know, Sir, that cod, like other fish when 
 attackt by their enemies, fly into any water where 
 they can be safest; that whales when they have 
 a mind to eat cod, pursue them wherever they fly; 
 and that the grand leap of the whale in the chase up 
 the Falls of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have 
 seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. 
 Really, Sir, the world is grown too incredulous." 
 The fine gravity in this logical analysis of an 
 arrant impossibility, which we note here in 
 Franklin and again in Mark Twain, is not infre 
 quent in our humorists; but it is not an Ameri 
 can invention. Its analogs can be discovered 
 in Fielding, and more particularly in Swift, in 
 his Modest Proposal and in his defense of 
 Christianity. And one might even replevin 
 earlier examples from earlier authors of earlier 
 languages, from Aristophanes, for instance. In 
 the Frogs, when Bacchus is going down to 
 174 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 Hades with his servant Xanthias, they meet a 
 dead man on his way to the Styx and they offer 
 him a small sum to be the bearer of their burdens. 
 But the dead man scorns the insignificant fee, 
 saying, "I d sooner be alive first!" Yet even 
 if there is here a Greek anticipation of American 
 exaggeration and even if irony was employed by 
 Swift and Fielding very much as it has been em 
 ployed by Franklin and Mark Twain, none the 
 less must it be admitted that this irony and this 
 exaggeration are more common in American lit 
 erature than in any other; and they are more 
 characteristic of our brand of humor. 
 
 Where did we get these characteristics? Not 
 from the Irish, whose humor is of another quality. 
 Not from the Puritans, whose humor has not sur 
 vived abundantly enough for us to know it well. 
 And yet it may have been brought across the 
 ocean in the original package, since we find 
 something not unlike it in England in the spacious 
 days of Elizabeth and in the decadent years of 
 her more pedantic successor. There is a large- 
 ness of vision, a buoyancy of spirit, an abounding 
 hopefulness, a superb self-confidence in the Eng 
 land of the early seventeenth century which we 
 cannot help noting also in the America of the 
 early twentieth century. In many attributes 
 of his character, in his exuberant vitality, in his 
 attitude toward life, the modern American seems 
 175 
 
AMERICAN HUMOR 
 
 to be a little more closely akin to the bolder 
 Elizabethan than is the modern Englishman. 
 At least, we seem to have preserved rather more 
 of the forthputting of that expansive era, both in 
 language and in literature. Indeed, it would not 
 be difficult to make out a suggestive list of the 
 points of resemblance between Ben Jonson and 
 Mark Twain, for example. Sir Epicure Mammon 
 in the Alchemist is a figure that might be easily 
 paralleled in the works of the most American of 
 our authors; and Meercraft, in the Devil is an 
 Ass/ urges plausibly a variety of fantastic schemes 
 for making money quite in the manner of Colonel 
 Mulberry Sellers. If less deliberately poetic 
 than Ben, Mark has not less imagination or a less 
 vigorous grasp on reality. He is less formal 
 and less rigid; he is gayer and more frolicsome; 
 but he has the same sturdy sincerity and the same 
 artistic conscientiousness. It is perhaps because 
 he thus relates us to our origins that Mark Twain 
 is the foremost of American humorists. 
 
 American humor is also good humor, as we have 
 seen; it is generally genial, even if it is sometimes 
 grim; it is often ironic; and it tends toward 
 imaginative exaggeration. The humor of other 
 peoples may reveal, now and again, one or an 
 other of these characteristics; but we seem to hold 
 the patent on the combination. 
 
 (1908.) 
 
 176 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 IT happened that a chance number of an im 
 portant electrical review came into the hands 
 of a professor in the English department of a 
 leading American university not long ago; and 
 one of the prominent advertisements caught his 
 eye at once. The advertiser vaunted the merits 
 of his " separately excited boosters." The pro 
 fessor lowered the paper for a moment and 
 wondered vaguely what manner of thing a "sep 
 arately excited booster" might be. First of all, 
 what was a booster? Secondly, why should it 
 get excited ? And finally, why need it be excited 
 separately? He was moved to ask a colleag in 
 the electrical department, who easily explained 
 the meaning of the puzzling words and assured 
 him that they would be understood at once by 
 all the experts engaged in practical electrical work, 
 however obscure they might be even to a pro- 
 fest student of the language, ignorant of the latest 
 developments in this special art. 
 
 Within a few days thereafter the professor 
 
 chanced to hear other phrases drawn from the 
 
 rapidly increasing vocabulary of the electricians. 
 
 He was told by a war-correspondent who had re- 
 
 179 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 cently been to the front with the Russian army, 
 that vodka was a "live-wire." He was informed 
 that on a certain occasion a lady of uncertain 
 temper was "off her trolley." He listened to an 
 indignant friend declaring that an objectionable 
 person had been so very annoying that the speaker 
 was ready "to throw him down on the third rail." 
 And then he recalled the stirring stanza of the 
 bard of the British Empire, in which Mr. Kipling 
 declared the readiness of the Native Born on 
 the shores of the seven seas to drink 
 
 To the hearth of our people s people 
 
 To her well-plowed windy sea, 
 To the hush of our dread high-altar 
 
 Where the Abbey makes us We; 
 To the grist of the slow-ground ages, 
 
 To the gain that is yours and mine 
 To the Bank of the Open Credit, 
 
 To the Power-house of the Line! 
 
 And when he had assembled these things in 
 his memory, the professor of English saw their 
 significance at last. Here under his hand was 
 new evidence of the growth of the language, of 
 its constant expansion, of its vitality and of its 
 health. Here was proof again that the English 
 language was abundantly alive, and that how 
 ever firmly rooted it might be in the past it was 
 forever stretching out fresh branches for the future. 
 Its work was not done; and it was keeping itself 
 180 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 fit for the larger duties that loomed before it. 
 Being alive and not dead, it is in constant change, 
 adjusting itself to the varying circumstances, 
 continually making itself ready to meet the ne 
 cessities of the several peoples that speak it. 
 
 The English language is not made; it is a-mak- 
 ing now. It is not finisht and complete, like 
 Latin; nor is it dead, like Latin. It is alive and 
 growing, and therefore it is not yet fixt and de 
 termined; it is ever flexible, yielding, resourceful, 
 as it has always been since its earliest begin 
 nings. It is now the same tongue that the great 
 King Alfred spoke, and yet it is not the same, 
 for it has outgrown its swaddling-clothes and 
 attained to the full stature of a man. It was 
 in the infancy of English that Alfred achieved 
 the marvelous literary feat of creating a prose 
 style, a feat which, so Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 asserts, can be explained only "by remembering 
 that the language which Alfred spoke and wrote 
 was not exactly early English, nor middle Eng 
 lish, much less the highly composite and tessel 
 lated mosaic which we call the latest and con 
 temporary English. It was but the bony skeleton 
 of our English, what the Palatine mount of 
 Romulus was to imperial Rome, what Wessex 
 was to the present empire of the Queen. But 
 it was the bones of our common tongue; it was 
 the bones with the marrow in them; ready to 
 181 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 be clothed in flesh and equipt with sinews and 
 nerves. But this simple and unsophisticated 
 tongue the genius of our Saxon hero so used and 
 molded that he founded a prose style, and taught 
 the English race to trust to their own mother- 
 tongue from the first; to be proud of it, to culti 
 vate it, to record it in the deeds of their ancestors, 
 and to hand it on as a national possession for 
 their children." 
 
 Alfred seems to have had an intuitive knowledge 
 of the fact which later philological science has 
 not yet succeeded in getting generally accepted 
 the fact that every language is born on the lips 
 of those who use it and that it lives in common 
 speech and in daily use, rather than in grammar 
 and in dictionary. Language was spoken long 
 before it was written; and our noble English loses 
 something of its vivacity and even of its vitality 
 when at last it is written down, when it is forced 
 to make its appeal to the eye rather than to the 
 ear. There is a freshness about the spoken word 
 which the written word, and more especially the 
 printed word, has often lost. This freshness the 
 real masters of speech are forever striving to re 
 capture; and their writings are direct and vigor 
 ous and inviting in proportion as they succeed in 
 this endeavor. It was Lowell, a scholar of the 
 widest reading and a most adroit wielder of lit 
 erary allusion and illustration, who once told a 
 182 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 friend frankly that "boys and blackguards have 
 always been my masters in language." 
 
 Most of us have failed to lay firm hold of this 
 principle, that the spoken word is primary and 
 that the written word is secondary only. Failing 
 to grasp it, we fail to see its consequences; and 
 we are likely to fall into the common error of ac 
 cepting a grammar as a code of rules which must 
 be obeyed, and we are prone to hold up a dic 
 tionary as a final authority to settle all questions 
 of usage in orthography and pronunciation. But 
 the grammarian has no warrant to set up as a 
 lawgiver; and he has no commission to do more 
 than declare what he has ascertained as to the 
 structure and the condition of the language at 
 that special period of its changing history which 
 he has undertaken to explain. It is as a record 
 of facts and of tendencies that a grammar is 
 valuable; and its value is diminisht in proportion 
 as the grammarian mistakes his office and risks 
 himself in dogmatic judgments. And as a gram 
 mar has no authority in itself, so also a diction 
 ary has no authority of its own. Its value lies 
 in the accuracy with which it has recorded the 
 facts. As a President of the Modern Language 
 Association stated it plainly a few years ago, the 
 trained scholars look upon a dictionary simply as 
 "a more or less incomplete list of the words and 
 phrases used in a language in some period of its 
 
 183 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 life, with definitions (often inexact) of these 
 words and phrases." 
 
 The dictionary, however ample, however fre 
 quent its supplements, must always remain 
 "more or less incomplete," for the language keeps 
 on growing and expanding and responding to the 
 unexpected needs of those who use it even while the 
 most recent supplement is getting itself into print. 
 And there is need also to emphasize the fact that 
 the language has grown and expanded so abun 
 dantly that no dictionary-maker has ever dared 
 to attempt to include all the words within his 
 reach. The special vocabularies of the several arts 
 and sciences are enormously distended; and only 
 the more important words of these special vocabu 
 laries can be included even in the dictionaries 
 which are planned to extend to several volumes. 
 
 The special terms of the electrician, such as 
 " live-wire" and "third-rail" and "separately 
 excited booster," are recorded only in part 
 even in the lexicons of that science. The special 
 terms of the stage and the theater were carefully 
 collected a score of years ago by an expert for 
 one of the foremost of American dictionaries; 
 and they proved to be so many that it was possible 
 to insert only the most significant and the most 
 likely to be lookt for. These theatrical terms were 
 not evanescent slang; they were the technical 
 words used with absolute exactness by the thou- 
 184 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 sands of men and women connected with the 
 stage. Some of them were known also to the 
 theater-going public, such as " box-office" and 
 " return-check," "act-drop" and "stage-hands"; 
 but many more such as "sky-borders" and 
 "cut-wing," "bunch-lights" and "star-trap," 
 "raking-piece" and "billboard-ticket" would 
 probably not convey any clear and definite idea 
 to the most of those who throng into the theater. 
 It is from these special vocabularies that the 
 language is constantly enlarged and enricht. 
 From these special vocabularies, familiar only to 
 the practitioner of the several arts, certain words 
 and terms and phrases are snatcht up into gen 
 eral use. For a season they may be lookt upon 
 as intruders, as little better than slang; and not 
 a few of them fail to establish themselves in time, 
 unable to make good a right of domicile in the 
 select lexicon of literary usage. But some of 
 them persist and justify their claims to acceptance 
 even by the fastidious. Nothing more clearly 
 indicates the taste and the tact of an author than 
 the way in which he deals with these novel locu 
 tions, some of them barbaric and to be rejected 
 without question, some of them needless, and a 
 few of them fresh and terse and significant. The 
 adroit writer cannot do better than accept the 
 advice proffered by one of the sagest of Moliere s 
 characters, Ariste, in the School for Husbands 
 
 185 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 who declared that it is best to follow the fashion 
 slowly in language as well as in clothes. 
 
 And another comic dramatist, Ben Jonson, 
 who often rivals Moliere in his common sense, 
 put the matter pithily as was his wont, when he 
 asserted that "custom is the most certain mistress 
 of language, as the public stamp makes the cur 
 rent money. But we must not be too frequent 
 with the mint, every day coming, nor fetch 
 words from the extreme and uttermost ages, since 
 the chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and noth 
 ing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter. 
 Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of 
 majesty to style, and are not without their delight 
 sometimes. For they have the authority of 
 years, and out of their intermission do win them 
 selves a kind of grace like newness. But the 
 eldest of the present, and newest of the past 
 language, is the best." 
 
 The French, who have less initiative than the 
 twin-peoples that speak English, have yielded 
 authority to the French Academy, founded by 
 Richelieu to act as the guardian and trustee of the 
 language. Whenever a word or a phrase has 
 been past upon by the Academy and admitted to 
 citizenship, then its validity is placed beyond all 
 question. But there is no French dictionary, 
 even if it is edited by a member of the Academy, 
 which does not include thousands of locutions 
 186 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 not yet warranted by the approval of the Academy 
 as a whole. And there are few of the members 
 of the Academy who do not individually use un 
 hesitatingly a host of words which they collectively 
 have not yet sanctioned. Thus it is that the 
 Academy lags far behind the best usage as certi 
 fied by its own members. Thus also we see how 
 futile was Richelieu s effort to confide the care 
 of the language to any body of men however com 
 petent or however distinguisht. No dikes can 
 be set to the overflowing forces which are ever 
 broadening the common speech; at least, no arti 
 ficial embankments are effective for long. The 
 sole restraint must be sought in that common 
 sense, that tact, and that taste of wise writers, in 
 which Ben Jonson and Moliere wisely put their 
 trust. 
 
 There is significance in the fact that not a few 
 of the members of the French Academy employ 
 freely many phrases not approved by the august 
 tribunal to which they belong. Many authors of 
 the greatest scholarly distinction have delighted 
 to keep their talk vigorous, even if their writing 
 was ultra-refined. Tennyson had a relish for 
 the homely vernacular and used the plainest 
 words, on occasion, finding a keen delight in their 
 unadorned directness. He told Carlyle once that 
 if any man-on-horseback, any masterful Duke 
 William should appear in England to curb per- 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 sonal liberty, "he d soon feel my knife in his guts." 
 And in Professor Peck s biography of Prescott 
 we are told of the fondness of that stately and 
 sonorous historian for the frank colloquialisms 
 of his section and of his time. No doubt Prescott 
 found in these snatches of slang a wholesome 
 corrective for that eighteenth century grandilo 
 quence toward which he was tempted by his early 
 training. 
 
 The biographer points out that in Prescott s 
 first book, the History of Ferdinand and Isa 
 bella, publisht in 1837, the historian "had not 
 yet emancipated himself from that formalism 
 which had been inherited from the eighteenth 
 century writers, and which Americans, with the 
 wonted conservatism of provincials, retained long 
 after Englishmen had begun to write with natural 
 ness and simplicity." And in the preface to the 
 second series of the Biglow Papers, written 
 thirty years after Prescott s first history, Lowell 
 asserted "that the great vice of American writing 
 and speaking" was a studied want of simplicity, 
 that we were in danger of coming to look on our 
 mother-tongue "as a dead language, to be sought 
 in the grammar and dictionary rather than in 
 the heart." Lowell went on to say that "it is 
 only from its roots in the living generation that a 
 language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for 
 its needs; what may be called a literary dialect 
 188 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, 
 till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living 
 thought as monkish Latin." Elsewhere in the 
 same introduction Lowell declared that "there 
 is death in the dictionary," and that "true vigor 
 and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page 
 to page, but from man to man, when the brain is 
 kindled and the lips suppled by downright living 
 interests." 
 
 After praising Lincoln s " truly masculine 
 English, classic because it was of no special 
 period, and level at once to the highest and the 
 lowest of his countrymen," Lowell voiced his 
 scorn of Congressional grandiloquence. In the 
 two score years since Lowell wrote this indict 
 ment, there has been an evident improvement 
 in the directness of our public speaking and in 
 the general appreciation of directness. Bombast 
 there is in plenty still, and talking for Bun 
 combe also; but the evil influence of Webster s 
 orotund manner, wholly unsuited to men less amply 
 framed than he, seems to be passing away. Even 
 if we have now no public speaker who can attain 
 at will to the noble and lofty simplicity of Lincoln, 
 there is satisfaction in recalling that a recent 
 Secretary of State was the author of the racy 
 Pike County Ballads and that a recent President 
 of the United States is the author of the vivid and 
 picturesque Winning of the West. The style 
 189 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 of Mr. Hay and of Mr. Roosevelt, each excellent 
 in its own fashion, is the style of a gentleman 
 and of a scholar, no doubt; but it is also the style 
 of a man, of a man, not stifled in a library, but 
 alert and alive by reason of friendly contact with 
 his fellow-men. Such also is the style of more 
 than one of our younger university presidents, 
 in whose public utterances we find an appfroach 
 at least to the ideal "speech of the people in the 
 mouth of the scholar." 
 
 It is pleasant also to note that the two authors 
 who now have the widest popularity among the 
 peoples that speak English, the two writers of 
 our language whose fame seems most solidly 
 establisht, Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, 
 are both of them anxious always to get into the 
 printed page as much as possible of the elemental 
 energy of the spoken word. Both of them are 
 verbal craftsmen of surpassing skill, bending 
 words to their bidding; and both of them are 
 ever on the alert to avoid the merely bookish 
 and the emptily literate. It is to be noted also 
 that Mark Twain is an American and that Rud 
 yard Kipling still reveals the influence exerted on 
 him in his youth by the American story-tellers 
 from whom he learnt his trade when he was 
 serving his apprenticeship in India. Perhaps 
 this may be taken as evidence that the writers 
 of the United States have arrived at last at a 
 190 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 better understanding of the true principles of 
 rhetoric. They seem to have renounced the 
 long-tailed Johnsonese, most ponderous and most 
 pedantic of dialects, in which our fathers delighted 
 only half a century ago. 
 
 Perhaps this improvement in American style is 
 due in part to the disestablishment of the diction 
 ary as a final authority and to the discrowning of 
 the grammar as the sole monarch of all it sur 
 veyed. Perhaps it is due to the growing percep 
 tion that the spoken language is franker, fresher 
 and freer than the written. The old grammars 
 were absurdly arbitrary and self-sufficient in the 
 rules they laid down and in the way they sought 
 to shackle the healthy growth of the language. 
 They were guilty of the unpardonable sin of de 
 claring that Shakspere and the translators of the 
 English Bible had committed faults of grammar, 
 as if nice customs did not curtsey to great kings. 
 These old-fashioned grammarians arrogated to 
 themselves the privilege of saying that this usage 
 was right and that usage wrong, instead of con 
 tenting themselves with the humbler task of re 
 cording the several usages which they might find 
 in the pages of the masters of English. A compari 
 son of two American grammars, Lindley Mur 
 ray s and the more recent volume by Professor 
 G. R. Carpenter, will serve to show how far we 
 have advanced, for the later author is modest and 
 191 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 tentative where the earlier is arrogant and dom 
 ineering. 
 
 The trouble with these outworn grammars 
 and rhetorics was not merely that they laid an 
 interdict on certain locutions, but that their tone 
 was always prohibitive. They kept on declar 
 ing that this or that must not be done. Their 
 advice was mainly negative; and thus it tended 
 always to cramp and to stiffen. They ordered 
 us to shun double negatives and split infinitives 
 and final prepositions; as if mere avoidance of 
 error would ever give sinew to a phrase. They 
 set up false standards; and the result was that 
 "schoolmaster s English" became a term of re 
 proach, for it described a style juiceless and nerve 
 less, a style unfit for hard work, a style which was 
 as remote as possible from the terse vigor of actual 
 speech. These false standards are not yet wholly 
 cast out; and there are still sold here in the United 
 States every year thousands of text-books which 
 lay down rules of no real validity and which tell 
 the student what not to say, instead of helping 
 him to say what he wants. But altho this is 
 unfortunately true, it is true also that in no de 
 partment of American education has the improve 
 ment been more obvious than in the teaching of 
 English. Attention is now rarely called to the 
 " grammatical errors" of Shakspere; and the 
 callow student is not now puft up with the conceit 
 192 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 that he knows more about the English language 
 than the mighty masters who made it what it is. 
 Three centuries ago, Samuel Daniel, the poet- 
 laureate of King James, made a prophetic in 
 quiry : 
 
 And who in time knows whither we may vent 
 
 The treasures of our tongue? to what strange shores 
 
 The gain of our best glory may be sent 
 
 To enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? 
 
 What world in the yet unformed Occident 
 
 May come refined with accents that are ours. 
 
 Not only in the " unformed Occident" but on 
 the strange shores of the Orient also are the 
 treasures of our tongue now enriching nations 
 unknown when Daniel rimed these lines. And 
 here it is that English is favored above all other 
 languages, that it is spoken not merely in a single 
 compact country but by two great peoples with 
 their many outposts on all the corners of the earth. 
 There is thus the less danger that the language 
 may stagnate. There is thus a far greater variety 
 of sources of refreshment and renewal. The 
 English language is the mother-tongue of the 
 British and of the Americans, of the Canadians 
 and of the Australians; and new words and new 
 meanings are being contributed constantly from 
 every one of these sources of supply. 
 
 Nor is there any danger of contamination in 
 this multitude of contributors, all loyal to the 
 193 
 
THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 same ideal. Professor Lounsbury has stated the 
 governing principle with his customary clearness 
 and common sense. The final decision as to 
 propriety of usage and as to all new words and 
 phrases, he tells us, " rests not with individuals 
 neither with men of letters, however prominent, 
 nor with scholars, however learned. It is in the 
 hands of the whole body of cultivated users of 
 speech. They have an unerring instinct as to 
 its necessities. They are a great deal wiser than 
 any of their self-constituted advisers, however 
 prominent. Fortunately, too, they have the abil 
 ity to carry their wishes into effect. They know 
 what they need, and they can neither be persuaded 
 out of it nor bullied out of it. ... If, in spite of 
 clamor, they retain a word or construction, it may 
 generally be taken for granted that it supplies 
 a demand which really exists." 
 
 (1905-) 
 
 194 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD- 
 LANGUAGE 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 FIVE hundred years ago, a thousand years 
 ago, fifteen hundred years ago, every man 
 of education could talk freely and easily with 
 every other man of education in Latin. It was 
 perhaps his native speech or he might have had 
 to learn it; but he was not held to be an educated 
 man until he had acquired it. Even after Latin 
 had ceased to be a mother-tongue, and when it 
 was spoken only by those who had achieved it 
 by hard labor, it was still the language used in 
 diplomacy, in the church, by men of letters and 
 by philosophers and scientific investigators. Out 
 of the fragments of the Roman Empire new 
 nations had compacted themselves slowly, each 
 with its own tongue; they asserted their inde 
 pendence; they warred with one another; and 
 yet the Latin language, no longer native to any 
 one of them, was the chief means by which they 
 communicated with each other. Latin long 
 sufficed even for their men of letters. As Lowell 
 asserted, "till Dante s time the Italian poets 
 thought no language good enough to put their 
 nothings into but Latin, and indeed a dead 
 tongue was the best for dead thoughts, but 
 Dante found the common speech of Florence, in 
 197 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 which men bargained and scolded and made love, 
 good enough for him, and out of the world around 
 him made a poem such as no Roman ever sang." 
 A little later Chaucer chose the common speech 
 of London for the telling of his tales. And yet 
 after Dante had descended into Hell and after 
 the Canterbury pilgrims had gone forth, Bacon 
 put his great book into Latin and Milton wrote 
 not a few poems in that dead tongue. For a 
 century after Paradise Lost, Latin was still held 
 to be the most fit and proper vehicle for the sys 
 tems of the philosophers and for the discoveries 
 of the scientists. The language of Cicero lingered 
 as a very convenient means of communication 
 for the educated men of all countries; and yet at 
 last the forces of nationality and of race were too 
 strong for it. For more than two centuries now 
 men of letters have exprest themselves in their 
 mother-tongue, and men of science have used each 
 his native language to set forth their contribu 
 tions to the sum of human knowledge. For more 
 than fifteen centuries Latin had been truly a 
 world-language, only in the end to surrender its 
 supremacy, thru no fault of its own, but by sheer 
 force of circumstances. 
 
 For several centuries there seemed to be a likeli 
 hood that the place of Latin might be taken by 
 French. Chappuzeau, a strolling hack-writer of 
 Paris, recorded in 1674 that in his travels in all 
 198 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 ports of Christendom, it had been easy for him 
 to remark "that a prince then, with the sole 
 French language, which has spread everywhere, 
 has the same advantages as had Mithridates with 
 twenty- two different tongues." Voltaire, in the 
 dedicatory letter prefixed to his Age of Louis 
 XIV. asserted that "the French language had 
 become almost the universal tongue"; and for 
 this he gave credit to the Grand Monarch. Even 
 in Germany the great Frederick preferred the 
 more polisht speech of his French enemies to 
 his own ruder vernacular; and he even wrote 
 his needless verses in French. Gibbon, whose 
 earliest book had been composed in French, hesi 
 tated whether to choose that foreign idiom or his 
 own native speech as the language in which to 
 write the * Decline and Fall, the first volume of 
 which appeared in the very year when those who 
 had English for a mother-tongue were separated 
 into two nations. The intensely Italian Alfieri 
 actually composed his earlier plays in French, 
 so complete was the acceptance of that language 
 among men of letters in other countries. So 
 late as 1783 the Academy of Berlin proposed as 
 a subject for a prize-essay, the * Universality of the 
 French Language ; and the reward was won by 
 the brilliant Rivarol, who discust first the reasons 
 why his own language was universally accepted, 
 and then inquired whether the language merited 
 199 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 this and whether it would preserve its dominant 
 position. 
 
 There is no doubt that the French language is 
 well adapted for general use. It has exceeding 
 clarity and precision and point; it has inherited 
 many of the best qualities of the Latin it bid fair 
 to supersede. But it has failed to retain its ap 
 parent universality. Within a century after Vol 
 taire and Frederick, after Gibbon and Rivarol, 
 French had lost a large part of its pre-eminence. 
 This was thru no failing of the language itself, 
 since its merits remained what they had been. 
 The spread of a language and its general accep 
 tance depend very little upon its own qualities 
 and very largely upon the qualities of the race 
 that has it for a mother-tongue and upon the 
 commanding position this race holds in the strug 
 gle for economic mastery. 
 
 Before the first quarter of the nineteenth cen 
 tury was past, it began to be seen that the French 
 nation did not bulk as big in the eyes of the other 
 peoples as it had done a hundred years earlier; 
 and by the end of the last quarter it was obvious 
 that the French had ceased to expand and that 
 the German Empire was more powerful, the 
 Russian Empire also, while the greatest develop 
 ment had taken place in the two branches of the 
 English-speaking race, the British Empire and 
 the United States. The facility and the felicity 
 
 2QO 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 of the French language, the range and the weight 
 of French literature, might for a little postpone 
 the inevitable; but the universality of the French 
 language had ceased to be a fact. Even while 
 Voltaire and Frederick, Gibbon and Rivarol, were 
 still alive, the French had let India and Canada 
 slip from their hands; and thereafter their 
 language could no longer make good its claim 
 to universal acceptance. For a brief space only, 
 for perhaps a century, French had seemed about 
 to take the place of Latin as a world-language. 
 This hope has now long since departed. French 
 may still be the second language of most educated 
 men in the United States and in Great Britain; 
 and for a little while longer it may retain this 
 position, because the rich treasury of French 
 literature amply rewards every one for the labor 
 needed to acquire the key that unlocks it. Yet 
 even in the English-speaking world French is 
 being hard-pusht by German, which is more 
 valuable commercially. And in Italy there are 
 beginning to be signs that French is barely holding 
 its own against English. 
 
 Beyond all question this failure of French to 
 establish itself as a world-language in succession 
 to Latin is a misfortune. It is a misfortune not 
 only to the French themselves but also to the 
 Germans and to us who speak English. The 
 advantages of a world-language are indisputable. 
 201 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 Without it every man must be content to express 
 himself in his own tongue; and every man who 
 needs to know what has been said upon the sub 
 ject in which he is especially interested must of 
 necessity master half a dozen other languages. 
 And this is the disadvantage of the individual 
 only; even more far-reaching and significant are 
 the disadvantages of the several communities 
 who have each only the speech of their own stock. 
 In the absence of a common tongue they may fail 
 to understand one another; and misunderstand 
 ings may lead to bickerings and bickerings may 
 bring them to open strife. So long as French held 
 its universality, even if that universality was not 
 complete, it served as a national speech for the 
 French themselves and it was also the second 
 language of all educated men in which they could 
 communicate without constraint, altho they 
 might reserve each of them his own mother-tongue 
 for all the ordinary uses of life and for self- 
 expression in literature. 
 
 There is no longer any probability that any one 
 of the leading languages will drive out any of the 
 others. Is there any possibility that any one of 
 them can succeed to the position of French as this 
 second language of all educated men? Or is 
 there any possibility of the world-wide acceptance 
 of some artificial language, which shall arouse 
 no international jealousy and which all races 
 202 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 will acquire as the best medium for communica 
 tion with each other? 
 
 Of these artificial languages there is no lack. 
 Volapiik had a fleeting vogue a few years ago 
 and Esperanto to-day has its hundred of advo 
 cates. These invented idioms appeal strongly 
 to many who feel the need of a world-language 
 and who fear the impossibility of the general 
 adoption of any one of the national tongues. 
 Many there are who find themselves forced to 
 consider the practicability of one or another of 
 the artificial languages. So urgent is the ques 
 tion in their minds that they have establisht a 
 Delegation for the Choice of an International 
 Language. Adhesions to this Delegation have 
 been received from two or three hundred organ 
 izations of one kind or another, academies, 
 chambers of commerce, scientific societies and 
 the like. The Delegation has been hailed as 
 "a perfectly practical solution of something about 
 which many have dreamed to no purpose. " 
 
 A student of history may be permitted to 
 doubt whether the recommendation of any Dele 
 gation will really bring us nearer to a practical 
 solution. Hitherto large bodies of men have 
 never been willing to take the trouble to acquire 
 a language merely for its own sake. A language 
 without a literature is sadly handicapt; and no 
 artificial language is ever likely to have a litera- 
 203 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 ture of its own. Poetry especially must be sus 
 tained by emotion; and genuine emotion ex 
 presses itself inevitably in the mother-tongue. 
 The Latin poems of Petrarch and of Milton are 
 pitifully inferior in all that takes poetry home to 
 the hearts of men. Even a great poet is not 
 likely to write great poetry in any language in 
 which he has not "bargained and scolded and 
 made love"; and the greatest poetry is likely to 
 be very close to the common speech and to choose 
 for its own the words of the hearth and of the 
 market-place. Will anybody ever use any in 
 vented dialect by the fireside and when he goes 
 courting? Will children baby-talk in any book- 
 made vocabulary? Will any mother ever croon 
 a lullaby over her cradled child in Esperanto? 
 Will schoolmasters thruout the world combine 
 to instruct youth in a language without a past 
 and with only a doubtful future? And can any 
 language made to order in the study ever possess 
 the vigor and the variety of a language which has 
 been evolved slowly thru the ages in response 
 to the needs of men, like a tool shaping itself 
 slowly to the hand that wields it ? 
 
 It needs to be said also that even if any arti 
 ficial language had all the merits claimed for it 
 by its inventors, we should be justified in doubt 
 ing whether it had any real prospect of expansion 
 and adoption. For not by its own merits does 
 204 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 a language prosper and extend its domain thruout 
 the world, but by the merits of the stock that 
 speaks it. The swords of the Roman legions and 
 the prowess of the Roman proconsuls carried 
 Latin from the Pillars of Hercules to the cataracts 
 of the Nile, and not the noble dignity of the Cice 
 ronian syntax. The swift courage of great gener 
 als and the wily intrigues of adroit diplomatists 
 pusht French into the foremost place, and not the 
 ease and clarity of Moliere s sentences. The 
 fate of French, like the fate of Latin, was wholly 
 independent of the specific qualities of that 
 speech. 
 
 "A language cannot be made either to improve 
 or degenerate of itself," said Professor Louns- 
 bury at the Congress of Arts and Sciences held 
 at St. Louis to commemorate the centenary of the 
 yielding up by the French of that Mississippi 
 valley they had once taken for their own. A 
 language is "nothing but the reflex of the spirit 
 and aims of the men who employ it, and it will 
 rise or fall in accordance with their intellectual 
 and moral condition. Its continued existence, 
 therefore, depends solely upon the fact whether 
 the men to whom it is an inheritance are culti 
 vated enough to enrich its literature, virtuous 
 enough to elevate and maintain its character, and 
 strong enough to uphold and extend its sway." 
 And Professor Lounsbury added a further sugges- 
 205 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 tion of high significance: " it is a question whether 
 under modern conditions any language can be 
 sure of continued existence which does not have 
 behind it the support of a great nationality." 
 If this may be said about a living speech, born 
 on the lips of men, a mother-tongue first lispt at 
 a mother s knee, what chance is there for an arti 
 ficial language, put together in a library, bare of 
 all literature and borne up by no nationality 
 whatever ? 
 
 In Du Bellay s Defence and Illustration of 
 the French Language/ the poet declared loftily 
 that "the same natural law which commands 
 each of us to defend the place of his birth, obliges 
 us also to guard the dignity of our tongue." But 
 who will ever care to guard the dignity of any of 
 these made-to-order languages? Who will ever 
 feel the words of these manufactured vocabularies 
 rising to his lips involuntarily in the hour of need ? 
 When the laws of a powerful nation begin to be 
 written in one of these contrived dialects, when 
 its dictionary and its grammar serve satis 
 factorily for the customary ritual of marriages 
 and of funerals, when countless children cry 
 aloud in the night and use its words to call their 
 mothers, when the thousands of sailors on a 
 mighty fleet and the hundreds of thousands of 
 soldiers in a mighty army shout it in the heat of 
 battle, then and then only may the advocates of 
 206 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 that artificial language begin to take hope. Then 
 and then only may they feel justified in looking 
 forward with confidence. And until then the 
 rest of us can go about our daily duties disregard 
 ing their assertions and their appeals. 
 
 To say this is not to deny that one or another 
 of these artificial tongues may not serve certain 
 of the humbler purposes of commerce, and that 
 some men may use it in bargaining, even if they 
 do not feel it fit for love-making. 
 
 But the need of a world-language is as obvious 
 as ever, even if the futility of any artificial tongue 
 is equally evident. And if the coming world- 
 language cannot be made artificially, it must be 
 one of the existing tongues, already spoken by 
 millions of people. A world-language may be 
 but a dream; but it may be a reality of the future. 
 And if the coming generations are to be possest 
 of this inestimable boon, which of the living 
 tongues will achieve this universal acceptance? 
 It is easy to put the question; and it is impossible 
 to give the answer. Yet it is not difficult to point 
 out certain probabilities. We may dismiss French 
 at the start; it has had its chance and lost it. 
 We may regret the fact but we cannot deny it. 
 The French have been beaten in the race for ex 
 pansion by those who speak German, and by us 
 who speak English. There will soon be twice as 
 many men and women having German for a 
 207 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 mother-tongue as now have French for their 
 native speech. There are already almost three 
 times as many men speaking English as there 
 are speaking French. 
 
 The possibilities of growth and expansion still 
 lie boundless before English. It has already the 
 support not of one great nationality only but of 
 two. It is spoken by more people than speak 
 its two chief rivals together; and its rate of in 
 crease is more rapid than either of theirs. The 
 two nations who claim English as their birthright 
 are at least as abundant in energy, in enterprise, 
 and in determination as the members of any other 
 race. It possesses a splendid literature, holding 
 its own in comparison with Greek and with 
 French, lacking certain of their characteristics, 
 no doubt, but making up for these by qualities 
 of its own with which they are less richly en 
 dowed. This literature reveals no hint of decay 
 or decadence in the present. In the nineteenth 
 century the British branch of it can withstand 
 comparison with the French literature of the 
 same period, while the American branch can 
 hardly be held inferior to the German literature 
 contemporary with it. Already is English appeal 
 ing to certain authors of the smaller races, for 
 example, Maarten Maartens, the Dutchman, and 
 Joseph Conrad, the Pole, who have chosen it as 
 the vehicle of their literature in preference to their 
 208 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 own native idioms of narrower appeal, just as 
 the Scot Hamilton and the Italian Galiani for 
 merly preferred French. It seems to be about to 
 enter on the favored fortune predicted for it early 
 in the nineteenth century by Jacob Grimm, who 
 declared that English has "a just claim to be 
 called a language of the world; and it appears to 
 be destined, like the English race, to a higher and 
 broader sway in all quarters of the earth." 
 
 Jacob Grimm was a large-hearted and open- 
 minded man. He stands in markt contrast to 
 another German who is now temporarily domi 
 ciled in one of the smaller towns of New Eng 
 land, and who seems to fear that the acceptance 
 of a world-language would crowd out the national 
 tongues and force an abandonment of the native 
 speech, such as the Russians have attempted in 
 Poland and in Finland. This German has shrilly 
 asserted that "the acceptance of any language, 
 were it English or French or Spanish, German 
 or Dutch, Russian or Japanese, would immediate 
 ly not only crush the pride of the other nations 
 but would give to the favored people such an enor 
 mous advantage in the control of the political 
 world and such immeasurable preference in the 
 world s markets that no healthy nation would 
 consent to it before its downfall." This might 
 be an important statement, if, by the acceptance 
 of one tongue as a world-language we meant only 
 209 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 the enforced or recognized adoption of that speech. 
 But no one has been so foolish as to suggest any 
 thing of the sort. 
 
 A century ago French was almost accepted as 
 a world-language because it had become the 
 second language of every educated man; and 
 because a book in French was accessible to all 
 men of education everywhere. To predict the 
 possible acceptance of English as a world- 
 language means no more than this, that Eng 
 lish bids fair to become the second language of 
 all educated men everywhere whether their 
 native speech is French or German, Spanish or 
 Italian, Russian or Japanese. 
 
 If this shall come to pass it will need no national 
 edict; it will not have to be registered by any 
 national decree; and it can be delayed by no 
 national pride, for it will have been brought about 
 by sheer force of circumstance, by the march of 
 events against which emperors are powerless 
 even to protest. Whether any one of the living 
 tongues is ever to win acceptance as the second 
 language of educated men, as the highly desirable 
 world-language of international communication, 
 can be decided only by time; and no man may 
 lift the veil of the future. But if any one of the 
 living tongues is to achieve this distinction and 
 to serve this useful purpose, that tongue is most 
 likely to be English. We who speak English 
 210 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 may be eager to help in bringing this about and 
 to hasten it; but we can do little or nothing. 
 Those who speak rival tongues may be determined 
 to prevent the spread of our speech; but they will 
 have little ability even to delay it. If it should 
 come to pass, this will be only because the accept 
 ance of English was inevitable. 
 
 If English should take this commanding posi 
 tion, it would not be because of the merits of the 
 language itself; and yet the language happens 
 to be well fitted for the duties which seem to lie 
 before it. Indeed, English is quite as well quali 
 fied to serve as a world-language as Latin or as 
 French. Undeniably it lacks certain of the special 
 advantages of each of these two supple and ample 
 tongues; but it has also special advantages of its 
 own. Perhaps the most obvious of these ad 
 vantages is the surpassing wealth of its double 
 vocabulary. To quote again from Jacob Grimm, 
 the perfected development of English " issued 
 from a marvelous union of the two noblest 
 tongues of Europe, the Germanic and the Ro 
 manic." And Grimm also asserted that "in 
 richness, in compact adjustment of parts, and in 
 pure intelligence, none of the living languages 
 can be compared with it, not even our own 
 German, which must cast off many imperfections 
 before it can boldly enter on its career." 
 
 It must be noted also that the varied vocabu- 
 
 211 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 lary of English, partly Teutonic and partly 
 Romanic, is likely to be nourisht and refresht 
 in the future, in consequence of the scattering of 
 the English-speaking race on all the shores of 
 all the seven seas, whereby new and expressive 
 words, as well as terse vernacular phrases, are 
 constantly called into existence to meet unex 
 pected needs, the best of these being sooner or 
 later lifted into the statelier speech of literature. 
 It is not a danger to the future of the English 
 language, but a positive gain, that there are in 
 existence hosts of Americanisms and Briticisms, 
 even of Canadianisms and Australianisms, serv 
 ing temporary and local uses in current speech, 
 but all of them ready for a larger utility whenever 
 the loftier English of the library has need for 
 just these vigorous terms. The outposts of the 
 Anglo-Saxon peoples are proving-grounds for the 
 seedlings of English speech. And English has 
 thus an advantage denied, so far at least, to any 
 other language. 
 
 Yet another advantage English has over all its 
 rivals, modern and ancient. It has shed the 
 primitive complexities of syntax which still 
 cumber most of the other living languages, and 
 more especially German. English is almost a 
 grammarless tongue. The genders of English 
 nouns are the natural genders of the things they 
 name, whereas in French, for example, the sun 
 212 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 is masculine and the moon feminine, while in 
 German, the sun is feminine and the moon 
 masculine. In German a maiden is absurdly 
 neuter. Moreover, English nouns are not de 
 clined and English adjectives do not have to shift 
 their terminations to accord with their nouns in 
 case and gender. And in English, once more, 
 verbs are conjugated in the simplest fashion by 
 means of uniform auxiliaries. Altho scholars of 
 an older generation, like Professor Goldwin 
 Smith, may lament this "lack of the power of de 
 clension and conjugation," linguistic students of 
 the younger school, Professor Jespersen, for 
 one, see a long step forward in this simplification 
 of the machinery of communication. They as 
 sert that English is thus revealed as the most 
 advanced of all languages. Probably it was 
 this characteristic of our speech that Grimm had 
 in mind when he declared English to be unrivalled 
 "in compact adjustment of parts and in pure in 
 telligence." Just as the steam-engine of to-day 
 has been simplified by the omission of useless 
 parts and just as all other machines have been 
 reduced to their necessary elements, so the Eng 
 lish language, the verbal machine of a practical 
 race, has got rid of the manifold grammatical 
 intricacies it found it could do without. 
 
 In one respect, and in one respect only, is 
 English inferior to the other modern languages. 
 213 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 Its spelling is still barbarously complex. Its 
 orthography is illogical and ckaotic. It is the 
 easiest of languages to learn by word of mouth; 
 and it is the hardest of languages to acquire from 
 the printed page. The spelling of Italian and the 
 spelling of Spanish present no difficulties to the 
 child or to the foreigner. The spelling of French 
 and the spelling of German cannot be so highly 
 commended; but their condition is far better 
 than the condition of English ; and both in France 
 and in Germany action has already been taken to 
 improve the national orthography, to reduce it 
 to rule, to regulate the analogies and to omit the 
 useless letters which merely distend certain words. 
 The two peoples who speak English like to regard 
 themselves as eminently practical; and now that 
 the example has been set by their two chief com 
 mercial rivals, perhaps they may be aroused from 
 their inertia. There are welcome signs of late 
 that the question is beginning to awaken public 
 interest. It is satisfactory to know that almost 
 all of those whose special studies have qualified 
 them for judgment are united in believing that 
 there is need for prompt action if our noble tongue 
 is to be kept fit for service in the splendid future 
 which seems to lie open before it. 
 
 But the simplifying of English spelling in the 
 future, like the simplifying of English syntax in 
 the past, will not suffice to bring about the accep- 
 214 
 
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE 
 
 tance of our speech as the second language of 
 every educated man. That may be accomplisht 
 only by forces other than those affecting the 
 language itself. In fact, it will come, if ever it 
 shall come, solely because it had to come in the 
 inevitable march of events. 
 
 (1907.) 
 
 215 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND 
 "FONETIC REFORM" 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND "FONETIC 
 REFORM" 
 
 EVER since the Simplified Spelling Board 
 began its work of enlightenment by issuing 
 its first circular, it has been confronted with a 
 special difficulty. The Simplified Spelling Board 
 was organized to hasten the progressive simpli 
 fying of English orthography, and not to introduce 
 a scientifically "fonetic" spelling. The original 
 members of the Board believed it was idle to ex 
 pect that the English-speaking peoples could ever 
 be persuaded to adopt any thorogoing scheme 
 for making our spelling conform closely to the 
 sound of our words. These original members 
 hoped that the public, which had paid no at 
 tention to the extreme demands of the radical 
 "fonetic" reformers, might be led to see the many 
 advantages of hastening the progressive simpli 
 fying of our orthography, which has been going 
 on slowly but unceasingly, and which has given 
 us economic (instead of ceconomicke) , jail (instead 
 of gaol) and wagon (instead of waggon). It was 
 because they desired to accelerate the progress 
 of this steady simplification, that they selected 
 the name for their organization and called them- 
 219 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND 
 
 selves the Simplified Spelling Board. And when 
 a kindred body was establisht in Great Britain 
 to work in alliance with the American group, it 
 chose a similar name and called itself the Sim 
 plified Spelling Society. 
 
 And yet, in spite of the care with which this 
 title was chosen, both the American Board and the 
 British Society are continually accused of advo 
 cating some kind of radical "fonetic reform." 
 A very large proportion of those who have paid 
 no attention to the subject seem to be unable to 
 grasp the difference between a progressive sim 
 plification of English spelling (chiefly by encour 
 aging the existing tendency to drop out needless 
 letters) and an absolute remaking of our orthog 
 raphy in accord with the demands of phonetic 
 science. There are many casual readers of news 
 papers (and even not a few careless writers for 
 newspapers) who suppose that any spelling less 
 complicated than that to which they are accus 
 tomed, must be an instance of " fonetic reform." 
 They are unable to see that there may be a safe 
 middle path of progress, between the retention of 
 all the absurd and illogical complexities of our 
 present spelling and that ultra-logical and revo 
 lutionary upsetting of all our orthographic tra 
 ditions which would be caused by the acceptance 
 of any searching scheme of "fonetic reform." 
 Underlying the countless quips and jibes with 
 220 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND " FONETIC REFORM" 
 
 which the journalistic wits sought to overwhelm 
 the suggestions of the Simplified Spelling Board, 
 there is to be perceived the assumption that the 
 partizans of simplified spelling were urging again 
 in a new guise the impossible proposals of the most 
 impractical "fonetic reformers." 
 
 For this widespread impression there is no 
 warrant whatever. The Simplified Spelling Board 
 came into existence because its members were 
 convinced that the plans of the "fonetic reform 
 ers" stood no chance of adoption and that if 
 anything was to be done to better English orthog 
 raphy, there must be an entirely new departure. 
 This difference of aim and of method the Board 
 has set forth repeatedly; and it has again and 
 again declared that its proposals had no immediate 
 relation to what has been known as " fonetic 
 reform." 
 
 Possibly one reason why there is still more or 
 less confusion in the minds of many between 
 the modest proposals of the Simplified Spelling 
 Board and the sweeping demands of the "fonetic 
 reformers" is to be found in the fact that very 
 few English readers of average intelligence know 
 anything about phonetics or even about the his 
 tory of English spelling; and it is this absence of 
 knowledge which leads them to confound two 
 methods of regenerating English orthography, 
 which are in reality very different in scope and 
 221 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND 
 
 in effect. And perhaps there may be profit in 
 declaring these two methods, and in setting them 
 side by side, so as to show clearly the exact differ 
 ence between them. 
 
 As a result of manifold causes, which it is not 
 necessary to specify here, the spelling of English 
 is in a worse condition than that of any other 
 language. Of course, the real purpose of any 
 method of spelling is to represent the sound of the 
 word, if not with unswerving accuracy, at least 
 as directly as may be possible. A language has 
 a satisfactory orthography only when the spelling- 
 book is wholly unnecessary and when there is a 
 single symbol for every sound and a single sound 
 for every symbol. This is the case in Italian and 
 in Spanish ; and in those two tongues no one read 
 ing any word need have a moment s hesitation 
 as to its pronunciation. That this is not the case 
 in English we all know to our sorrow. 
 
 In English some sounds are represented by 
 many different symbols and some symbols rep 
 resent many different sounds. For example, 
 the sound of e in let represented in at least seven 
 different ways, as in let itself, in head, in heifer, 
 in leopard, in says, in many, and in said. That 
 is to say, this simple vowel sound is in our present 
 spelling indicated sometimes by one vowel, e, 
 sometimes by another vowel, a, and sometimes 
 by combinations as dissimilar as ea, ei, eo, ay, 
 
 222 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND " FONETIC REFORM" 
 
 and ai. As a result, when we come across the 
 words read and lead, it is only from the context 
 that we can find out whether they are to be pro 
 nounced so as to rime with fed or with feed. And 
 the consonants are no better off than the vowels. 
 For instance, the sound of sh in shape is repre 
 sented in at least eight different ways, as in 
 shape itself, in sugar, in suspicion, in conscious, in 
 ocean, in potion, in tissue, and in anxious. That 
 is to say, this simple sound is indicated some 
 times by one consonant s, sometimes by this con 
 sonant doubled, sometimes by 5 in combination 
 with other consonants, and sometimes by com 
 binations into which 5 does not enter. Nothing 
 can be more illogical than the fact that in our 
 present orthography the sound of u in burn is 
 represented by every vowel in the language, as 
 in burn, jern, learn, fir, myrrh and journey. But 
 the very worst example of the chaos of our ordi 
 nary spelling is to be found in the symbol ough, in 
 cough (pronounced coff), in rough (pronounced 
 ruff), in dough (pronounced doe), in through 
 (pronounced throo), in borough (pronounced 
 boro), in hough (pronounced hock) and in plough 
 (prounced plow). 
 
 These are but a few specimens, taken almost 
 at random, to make evident the lack of logic in 
 the orthography of English. While the orthog 
 raphy of French and the orthography of German 
 223 
 
are neither of them perfect, it would be impossible 
 to pick out of either language specimens of spell 
 ing as grotesque as those which have been here 
 selected from our ordinary English vocabulary. 
 And those here presented have been but a few 
 pluckt from an almost limitless field. It is easy 
 enough to understand how revolting such a situ 
 ation must be to radical reformers governed by 
 strict logic. There is no difficulty in perceiving 
 why they have felt moved to act on the advice of 
 Hamlet and " reform it altogether." To many 
 a passionate believer in perfection for its own 
 sake, the very difficulty of the task would be in 
 spiring. 
 
 The task is soon seen to be more difficult than 
 it seems at first. Those who have carefully 
 studied the English language as it is now spoken, 
 appear to be agreed that there are about forty 
 distinct sounds in our speech. Forty sounds, 
 and our alphabet has only twenty-six letters! 
 In fact, when we consider it carefully we find 
 only twenty-three useful letters, since q is em 
 ployed only with , (when it is pronounced kw), 
 since c is pronounced either s or k, and since x is 
 merely ks. Even if every one of the remaining 
 twenty-three letters should be limited rigorously 
 to a single sound a limitation which would 
 itself upset all our orthographic traditions even 
 then there would be some seventeen sounds for 
 224 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND " FONETIC REFORM" 
 
 which our present alphabet would provide no 
 symbol. These seventeen sounds would de 
 mand either the invention of new letters or the 
 adding of new accents of some sort to the existing 
 letters, so that one sound might be represented 
 by the letter as we now know it and another 
 sound by the same letter with an added accent. 
 This is the device by means of which the French 
 and the Germans have got out of a similar diffi 
 culty. 
 
 New accents, new letters, digraphs of one kind 
 or another, these would need to be supplied for 
 nearly one-half of the recognized sounds of our 
 language; and the result of all these additions 
 would be to make a page of English look very 
 strange indeed to most readers. But the addi 
 tion of these new devices would not be as startling 
 and as upsetting to all our orthographic habits, 
 as the changes which would result from the 
 rigorous limitation of every symbol to a single 
 sound and of every sound to a single symbol. 
 As the vowel sound of e in let is now represented 
 in seven different ways, as in let, head, heifer, 
 leopard, says, many, and said, then all the words 
 in at least six of these classes would have to be 
 spelt in some new fashion. As the consonant 
 sound of sh in shape is now represented in eight 
 different ways, as in shape, sugar, suspicion, con 
 scious, ocean, potion, tissue and anxious, then all 
 225 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND " FONETIC REFORM" 
 
 the words in at least seven of these groups would 
 necessarily appear in a novel orthography. 
 
 Now, this is precisely what the extreme "fonetic 
 reformers" demand. They see no health except 
 in the exact adjustment of symbol to sound and 
 of sound to symbol, no matter how abundant 
 and how violent the changes may be which the 
 adoption of this scientific system of orthography 
 would compel. It would mean the making over 
 of English spelling, once for all, with little or no 
 regard for existing conditions. No doubt, there 
 is a great deal to be said in behalf of this proposi 
 tion. It is logical; it would be permanent; it 
 would put English spelling on a level with the 
 spelling of Spanish and Italian; it would make 
 English spelling far more exact than the present 
 spelling of French or German; it has been ap 
 proved by many scientific students of language; 
 and it has been urged by authors as unlike as 
 Max Miiller and Mark Twain. 
 
 But altho the claims of radical "fonetic reform" 
 have been ably presented by eloquent advocates 
 on both sides of the Atlantic for now many years, 
 they have never succeeded in making any im 
 pression on the general public; and there are no 
 signs that they are likely to make any impression. 
 The stock that speaks the English language is 
 not enslaved by logic; it is in the habit of making 
 haste slowly; it prefers to get its reforms piece- 
 226 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND " FONETIC REFORM" 
 
 meal, a little bit to-day and a little more to 
 morrow, as occasion serves and as the event de 
 mands; it cherishes its traditions; it follows 
 its precedents; and it resents all suggestion of 
 violent or radical change. It is very slow to 
 move, and before starting it wants to see where 
 it is going. And if these are the characteristics of 
 the people of Great Britain and the people of 
 the United States, what possible chance is there 
 for any scheme of radical spelling reform? 
 
 Here, then, is the dilemma before those who 
 want to see our noble tongue kept fit for service 
 all over the world. Our present orthography is 
 barbaric and wasteful; so much can hardly be 
 denied by any one who has learnt how to read 
 and write. And yet the adoption for every-day 
 use of anything like real "fonetic reform," the 
 introduction of a scientific system and the com 
 plete readjustment of our orthography, is abso 
 lutely hopeless of achievement; it stands outside 
 the sphere of practical politics. Then what can 
 be done? Can anything be done? 
 
 The Simplified Spelling Board and the Simpli 
 fied Spelling Society were organized because their 
 members believed that something ought to be 
 done and that something could be done. They 
 saw that the spelling of English had slowly bet 
 tered itself, century after century, and that illog 
 ical and barbaric as it is in the twentieth century 
 227 
 
it was not quite so illogical and barbaric as it 
 had been in the nineteenth century and in the 
 eighteenth. They knew that this improvement 
 was very largely the result of individual efforts to 
 simplify by striking out superfluous letters and 
 by bringing anomalous spellings into conformity 
 with general rules. As Whitney told us, "every 
 single item of alteration of whatever kind, and 
 of whatever degree of importance, goes back to 
 some individual or individuals, who set it in cir 
 culation, from whose example it gained a wider 
 and a wider currency, until it finally won general 
 assent, which is alone required to make anything 
 in language proper and authoritative." 
 
 The members of the Simplified Spelling organ 
 izations believe that this process of simplification 
 can be guided and made to operate more swiftly 
 and more broadly. They are aware that most 
 English monosyllables and English is largely 
 a monosyllabic language have now a fairly sat 
 isfactory spelling, cant, for example, and splash, 
 and sum and thing. They know also that a very 
 heavy proportion of our polysyllabic words, de 
 rived mainly from Latin and from Greek, have 
 also an orthography which was not unacceptable, 
 eminent, for instance, and submit and biology, 
 and diabolical and astronomy. They accept the 
 fact that probably nine-tenths of our enormous 
 vocabulary does not stand in immediate need 
 228 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND 
 
 of much orthographic readjustment. They think 
 that the effort to improve might now be confined 
 to the tenth of our words which are more ob 
 viously in need of improvement. They are satis 
 fied to ask for only a little at a time, and to take 
 what they can get, without frightening away their 
 possible supporters by too large a list of changes 
 all at once. 
 
 They believed further that their effort merely to 
 accelerate that progressive simplification which 
 has been evident generation after generation- 
 would not evoke the racial antipathy to revolu 
 tionary radicalism of any kind. Indeed, they 
 hoped that this would be acceptable, as strictly 
 in accord with the racial regard for precedent. 
 What the Simplified Spelling Board proposed to 
 ask this generation to do, was precisely what the 
 preceding generations had done, one after an 
 other. Our forefathers had dropt the u out of 
 governour; why should not we drop the ugh 
 from the end of though? An earlier century had 
 cut sunne and batte down to sun and bat; why 
 should not this century in its turn, follow the good 
 example, and cut programme down to program 
 and borough to boro? 
 
 In other words, the Simplified Spelling Board 
 
 has been establisht merely to continue and to 
 
 hasten a process which has always been at work 
 
 in English orthography. It does not demand 
 
 229 
 
that all which might be done shall be done at 
 once; and it holds with Bismarck that "we 
 had better leave something for our children to 
 do or they may be bored." What the Simpli 
 fied Spelling Board proposes is not any radical 
 scheme of sweeping "fonetic reform" but the 
 encouragement of a simplification by the omis 
 sion of useless letters and by the broader appli 
 cation of analogy the same simplification which 
 no man can fail to find at work more or less con 
 tinuously and more or less intentionally, since the 
 invention of printing. Any improvement is bet 
 ter than none; and as Roger Ascham remarked 
 in his Schoolmaster more than three centuries 
 ago, "If we must cleave to the oldest and not the 
 best, we should be eating acorns and wearing old 
 Adam s pelts." The most vehement and the most 
 vociferous opponents of the proposals of the Sim 
 plified Spellers are themselves employing number 
 less spellings simplified in the past; and whether 
 they know it or not, they are themselves simpli 
 fied spellers, however much they may resent the 
 reminder. 
 
 These opponents may object as much as they 
 please to any special simplification suggested 
 by the American Board or by the British Society; 
 they may abuse that as an instance of orthographic 
 mayhem; they may hold it up to scorn as an ab 
 horrent novelty; and in so doing they are within 
 230 
 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND 
 
 their rights as individuals. But when they go 
 beyond objurgation against any specific simpli 
 fication and attack the principle of simplification 
 itself, they then discover themselves as innovators, 
 in that they are now opposing a principle which 
 has been accepted in the past and which has 
 brought about whatever slight improvement we 
 can discover in our spelling in the twentieth cen 
 tury over that of our forefathers in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 These objectors reveal their own failure to 
 understand what they are talking about when 
 they confuse Simplified Spelling with "fonetic 
 reform"; and as Lord Morley has remarkt in 
 one of his recent essays, "Nothing makes men 
 reason so badly as ignorance of the facts." Per 
 haps it is not too much to suggest that the most 
 violent of these objectors are disclosing themselves 
 as disloyal to the language they are pretending to 
 defend, since they are antagonizing and striving 
 to delay a modest effort to make English fitter 
 for its impending adoption as a world-language, 
 that is to say, as the second tongue of all edu 
 cated men thruout the habitable globe. 
 
 (1909.) 
 
 231 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE 
 THEATER 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 AT the close of the memorable journey of 
 the Comedie-Franfaise to England in 1878, 
 Matthew Arnold wrote a characteristic paper 
 on the French Play in London, in the course 
 of which he took occasion to declare that 
 "the pleasure we have had in the visit of the 
 French company is barren, unless it leaves us 
 with the impulse to mend the condition of our 
 theater." He asserted that the desire for the 
 drama is irresistible, and that, therefore, we should 
 "organize the theater"; and he held up as model 
 the organization of the Come die-Francaise. He 
 advised that a company of good actors be formed 
 in London, and that to this company a theater 
 should be given, and also a grant of money from 
 the Science and Art Department. He proposed 
 that the condition of this grant should be an agree 
 ment on a repertory chosen out of the works of 
 Shakspere and of the best modern British dram 
 atists; and he added that it would be needful 
 to appoint a government Commissioner to see 
 that the terms of the agreement were carried out. 
 It is now nearly a quarter of a century since 
 Matthew Arnold urged these suggestions with 
 all his playful eloquence; and as yet, neither in 
 235 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 Great Britain nor in the United States has any 
 thing been accomplisht toward such an organ 
 ization of the theater as he had in view. But 
 the subject has been incessantly discust. Many 
 and fervent have been the appeals of zealous and 
 youthful spirits, first, to that intangible entity 
 the State, for a subsidy, and second, to that al 
 luring personality, the benevolent multi-million 
 aire, for an endowment. Fervent these appeals 
 were, no doubt, but also not a little vague; and, 
 perhaps, this is a chief reason why they have failed 
 to persuade. Indeed, it is not unfortunate, even 
 for those ardently urging a reform, that the man 
 who holds the purse-strings should never be 
 seduced by empty declamation, that he should 
 be hard-hearted and slow-moving, and that he 
 should be won over at last only after careful con 
 sideration of all the facts of the case. 
 
 Now, what are the facts in this case? What 
 are the reasons which led Matthew Arnold to 
 call upon his countrymen to " organize the the 
 ater"? Why is it that there is in England and 
 America an insistent demand that the theater shall 
 be either subsidized by the State or endowed by 
 the wealthy? What are the conditions of the 
 theater in the English-speaking countries which 
 call for amelioration? Apparently the theater is 
 flourishing; never were there more playhouses 
 than there are to-day, and never were these vari- 
 236 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 ous places of amusement more thickly thronged 
 with playgoers, pleased with the entertainment 
 proffered to them. There is no denying the sump- 
 tuousness, the propriety, and even the beauty of 
 the scenery and costumes and decorations set 
 before us on the stage nowadays. There is no 
 doubt that we have many opportunities for observ 
 ing acting which attains to a high level of technical 
 accomplishment, even if actual inspiration and 
 indisputable genius are as rare in the twentieth 
 century as they have been in all its predecessors. 
 Even in the plays themselves there has been of 
 late a distinct advance. Chatter about the decline 
 of the drama there is now, as there always has 
 been, and always will be. Euripides was still 
 alive when Aristophanes declared the decadence 
 of Attic tragedy; and Ben Jonson never hesitated 
 to express his low opinion of those wonderful 
 contemporaries of his, whose bold dramas have 
 made the Elizabethan reign the noblest epoch in 
 the history of English literature. Of course, 
 there is no period which would not be crusht by 
 a comparison with that illumined with the genius 
 of Sophocles and with that irradiated by the genius 
 of Shakspere. It is unprofitable ever to overpraise 
 the plays of our own time; but it is unwise also 
 to depreciate them unduly. Even if the acted 
 drama of the English language at the beginning 
 of the twentieth century is not equal in range, in 
 2 37 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 skill, in power, to the acted drama of the French 
 language in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 it has at least freed itself from the disheartening 
 insincerity which characterized the plays in Eng 
 lish that had been adapted from the French. 
 
 As Matthew Arnold pointed out, the result 
 of the effort to adjust a plot caused by French 
 social conventions to the conditions of English 
 life, was to produce in the attentive observer 
 "a sense of incurable falsity." So long as the 
 prevalent plays were adaptations of so fantastic 
 an unreality, it was very difficult to take the 
 theater seriously, or to expect that the dramatist 
 should observe life faithfully or deal with it hon 
 estly. In the quarter of a century since Matthew 
 Arnold made his plea for organizing the theater, 
 this reproach has been taken away from the 
 English-speaking stage. Adaptations from the 
 French have almost disappeared; and when a 
 foreign play is now presented in English, very 
 rarely does it masquerade as an English play. It 
 remains French or German; it retains its native 
 atmosphere; it is a translation, not an adapta 
 tion. This is an immense gain; this is the first 
 necessary step towards a revival of public inter 
 est in the drama of our own language. Our 
 acted drama may be a poor thing, even now, but 
 it is at least our own; it is no longer borrowed 
 from our neighbor. Whatever criticism we may 
 238 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 pass upon the Aristocracy of Mr. Bronson 
 Howard, the Gay Lord Quex of Mr. Pinero, 
 the Liars of Mr. H. A. Jones, the Alabama 
 of Mr. Thomas, or the Shore Acres of the late 
 Mr. Herne and it may be that no one of these 
 plays is an impeccable masterpiece we must 
 see in each of them a sincere effort to deal with 
 life at first hand. 
 
 If the theater is thus prosperous wherever the 
 English language is spoken, and if the dramatists 
 are again striving to handle the stuff out of which 
 alone literature can be made, what need is there 
 for any modification of the situation ? Why can 
 not the stage be let alone to take care of itself? 
 What call is there for subsidy or endowment? 
 The answer to these questions is to be found in 
 the statement that the theater is now governed 
 too much by purely commercial considerations, 
 and that the art of the drama is the only one of 
 the arts which is compelled to pay its own way, 
 and which is forced to make its own living under 
 conditions which limit its exertions to what is im 
 mediately profitable. 
 
 It is not bad for the artist that he has to earn his 
 own bread, and that he is bound to satisfy the 
 taste of his fellow-man; and it is not good for 
 any art that those who practise it should be shel 
 tered and coddled. No disadvantage has it been 
 to us that the two greatest of modern dramatists, 
 2 39 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 Shakspere and Moliere, were each of them 
 managers with a direct interest in the takings at 
 the door. No advantage was it to anybody that 
 Goethe was, by the grace of the Grand Duke, 
 made independent of the public and allowed to 
 do what he liked on the stage of the Weimar 
 theater, since the result of Goethe s independence 
 of the public was that the Weimar theater brought 
 forth little worthy to live on the German stage. 
 The arts are democratic, all of them; but none 
 more so than the drama, since it is inconceivable 
 without the assistance of the people at large. 
 If any proof were needed of the insanity of the 
 Bavarian king, it could be found in the fact that 
 he liked to be the sole spectator of performances 
 in his opera-house. 
 
 Yet the experience of history seems to show 
 that it is unwise to leave any art wholly at the 
 mercy of the money- making motives. Even in 
 the English-speaking countries, where more is 
 abandoned to private enterprize than is thought 
 advisable among the Latin races, galleries have 
 been built for the proper exhibition of the works 
 of living painters and sculptors; and concert- 
 halls have been erected for the proper performance 
 of orchestral music. In New York, for example, 
 and only a stone s throw from each other 
 stand the Carnegie Music Hall and the Vander- 
 bilt Gallery (of the Fine Arts Building), visible 
 240 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 evidences of the aid willingly extended by the 
 wealthy to the other arts. In Carnegie Hall, 
 in the course of the season, concerts are given by 
 three or four different symphony-orchestras, the 
 continued existence of which is conditional upon 
 a large subscription or on a guarantee fund sub 
 stantially equivalent to a subsidy. And during 
 the same winter months, a series of performances 
 of grand opera, in Italian, in French, and in Ger 
 man, is given at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
 performances made possible only by a very large 
 subscription from the box-holders, and by a reduc 
 tion of the rental from the figure which the owners 
 of the building would demand if they sought sim 
 ply for a proper return on the money invested. 
 
 If men of means had not chosen to sink their 
 money in the Metropolitan Opera House and in 
 Carnegie Hall; if Major Higginson were now to 
 withdraw his support from the Boston Sym 
 phony Orchestra; and if the public-spirited 
 music-lovers of Chicago and Pittsburg were to 
 refuse any further subsidy to the orchestras of 
 which they are justly entitled to be proud; if 
 music were to be deprived of all artificial assistance 
 and forced to depend for existence solely upon the 
 working of purely commercial motives then 
 music would be exactly in the same position in 
 which the drama is now. Good music would 
 still be heard, it is true; but we may be certain 
 241 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 that there would not be so many performances as 
 there are now; and, what is more important, the 
 performances would not be so adequate or so 
 satisfactory, and the programs would be more in 
 accordance with the prevailing taste of the less 
 cultivated portion of the public. The managers 
 of concerts would be less likely to risk upon their 
 programs either the more austere of the classic 
 composers or the more aggressive of the younger 
 musicians; and they would tend to confine their 
 selections to a small list of establisht favorites. 
 
 Much has been done for music; just as much 
 has been done in other ways for painting, for 
 sculpture, and for architecture. Nothing at all 
 has been done for the drama. It is wholly de 
 pendent upon the law of supply and demand, and 
 so long as this is the case, the manager will natu 
 rally seek to produce the kind of play likely to 
 please the most people. He will perform it con 
 tinuously, seven or eight times a week for as 
 many weeks as possible. He will proclaim its 
 merits as vehemently as he can; and he will ad 
 vertize it very much as a circus or a sensational 
 novel is advertized. He will be prone to turn 
 away from any kind of play which is not so likely 
 to please the largest portion of the public, which 
 cannot be forced to a long run, and which cannot 
 be boomed as a freak-fiddler is boomed. His aim 
 will be to give the public what it wants. 
 242 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 In this last phrase there lurks a fallacy. There 
 is no such entity as "the public" wanting a definite 
 thing; or else we should not see the Irving-Terry 
 company and the Weber-Fields company both 
 playing to crowded houses in the same city at the 
 same time. There are as many separate publics 
 as there are separate attractions; these several 
 publics intersect, and every individual probably 
 belongs to more than one. For example, there 
 is a very large public for Buffalo Bill s Wild West, 
 and there is a far smaller public for the symphony 
 concerts; but of a certainty there are a goodly 
 number of persons with a catholicity of taste 
 which will enable them to enjoy both these en 
 tertainments. The public which delights in 
 melodrama and in musical farce is enormous; 
 whereas the public which would care to see a 
 performance of the Oedipus of Sophocles or 
 the Ghosts of Ibsen, is very restricted probably 
 it is not more than enough to fill a small theater 
 two or three times in the course of a season. The 
 public capable of a severe joy in the beholding 
 of Oedipus or of Ghosts may be taken as one 
 extreme; and the public which laughs hilariously 
 at musical farce and which thrills sympathetically 
 at melodrama may be taken as the other; and 
 between these are publics of all sorts and of all 
 sizes, a limited public for Pelleas and Melis- 
 ande, a public less limited for the School for 
 243 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 Scandal and for As You Like It, a public fairly 
 large for Hamlet, and a public extensive beyond 
 all belief for Uncle Tom s Cabin. The public 
 for broad farce is larger than that for the comedy 
 of manners; and the public for the comedy of 
 intrigue, relieved by sentiment, is larger than the 
 public for tragedy. 
 
 But the fallacy in the phrase "what the public 
 wants" really matters little. Whether there is 
 one homogeneous public or whether there are any 
 number of smaller and intersecting publics is of 
 no importance, so long as the theater is controlled 
 solely by the law of supply and demand like any 
 other business. The manager has to present the 
 kind of play which is calculated to please the 
 largest number of possible spectators, and he will 
 be likely to shrink from the kind of play which 
 would appeal to a small public only, which cannot 
 be forced into a long run, and which does not 
 lend itself to circus-methods of booming. In fact, 
 the conditions of the theater being what they are 
 now in New York and in London, the wonder is 
 that the level of the stage is not lower than it is 
 actually, and that the more intelligent playgoers 
 ever have an opportunity to see anything other 
 than spectacle and sensation. That we have a 
 chance now and then to behold more plays of a 
 more delicate workmanship and of a more po 
 etic purpose is due partly to the courage and the 
 244 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 liberality of certain of the managers, and partly 
 to the honorable ambition of certain of the actors 
 and actresses, seeking occasion for the exercise 
 of their art in a wider range of characters. 
 
 To those managers and to these actors and 
 actresses we owe also casual presentations of a 
 limited number of Shaksperian plays, tragic and 
 comic, and also of a few of the old comedies. 
 But these performances of the classics of English 
 dramatic literature are infrequent; and, moreover, 
 they are not altogether satisfactory, since it is 
 rare to find the smaller characters in the hands of 
 trained and competent performers. In the days 
 of the two patent theaters in London, when Drury 
 Lane and Covent Garden had a monopoly of the 
 serious drama, the cast of a Shaksperian comedy 
 was extraordinarily strong; and even in New York 
 a quarter of a century ago, the late Mr. Augustin 
 Daly had a company so large that on one occasion 
 it presented the School for Scandal at the Fifth 
 Avenue Theater, while the performers not needed 
 in that play went over to Newark to perform 
 London Assurance. But the monopoly of the 
 patent theaters in London was abolished long 
 ago; and the large companies, such as Mr. 
 Daly kept together for a score of years, have been 
 broken up. Plays are now presented by com 
 panies, every performer in which was specially 
 engaged for the specific part he has to act; and 
 245 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 altho this practise has advantages of its own, it 
 does not tend to facilitate the reviving of the 
 masterpieces of our older drama. 
 
 Thus the drama is at a grave disadvantage as 
 compared with the other arts, owing to the ab 
 sence of all outside aid. There are public libra 
 ries for the preservation of the masterpieces of 
 literature, and there are public galleries and pub 
 lic museums for the proper display of the master 
 pieces of painting and of sculpture. There is 
 no public theater where the masterpieces of the 
 drama are presented for our study and for our 
 stimulation. It is true that we can read the great 
 plays of the great dramatists; we can read them 
 by ourselves at our own firesides; but how pale 
 is a perusal compared with a performance, how 
 inadequate, how unsatisfactory ! Perhaps a mere 
 reading may enable us to appreciate some of the 
 purely literary beauties of the play; but it will 
 hardly help us to apprehend its essential dra 
 matic qualities, the very qualities which give 
 the play its true value, and which stand revealed 
 at once when the play is presented in the theater. 
 
 A true drama, comic or tragic, witty or poetic, 
 is always conceived by its author in terms of the 
 theater; he means it to be performed by players, 
 in a playhouse, before playgoers. And every 
 true drama loses more or less of its power when 
 it is deprived of the theater, of the actors, and of 
 246 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 the audience. Recent revivals have proved that 
 many a Greek tragedy and many a Latin comedy, 
 remote as these may be from our modern modes of 
 thought and disestablisht as their technic may 
 seem to us to-day, can shake off the dust of the 
 book-shelves and start to life again with surprizing 
 vitality, when it is set before us on a stage by 
 actors of flesh and blood. Whatever the im 
 pression produced upon the reader in the library 
 by Macbeth and As You Like It, by the Al 
 chemist and A New Way to Pay Old Debts/ 
 by the School for Scandal and She Stoops to 
 Conquer, it is not so deep, not so varied, not so 
 lasting as that produced upon the spectator in the 
 theater. The frequent and liberal revival of the 
 masterpieces of dramatic literature, English and 
 foreign, ancient and modern, would be very ex 
 pensive. In a pecuniary sense it would not pay, 
 any more than the exhibition of Rembrandt s 
 Gilder would pay as a private enterprize. 
 
 So long as the theater is governed chiefly by 
 commercial considerations, we have no right to 
 expect managers to take a great risk for a very 
 doubtful reward. Most of the managers will go 
 on appealing to the largest public with melodrama 
 and with musical farce; they will strive to make 
 money out of sensation and spectacle; and in so 
 doing they will be wholly without blame. From 
 a minority of the managers, men of a wiser liber- 
 247 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 ality and a finer taste, and from actors of a lofty 
 aspiration, we shall get now and again a modern 
 play of a subtler significance and an old play of 
 a more poetic beauty; and for these guerdons we 
 ought honestly to be grateful. So long as the 
 theater is left to the operation of the law of sup 
 ply and demand, it is idle to look for a manager 
 who will make it his business to produce plays 
 which he knows cannot be forced into a long run, 
 and who will take pleasure in presenting the 
 masterpieces of dramatic literature as they ought 
 to be presented. Without a subsidy or an en 
 dowment or financial support of some kind, he 
 could hardly hope to pay his expenses. 
 
 A subsidy from the State was what Matthew 
 Arnold proposed, and he suggested the establish 
 ment of a British Theater on the model of the 
 The atre Francais. Most of the Parisian the 
 aters are private enterprizes, but four of them are 
 more or less supported by the national govern 
 ment, two for music, the Ope*ra and the Ope ra- 
 Comique, and two for the drama, the Theatre 
 Francais and the Oddon, the official title of the 
 latter being the Second Theatre Francais. The 
 Theatre Francais is a sumptuous playhouse owned 
 by the State and assigned rent-free, with a large 
 annual subsidy also, to the Come die-Francaise, 
 a commonwealth of the chief actors and actresses, 
 who govern themselves more or less under the 
 248 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 control of a director appointed by the government. 
 The associates elect their successors; they en 
 gage the subordinate performers on salary; and 
 they divide among themselves the annual profits 
 of their enterprize. They are expected to remain 
 members as long as they are fit for service; and 
 then they can take a farewell benefit and retire 
 on a pension. They have various committees of 
 their own; but they generally leave abundant 
 power to the director, who is the executive, and 
 who is also a sharer in the profits. 
 
 Altho it has had its ups and downs, the Theatre 
 Francais is the foremost theater of the world ; and 
 its company is incomparably large and gifted, 
 most of the actors and actresses having been 
 trained at the Conservatory, and having been 
 chosen because of their skill in interpreting the 
 tragedies of Corneille and Racine and the com 
 edies of Moliere and Beaumarchais. It gives 
 seven or eight performances a week, and the 
 newest play is never repeated more than four 
 times in that period, and rarely more than three. 
 One or two performances a week are always de 
 voted to the classical drama, comic or tragic; and 
 any one spending a single winter in Paris may 
 have occasion to see half of the acknowledged 
 masterpieces of the French stage. Upon the re 
 maining nights are presented modern pieces chosen 
 from a vast and varied repertory. Comparatively 
 249 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 few of the best plays of the last half-century were 
 originally produced at the Theatre Francais; 
 but this theater took them over after they had 
 proved their value on other stages. Altho 
 the Theatre Francais is continually experiment 
 ing with new pieces, in prose and in verse, by the 
 foremost living French dramatists, its chief func 
 tion is rather to be a museum of the French drama, 
 ancient and modern; and its main reliance is 
 more upon its repertory than upon its novel 
 ties. 
 
 The Come die-Francaise is an institution which 
 we may easily envy, but which we should find it 
 very difficult to imitate. It is what it is, because 
 it is a growth of more than two centuries. It 
 is one of the only two institutions of the Monarchy 
 which survived the Revolution with undiminisht 
 prestige; the other is the French Academy. It 
 was not a creation of the king s, even when it was 
 founded; it was only the consolidation, under 
 royal control, of three companies of actors already 
 existing as private enterprizes. Even now, it is 
 not so much governed by its statutes as it is ruled 
 by its traditions; and we cannot hope to ex 
 temporize traditions. If it did not now exist, 
 we may doubt whether it would be possible to 
 establish it to-day, even in France, where every 
 body is trained to expect governmental super 
 vision and support for all the arts. Still more may 
 250 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 we doubt whether the result would not have 
 been sadly disappointing if the British had taken 
 Matthew Arnold s advice a score of years ago 
 and had formed a company of actors, assigning 
 to this body a theater in London, a grant from 
 the Science and Art Department, and a govern 
 ment Commissioner. As Bismarck said, "you 
 cannot ripen fruit by setting lamps under the 
 tree." No worthy rival of the Come die-Francaise 
 could be treated off-hand by mere fiat. 
 
 But Matthew Arnold must have known how 
 very unlikely it was that any attention would 
 be paid to his advice. Indeed, we who speak 
 English need not waste our time in asking for aid 
 for the theater from the government. We shall 
 not get it, no matter how insistent our demand. 
 And if we in America are wise enough to consider 
 the situation carefully, we shall not seek govern 
 ment aid; because, if we were to get it, the last 
 state of the drama might be worse than the first. 
 In the one art in which the government has had to 
 take an interest, and upon which it may even 
 have exerted some influence, the result has only 
 too often been sadly unsatisfactory, as all will 
 admit who recall the pitifully pretentious United 
 States Building set amid the beautiful palaces 
 of the Chicago Exhibition. Altho, as a people, 
 we Americans seem to have a remarkable aptitude 
 for art, we are as yet untrained to appreciate it; 
 251 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 and we are as yet unwilling to pay proper re 
 spect to expert opinion. 
 
 The civil service of the nation and of many of 
 the state governments is now highly efficient; 
 but the civil service of most of our cities is in a 
 less satisfactory condition; and it is from the city, 
 rather than from the state or the nation, that a 
 state-aided theater would expect its support. It 
 is true that, even in the cities, the outlook is en 
 couraging and the foul atmosphere of the spoils- 
 system is lifting; but it has not now been lifted 
 entirely; and no lover of the drama would face 
 with composure the prospect of a municipal the 
 ater in New York, where Tammany could turn 
 it over to the control of some ignorant spoilsman. 
 But no more words need be wasted in considering 
 the advantages and disadvantages of a theater 
 supported by the government, as the Theatre 
 Francais is in France. Such a discussion is aca 
 demic only, since in the present state of opinion 
 among the peoples that speak English, the debate 
 can hardly have any practical result. 
 
 It is not by seeking government aid that the 
 problem of the theater can be solved in the United 
 States or in Great Britain. Those who wish to do 
 something for the drama must rely on themselves, 
 taking pattern by those who have been able to 
 accomplish wonders for the elevation of music. 
 When this decision is once reacht the question 
 252 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 is easier of answer. What is it we really want, 
 after all? We want to find a retort to the man 
 ager who tells us that he cannot afford to attempt 
 certain more delicate forms of dramatic art, or to 
 present the masterpieces of the drama as they 
 ought to be presented. We want to help this 
 manager to accomplish that which the existing 
 purely commerical conditions of the theater pre 
 vent him from attempting. What has to be 
 done is to come to the aid of the drama, just as 
 the owners of the Metropolitan Opera House 
 came to the aid of the opera. The opera in New 
 York is still a private enterprize, but it would be 
 difficult to present the music-drama, with all 
 the parts taken by singers of wide renown, if the 
 manager was not sustained by the heavy sub 
 scriptions, and especially by a release of the full 
 rental which the owners of the edifice would ex 
 pect if they had been governed solely by the desire 
 to get the largest possible return for the money 
 invested. 
 
 The same problem presented itself in Vienna 
 and in Berlin, in spite of the fact that there were 
 state-aided theaters in both cities; and the solu 
 tion discovered by the Germans is at the service of 
 the Americans and the British. It is very simple, 
 but it is perfectly satisfactory. A body of sub 
 scribers raises a sum of money sufficient to pay 
 the rent of a theater, and they then turn the the- 
 253 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 ater over rent-free to a manager who will pledge 
 himself to conduct it along certain lines, and to 
 accord certain privileges to the subscribers. The 
 manager will try to make the theater pay him a 
 profit, and he will try to attract the public; but 
 it will be rather the smaller public that likes the 
 better class of play than the larger public that is 
 more easily pleased by sensation and by spectacle. 
 With a subsidy equivalent to his rental, the man 
 ager would bind himself to give up the habit of 
 unbroken runs, the practice of acting the same 
 play six and seven and eight times a week. He 
 would be able to return to the earlier custom of 
 the English-speaking theater, that of a nightly 
 change of bill, such as we still expect at the opera, 
 and such as we find at the Theatre Francais in 
 Paris, at the Lessing Theater in Berlin, and at the 
 Volks-theater in Vienna. 
 
 Under these conditions a play might still have 
 a very long run, but its run would not be com 
 pacted within a brief period. Every new piece 
 and every important revival would at first appear 
 on the bills for three of the seven performances 
 or even for four; and then as its attractive power 
 waned, it would drop down to two performances 
 a week, perhaps, and finally to one a fortnight. 
 Thus two or even three different plays might be 
 running at the same time, as is the case now at 
 the Theatre Francais, where the * Monde ou Ton 
 254 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 s ennuie attained its five-hundredth perform 
 ance about ten years after it was first produced, 
 and where it can still be seen every winter. Thus 
 it would be possible to bring out plays of delicate 
 texture or of historical interest, certain to attract 
 for a dozen or a score of performances, but not 
 likely to draw full houses for a month at a time. 
 If the manager was wisely chosen and if the 
 contract with him was for a term of years, three 
 at least, or five, with the understanding that it 
 would be renewed certainly if his management had 
 approved itself to the subscribers, then much 
 should be left to his discretion. The contract 
 would debar him from performing the more vio 
 lent melodrama or the lighter forms of farce; and 
 might require him to revive every season two or 
 three Shaksperian plays, either comic or tragic, and 
 two or three of the older comedies of our language. 
 He would not be required, or even expected, to 
 mount these plays as elaborately or as expensively 
 as is the custom when the appeal to the love of 
 spectacle is an approved method of pleasing the 
 unthinking crowd. And these standard plays, 
 once produced with scenery and costumes and 
 properties, sufficient but not extravagant, would 
 be kept in stock ready for performance at any time 
 during the season at a week s notice. At first, 
 of course, the repertory would not be large, but 
 it would become more varied and richer year by 
 2 55 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 year. The manager would be ever on the look 
 out for the best modern plays, American and 
 British, French and German. He would be 
 able also to select from the large stock of pieces 
 written in our language during the past twenty 
 years which are unfamiliar to the latest generation 
 of playgoers. His aim would be to get together 
 a repertory of plays, old and new, which would 
 make him somewhat independent in case the 
 actual novelties he produced should not prove 
 attractive. A solid repertory is invaluable to a 
 manager; it is to him what a reserve- fund is to 
 a banker. 
 
 To do justice to so varied a repertory, a large 
 and competent company of actors and actresses 
 would be required, not stars, of course, but 
 ambitious and accomplisht performers. There 
 would be no need to pay extravagant salaries, as 
 an engagement in such a theater would soon 
 be esteemed an honor. Furthermore, the actors 
 would be spared the wear and tear of a succession 
 of " one-night stands"; and they would also en 
 joy the luxury of a home. The frequent change 
 of bill would tend to decrease the unwillingness 
 of young actors and actresses to appear in parts 
 they might deem unworthy of them, an unwilling 
 ness which has some justification under the exist 
 ing conditions, when a character may have to be 
 sustained for a hundred times in succession. 
 256 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 But when the bill changes every night, a per 
 former sure of a good part on Monday and on 
 Wednesday is less strenuous in his objection to 
 performing a part not so good on Tuesday. The 
 accumulation of a repertory would thus tend to 
 strengthen the casts of the more important plays; 
 and there might even be developt in time a 
 disinterestedness like that displayed in the fa 
 mous Meiningen company, where the foremost 
 actors were accustomed to appear in the smallest 
 parts. 
 
 If such a theater were to be establisht in 
 New York, its season should be at least eight 
 months long. Perhaps the manager might be 
 allowed the privilege of taking the company to 
 other cities during the summer months; but the 
 wisdom of this may be doubted; and perhaps 
 a part of the rental might be earned by leasing 
 the playhouse itself during the summer months 
 to some other manager for the performance of 
 lighter summer plays. But, if possible, it would 
 be best to keep the theater closed except when 
 its own company was playing in it, and not to 
 let the company play anywhere else. If possible, 
 also, it would be desirable to build a special the 
 ater as soon as the success of the scheme was 
 assured, a special theater more spacious and 
 more comfortable both before and behind the 
 curtain than any now existing in New York. 
 257 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 The house should not be too large for the subtler 
 passages of comedy; but its lobbies and its aisles 
 and its seats should all be upon a generous scale. 
 If the theater could succeed in accustoming a cer 
 tain body of constant playgoers to feel at home 
 within its walls, special nights might be set apart 
 for the subscribers, like the Tuesdays of the 
 Theatre Francais, to attend which is a point of 
 honor in the fashionable world of Paris. 
 
 Those who undertake to carry out any such 
 scheme as is here suggested will have to face one 
 serious difficulty, and they will have to avoid 
 one grave danger. The difficulty will be that of 
 finding a fit manager, who must be a man of taste, 
 of tact, of experience, of executive ability, and of 
 sufficient means to support the enterprize. The 
 danger will be that of yielding to the assaults of 
 the cranks and of the freaks, who will denounce 
 any effort to come to the aid of the drama which 
 does not promise to satisfy their demands. To 
 appeal successfully to the intelligent public, the 
 promoters of a scheme like this must avoid all 
 pretentious affectation of "elevating the theater" 
 and of encouraging only the poetic drama. They 
 must refrain from all promises to bring out the 
 more or less dramatic poems of Browning and of 
 Maeterlinck, or to push forward the darker pict 
 ures of life shown in the dramas of Ibsen and 
 Hauptmann. They must not expect to discover 
 
 258 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE THEATER 
 
 new dramatists; and they need count on no aid 
 from the mere men of letters, who, as such, have 
 no more knowledge of the theater than the paint 
 ers have. In other words, the promoters of this 
 scheme ought to be practical men, taking a 
 common-sense view and trying to improve the 
 conditions of the actual theater. They should look 
 upward, but they should not aim too high at first. 
 
 These suggestions may seem very commonplace; 
 and it may be confest at once that they are not 
 epoch-making. They do not point toward any 
 theatrical Utopia, nor do they promise any dra 
 matic millennium. They propose to make an easy 
 beginning, in the belief that the best way to get 
 the attention and the assistance of the public- 
 spirited is to show that an improvement is actually 
 possible. When interest is aroused by the reali 
 zation of a modest program such as is here set 
 forth, then it will be time to be more ambitious. 
 If the theater here outlined were successfully 
 establisht in New York and if it had proved its 
 utility, the first step would have been taken along 
 the right path, at the end of which there might 
 loom an American rival of the Theatre Francais. 
 This is a prediction which one need not be afraid 
 to make, in spite of George Eliot s remark that, 
 " among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the 
 most gratuitous." 
 
 (1902.) 
 
 259 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 A FEW years ago a colonel of the Civil War, 
 who is now a Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, delivered a Memorial Day 
 address on the Soldier s Faith/ in which he sug 
 gested that it is perhaps "not vain for us to tell 
 the new generation what we learnt in our day 
 and what we still believe that the joy of life is 
 living, is to put out all one s powers as far as they 
 will go, and the measure of power is obstacles over 
 come; to ride boldly at what is in front of you, be 
 it fence or enemy; to pray not for comfort but for 
 combat; to keep the soldier s faith against the 
 doubts of civil life, more besetting and harder to 
 overcome than all the misgivings of the battle 
 field." 
 
 It will be a sorry day for us when words like 
 these of Mr. Justice Holmes fail to arouse an 
 echo in the hearts of our young men. 
 
 For never land long lease of empire won 
 
 Whose sons sat silent when base deeds were done. 
 
 When the youth of America is ready to seek com 
 fort and to shrink from combat, then the end will 
 be near, and society will stagnate into a morass 
 of moral malaria. Life is neither nirvana nor 
 
 263 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 chaos; it is a never-ending struggle toward the 
 Promised Land; and no sooner have we topt 
 one hill than another still higher rises before us, 
 which we shall find the easier to climb since 
 our muscles have been hardened by the earlier 
 effort. No sooner is one victory won than there 
 looms large before us the next conquest to be 
 undertaken. There is never a truce in the fight 
 ing, and never a season when the armor may be 
 laid aside. But of a truth the joy of living is in 
 the putting forth of all our power in overcoming 
 the obstacles which are more abundant and more 
 difficult in civil life than on the battlefield, as the 
 soldier-judge declared. Yet the more abundant 
 they may be and the more difficult, the keener is 
 the zest of combat, and the less worthy is the 
 comfort which might come to us from giving up 
 the struggle. 
 
 If, however, there is a cause in behalf of which 
 it is worth while to battle, surely also it will be 
 worth while to learn how to wage the war. Ardent 
 youth is swift to enter on a civic campaign, often 
 without training and without taking time to 
 form a plan, altho even the youngest of us knows 
 that the military instruction at West Point ex 
 tends over four years and that it teaches only the 
 elements of the art of war. If it is true that the 
 conflicts of civil life are more exhausting than 
 those in which the soldier engages, and that the 
 264 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 manuvers of the enemy are more baffling, then 
 is there an obvious need of education for those 
 who are undertaking a civic struggle. They go 
 forth to contend with evil, by calling the attention 
 of the public to the impending danger and by 
 awakening the interest of good citizens in the 
 cause in which they are enlisted. 
 
 Here it is that a military metaphor becomes 
 misleading. Altho it is our duty to wrestle with 
 wrong and to overcome it, we can win the fight 
 only with the weapons of peace; and of these the 
 most important is persuasion. We can achieve 
 our end only by so presenting our case as to bring 
 over to our opinion the majority of our fellow- 
 citizens. Undue aggressiveness is wholly out of 
 place; it will never attract, it will always repel. 
 No doubt the actual adversary must be faced 
 boldly; but there is rarely any real chance of 
 converting him, for he is rooted in his own super 
 stition, and he has his own reasons for the faith 
 that is in him. It is not the opponent who stands 
 up against us that we are striving to convince, 
 since his case is hopeless. It is to the bystanders 
 that every appeal must be addrest, to those who 
 are looking on idly and without attention. If 
 their interest can be aroused, if they can be con 
 verted to our view, then our adversary is beaten, 
 even if he is stubborn to the end; for then the 
 majority is ours, and he is only one of a shrinking 
 265 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 minority. This is an aspect often overlookt by 
 men who are naturally combative and who are 
 lacking in the sympathetic appeal which wins 
 adherents; they spend all their energy in the 
 grapple with the individual advocate of the other 
 side, paying little heed to the duty of persuad 
 ing those who are not hostile, but only indifferent. 
 Sometimes it seems as tho their interest was 
 rather in the argumentative duel than in the final 
 decision of the debate. 
 
 Only those who have taken active part in urg 
 ing an improvement or in assaulting an evil ever 
 realize how difficult it is to awaken the attention 
 of the general public in behalf of any particular 
 cause, and how protracted and wearisome a task 
 it is to arouse any real interest in favor of it. The 
 human units who make up the general public 
 know little or nothing about any one topic, and 
 they seem to care less. They have each of them 
 their own traditions, their own prejudices, their 
 own proportion of conservatism, their own dis 
 trust of innovation. They have a strong desire 
 to let well enough alone and to keep to the good 
 old ways. Yet they are not resolutely hostile to 
 any new proposal; they simply fail to see the 
 necessity for it or to seize the significance of it. 
 They are open to conviction, if you can once get 
 them to listen to you while you show cause why 
 your opinion should be adopted. They are all of 
 266 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 them engaged in minding their own business; 
 and they are loth to lend an ear to any one who 
 asks them to listen to argument or even to evi 
 dence. 
 
 Yet it is these human units who are to be made 
 to listen, who are to be won over, who are to be 
 awakened from careless inattention and aroused 
 to active interest. Whoever applies himself to 
 this labor of love must possess his soul in patience 
 and curb his temper with firmness. He must put 
 up a good fight against the defenders of the con 
 dition which he is attacking, but he ought not to 
 waste his strength mainly upon them. He must 
 never let a delight in controversy tempt him to 
 forget that his chief duty is not to argue with the 
 other side, but to persuade the men who are tak 
 ing no part in the dispute the men who are ready 
 enough to dismiss the matter from their minds, 
 and who are prompt to cry "a plague o both 
 your houses." These are the very men whose 
 support, if only it can once be secured, will make 
 success certain. Whenever they can be allured 
 into listening to the facts, they are swift enough 
 in coming to a decision on the merits of the case; 
 and when public opinion has once been created 
 in favor of a cause, all the protests of its oppo 
 nents are useless and hopeless. There is no need 
 to waste time in answering the arguments of the 
 other side after the public has made up its mind. 
 267 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 It is not really argument which is effective; it 
 is information. If once you can induce the pub 
 lic to believe that here is something that they 
 ought to know about, if once you can get them 
 to turn aside from their own work long enough 
 to take in a plain statement of fact, then the rest 
 is easy. But to get them to listen at all is not 
 easy; it is very hard indeed, and it cannot be 
 done in a hurry. It can be done only by patient 
 and unceasing effort, which profits by every occa 
 sion, and which neglects no opportunity. 
 
 In this first approach nothing is more important 
 than an unassuming manner. If you want to 
 win the public to listen, you must be firm, of 
 course, but you must not be condescending; for 
 there is nothing that human nature resents more 
 quickly than being addrest in words of one syl 
 lable, as tho it was infantile in understanding. 
 And as you must not assume superiority, so you 
 must avoid the domineering tone and the ag 
 gressive attitude which only too many reformers 
 are prone to adopt. For example, there is little 
 doubt that the ineffectiveness of Ruskin s eloquent 
 crying aloud in the wilderness was due largely 
 to his shrill scolding and to his contemptuous 
 bullying. As the late Sir Leslie Stephen pointed 
 out, "the arrogance of Ruskin s language . . . 
 is one of the awkward consequences of being an 
 inspired prophet," since "it is implied in your 
 268 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 very position that your opponents are without 
 an essential mental faculty." Over-emphasis 
 always excites antagonism in the average man, 
 just as over-statement arouses suspicion. 
 
 In fact, nothing is more effective than an under 
 statement so clear and so moderate that the lis 
 tener is inclined to believe himself capable of 
 restating your case more powerfully; for if he 
 once undertakes this, he is your partizan forever, 
 if only for the pleasure of arguing on your side 
 better than you have done. As M. Emile Faguet 
 has reminded us recently, " the great point of all 
 dialectic and of all eloquence is to make men be 
 lieve that they come to a decision of their own 
 accord, that they are guiding themselves, that the 
 idea which has just been given to them is one they 
 have had since infancy." This is a difficult feat, 
 no doubt, but it can be accomplisht by a sincere 
 speaker who is also adroit, as Lincoln was. It 
 is never achieved by an exhorter who scolds and 
 who bullies; the more he talks himself hoarse, 
 the more he hardens the hearts of his hearers, 
 fixt in their resolve to oppose him. 
 
 It is recorded that Benjamin R. Curtis once 
 tried a law case against John P. Hale, and was 
 astounded when the verdict went against him. 
 "I had with me all the evidence and all the argu 
 ment," he explained, "but that confounded fel 
 low Hale got so intimate with the jury that I 
 269 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 could do nothing with them." And we may rest 
 assured that there was in Hale s manner, while 
 he was dealing with the men in the jury-box, 
 nothing superior or condescending, nothing ag 
 gressive or domineering. He met them on the 
 level of a common humanity, and he assumed 
 that they possest both intelligence and a desire to 
 do right. It is comic to think how complete a 
 failure Carlyle or Ruskin would have made had 
 either of them been called to the bar. Prophets 
 of wrath they may have been, both of them, but 
 sweet reasonableness was not their portion. They 
 may have helped to destroy the temples of Baal, 
 but whatever they sought to build themselves 
 was built on the shifting sand. At best, they 
 achieved only the easier feat of destruction, and 
 they failed to accomplish the more useful duty 
 of construction. 
 
 An illustration of the successful use of cogent 
 under-statement can be taken from the history 
 of the movement in behalf of international copy 
 right. Only after half a dozen years of incessant 
 endeavor was it possible to pass the act of 1891, 
 whereby the protection of copyright in the United 
 States was extended to foreign authors provided 
 they complied with certain conditions. Previously 
 these authors had no control here over their own 
 writings, which were freely pirated, thus forcing 
 American authors to sell their writings in unfair 
 270 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 competition with stolen goods. Obviously, this 
 was a bitter wrong alike to the friendly alien and 
 to the citizen; but it was very difficult to make 
 the average man see this. Winter after winter 
 the members of the American Copyright League 
 devoted themselves to the awakening of public 
 interest. Meetings were held in the larger cities, 
 and reports were publisht in the local news 
 papers and telegrapht all over the country; 
 speeches were made before all sorts of societies; 
 sermons were preached on the "national sin of 
 literary piracy"; articles were inserted in the 
 magazines and reviews; statements were put 
 forth frequently in which the question was con 
 sidered from every point of view; explanatory 
 pamphlets were to be had for the asking; and 
 no possible means of arresting public attention was 
 neglected. And yet, after this propaganda had 
 been going on for years, the advocates of justice 
 were continually surprized to meet men of educa 
 tion and of intelligence who had paid no attention 
 to our appeals and who were not aware that there 
 was a wrong to be righted. These men were very 
 rarely hostile; they were only uninterested be 
 cause of their total ignorance in the matter. Gen 
 erally we found it easy enough to gain their sym 
 pathy, and sometimes even their active support, 
 after they once understood the need for an im 
 provement in the law. But they had been 
 271 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 minding their own business, and they had not 
 been reacht by any of the multitudinous appeals 
 that we had been making. 
 
 Some of the appeals, it must be confest, were 
 now and then declamatory and domineering; 
 and it was apparently a reading of these unduly 
 vehement documents which turned the late 
 Speaker Reed against the cause. This was the 
 more unfortunate as the time came when he was 
 the one man whose good-will was absolutely neces 
 sary. The friends of the bill believed that it 
 would pass if it was allowed to come up; that is 
 to say, if only the Speaker would grant a small 
 portion of time in the final days of the session, 
 always tumultuously overcrowded. Just then, 
 as it happened, a member of the League publisht 
 a paper from a new point of view, tracing the 
 slow evolution of copyright ever since the inven 
 tion of printing, and pointing out that the United 
 States, which had been among the most progres 
 sive nations at the end of the eighteenth century, 
 was among the most backward in this respect at 
 the end of the nineteenth. The writer of this 
 paper was studiously moderate in tone, and he 
 strove to force the reader to draw his own con 
 clusion that the opportunity was then offered 
 for this country to recover its proper rank among 
 the nations. A member of the Copyright League 
 who was afterward the President of the United 
 272 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 States askt the Speaker to read this article as 
 a personal favor to him; and the next day Mr. 
 Reed told Mr. Roosevelt that he was ready to 
 grant time for the passage of the bill. 
 
 Probably it was the cautious under-statement 
 of this paper which captured the sympathy of 
 the Speaker, and quite possibly the vehemence 
 of some of the other appeals which had repelled 
 him were more effective with readers of another 
 type. The very manner needful to arouse the 
 interest of one man another man may reject as 
 rant. There are all sorts and conditions of men, 
 and they cannot all be converted by the same ar 
 guments. But, however emotional the speaker, 
 however lofty his standard, however assured he 
 may be as to the moral necessity of the step he is 
 advocating, he will fail to reach the hearts and 
 to touch the minds of his hearers unless he is ever 
 honest with himself and unless he is absolutely 
 fair to his opponents. If he descends to person 
 alities, he may amuse his audience, but he is far 
 less likely to bring them over to his side. Indeed, 
 the sincere advocate of a cause will often accom 
 plish most by resolutely refusing to acknowledge 
 the existence of his opponents as persons. In 
 stating his own case he will meet their arguments 
 fairly, refuting them as best he can; but it will 
 be arguments that he will attack, and never the 
 persons who have put forth the arguments. 
 273 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 Especially will he refrain from misjudging the 
 good faith of those who urge these opposing 
 arguments; for, by the very fact that he has been 
 willing to enter on a debate with them, he has 
 placed himself on the same plane, and whatso 
 ever debases them lowers him also. Any man 
 seeking to persuade will do well to refrain from 
 controversy. It was Dr. Holmes who drew at 
 tention to what he wittily called "the hydrostatic 
 paradox of controversy," pointing out that "con 
 troversy equalizes fools and wise men, and the 
 fools know it." 
 
 The wise men know it also; and they keep 
 out. They know that controversy, in the nar 
 row meaning of the word, is useless, and worse 
 than useless, even if it does not descend into the 
 rude exchange of offensive personalities. They 
 know, as Sainte-Beuve has declared, that "after 
 half an hour of any dispute no one of the con 
 testants is any longer in the right, and no one of 
 them is then really aware of what he is saying." 
 They know that public interest very soon ebbs 
 away from a dispute between persons, and that 
 public opinion is likely to accept what each side 
 says against the other and to reject what each side 
 says in favor of itself. They know that a pro 
 longed debate is likely to defeat the desires of 
 those who are in the right and to raise a dust of 
 side-issues for the profit of those who are in the 
 274 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 wrong. They know that nothing is more hope 
 lessly uninteresting than a controversy which has 
 died down to its ashes. They know that pro 
 tracted controversy is fatal to persuasion, and 
 that persuasion is the only means of carrying a 
 cause to victory. 
 
 Not a few wise men have carried this distaste for 
 dispute so far that they have resolutely refused to 
 pay any attention to personal attacks. Buffon was 
 one of these; and he explained that he took pride 
 in the thought that persons of a certain kind could 
 not injure him. Ibsen advised Georg Brandes 
 to adopt the same attitude "Look straight 
 ahead; never reply with a word in the papers; if 
 in your writings you become polemical, then do 
 not direct your polemic against this or that par 
 ticular attack; never show that a word of your 
 enemies has had any effect on you." Jowett 
 summed up his own principles in a terse sentence : 
 "Never retract, never explain; get it done, and 
 let them howl." And this is only a new setting 
 of the old Scots saying, "They say. What say 
 they? Let them say." Silent contempt is 
 often the most crushing rejoinder; it is the true 
 vengeance of large souls; and it is the one way 
 open to all who are seeking to persuade and who 
 are determined to abstain from bickering. A 
 good workman is not known by the chips on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 275 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 In attacking a venerable abuse, the ardent ad 
 vocate of improvement will find himself confronted 
 by opponents belonging to several different classes. 
 First of all, there are those who are conservative by 
 nature and who are moved to defend the establisht 
 order of things simply because it is the establisht 
 order, and because they dread and detest inno 
 vation of any kind; and these can often be won 
 over by showing that the proposed change is not 
 really an innovation, but rather a return to the 
 practise of the fathers and to the usage of the good 
 old days. Second, there are those whose good 
 faith is beyond question, but whose temperament 
 leads them to defend the existing situation in 
 spite of its defects; and these are the men whose 
 opposition is most difficult to overcome, because 
 they are honorable adversaries, possest of the best 
 intentions. They must ever be faced firmly but 
 courteously; and their arguments must be met 
 squarely. It was of opponents of this type that 
 Gladstone was thinking when he said that "the 
 one lesson life has taught me is that where there 
 is known to be a common object, the pursuit of 
 truth, there should be a studious desire to interpret 
 the adversary in the best sense his words will 
 fairly bear." 
 
 There is a third class containing those who 
 are personally profiting by the abuse which you 
 are attacking; and it is from these that you may 
 276 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 expect the bitterest fight and the most unscrup 
 ulous. They will never hesitate to resort to the 
 meanest of personalities and to the imputing of 
 the lowest of motives. They will seize any weapon 
 that comes handy; and they will never hesitate 
 to strike below the belt. This is an unsavory op 
 position, which must be anticipated; as the Au 
 tocrat of the Breakfast-Table declared, with his 
 pithy shrewdness, "you never need think you 
 can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible 
 squirming and scattering of the horrid little popu 
 lation that dwells under it." But altho the de 
 fense of an abuse by the men of this type, who are 
 toucht in their pocket, will always be venomous 
 and protracted, it is likely also to be so violent 
 and so hysteric and so offensive as to repel the 
 sympathy of the disinterested onlookers in whose 
 hands the final decision lies. 
 
 As a general rule, it is safest and wisest to 
 disregard the ululations of unworthy adversaries 
 of this type or of any other; but sometimes a rare 
 occasion may arise when it is needful to turn on an 
 opponent, and to smite him hip and thigh, and 
 to reduce him at once to impotent silence; and 
 this is what Huxley did to the Bishop of Oxford. 
 Sometimes again the chance may present itself 
 to puncture an adversary with a swift retort, just 
 as Leatherstocking caught by the handle the 
 tomahawk the Indian had thrown at him, hurling 
 277 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 it back at once to bury itself in the brain of his 
 red foeman. Once when a noted wit was hold 
 ing forth, a drunken bystander broke out with 
 "You re a liar!" To which the noted wit re 
 turned, instantly and with the utmost suavity of 
 manner, "Surely not if you say so!" When 
 Beecher was addressing a meeting in Liverpool 
 packt with Southern sympathizers, a voice from 
 the gallery askt him why we had not ended the 
 war in sixty days as we had said we would. At 
 this home-thrust, there was a pause in the tumult, 
 and Beecher took advantage of it to reply, "We 
 should have done so, if we had been fighting 
 Englishmen!" To the credit of his hearers, this 
 bold stroke toucht their sense of fair play, and 
 thereafter they listened to what he had to say. 
 
 But tho this may be successful, it is ever 
 dangerous, for it is perilously close to the flinging 
 to and fro of empty personalities. If the foeman 
 is unworthy of your steel, and if you suspect him 
 capable of a foul blow, it is best to refuse to cross 
 swords with him. There was common sense in the 
 saying of Truthful James, in his metrical minutes 
 of the meeting of the Society upon the Stanislaw, 
 when he declared that 
 
 I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent 
 To say another is an ass at least, to all intent; 
 Nor should the individual who happens to be meant 
 Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent. 
 
 278 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 The general public takes no interest in the 
 bandying about of personalities; and it is even 
 inclined to despise a victory won in such ignoble 
 strife. On the other hand, it is swift to give its 
 confidence to those whom it has observed to be 
 honest to themselves and fair to their adversaries, 
 moderate in statement and dignified in utterance. 
 And it is the general public which must decide 
 the question at last; and the general public is 
 ever repelled by unseemly altercation. It can 
 be reacht only by incessant and unassuming per 
 suasiveness. He who seeks to convert it must be 
 patient and persistent, coaxing the general public 
 to go forward with him one step at a time, and 
 taking care that there are no steps backward. He 
 must remember the potency of little drops of 
 water and of little grains of sand. He must not 
 try for too much all at once; but he must ever be 
 ready to take what he can get, and he must al 
 ways be glad to convert an individual here and 
 there, since the general public is only a mass of 
 stray individuals. 
 
 Above all else must the advocate of a new cause 
 and the assailant of an old abuse respect the 
 opinions of those he is striving to convert. He 
 must always bear in mind that the average man, 
 the unit which is multiplied into the general public, 
 means to do right that the average man is ever 
 ready honestly to echo the fine phrase of Marcus 
 279 
 
PERSUASION AND CONTROVERSY 
 
 Aurelius: "If any one is able to convince me 
 and show that I do not think or act right, I will 
 gladly change. For I seek the truth, by which 
 no man was ever injured. But he is injured who 
 abides in his error and ignorance." 
 
 280 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 WHEN a notorious Tammany official went 
 on the stump and cried "To Hell with 
 Reform," many simple folk were shockt, and 
 many less simple pretended to be shockt. But 
 the blatant spoilsman was only voicing violently 
 a sentiment which must often have been felt, 
 more or less clearly, by many an honest man 
 who happened to be endowed with a full share 
 of the invaluable quality for which we have no 
 better name than sense-of-humor. It was this 
 sentiment which moved Curtis (recalling the 
 Brook Farmers) to assert that "no wise man is 
 long a Reformer, for wisdom sees plainly that 
 growth is steady, sure, and neither condemns nor 
 rejects what is or has been," whereas "Reform 
 is organized distrust." It was this sentiment 
 which moved Lowell (having Garrison in mind) 
 to declare that "there never has been a leader 
 of Reform who was not also a blackguard." 
 
 In the Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne, 
 drawing on his experiences with the same group 
 of enthusiasts that Curtis had associated with, 
 warns us that "no sagacious man will long retain 
 his sagacity if he live exclusively among Reform- 
 
 283 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 ers and progressive people, without periodically 
 returning into the settled system of things, to 
 correct himself by a new observation from that 
 old standpoint." The biographer of Parkman 
 tells us how that clear-eyed and high-minded 
 historian was ever ready to "ride hard against 
 idealists and Reformers," holding that transcen 
 dentalism was weakening to common sense and 
 dangerous to practical aims. "The ideal Re 
 former," said Parkman, "is generally a nuisance 
 when he tries to deal with the broad and many- 
 sided questions involved in the government of 
 nations." Colonel Higginson, after a wide ex 
 perience of women and men, has assured us that 
 "Reformers are like Eskimo dogs, which must 
 be hitcht to the sledge each by a separate thong; 
 if put in a common harness, they turn and eat 
 each other up." And Emerson, after declaring 
 that he liked best " the strong and worthy persons 
 who support the social order without hesitation 
 or misgiving," asserted that "the profest philan 
 thropists, it is strange and horrible to say, are an 
 altogether odious set of people whom one would 
 shun as the worst of bores and canters." 
 
 Here is a striking unanimity of opinion, and 
 if we are justified in suspecting a sinister motive 
 in the frank desire of the Tammany office-seeker 
 to send below the thing he had reason to hate, 
 we can impute no mean motive to Lowell, to 
 284 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 Curtis and to Higginson, who proved themselves 
 active in good works. And if Hawthorne and 
 Parkman and Emerson were never actual lead-1 
 ers in any specific improvement of public affairs, 
 we know them as men of lofty character and of 
 transparent sincerity. Why is itlHat tliese men, 
 the very stuff ouTDf which heroic chiefs are made, 
 seem to be united in disliking and in distrusting \ 
 not only the noble army of Reformers but also the } 
 sacred cause of Reform itself? They, at least, 
 had no personal reason to think ill of it; they had 
 no occasion to fear it; they were ever ready to do 
 what might lie in their power to help along the 
 millennium; and, if they held these hostile or 
 contemptuous opinions, we may rest assured they 
 had good and sufficient reasons. 
 
 It is not, of course, that they were not friends of \ 
 progress and that they would not subscribe to 
 Professor William James s declaration that "for 
 morality, life is a war, and the service of the high 
 est is a sort of cosmic patriotism, which also calls 
 for volunteers." It is not that they would hesitate 
 to approve of Whittier s advice to a youth of 
 fifteen: "My lad, if thou wouldst win success, 
 join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause." 
 It is not that they were prepared to accept as their 
 own the bitter remark attributed to the late 
 Roscoe Conkling, "When Dr. Johnson said that 
 Patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, he 
 285 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 did not foresee the infinite possibilities of the 
 word Reform." But altho Lowell and Curtis and 
 Higginson might not be prepared to echo the 
 sharp saying of that cynical politician, none of 
 them would fail to understand what he meant 
 and to appreciate the reasons which moved him 
 to say it. 
 
 In any attempt to explain this attitude of theirs 
 the first suggestion which forces itself on us is, 
 that the Reformer is very likely to be lacking in 
 the sense-of-humor, without which a man is 
 more or less incapacitated from getting along 
 comfortably with his fellows. By the very fact 
 that he has set his heart upon the accomplishment 
 of a single improvement, he has reduced his sense 
 of proportion. He is likely to resemble the char 
 acter in Ibsen s * Wild Duck/ who is described as 
 "suffering from chronic integrity in an acute 
 form"; and he may possibly have a certain like 
 ness to the character in Turgenef s Dimitri 
 Roudine, who took himself so seriously that "he 
 lookt like his own statue erected by a national 
 subscription." He feels himself exalted by the 
 elevation of his own aim in life; and it is hard for 
 him not to become convinced that he is right and 
 always right, whereas the rest of the inhabitants 
 of the globe are wrong and always wrong. Slowly 
 but surely, as the years roll by, he comes to the 
 conclusion that he alone possesses the secret of 
 286 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 wisdom, and that he alone holds the universe by 
 the tail. 
 
 When Charles Sumner was elected senator, 
 Theodore Parker wrote him, "I hope you will 
 build on the Rock of Ages, and look to Eternity 
 for your justification." Now, when a man is 
 looking to Eternity and building on the Rock of 
 Ages he may very easily accept himself as a 
 prophet and believe that his denunciation of evil 
 is the result of direct inspiration. In time, as 
 he finds his burning words wasted on stubborn 
 ears, he may be moved to the increasing viru 
 lence of invective which is prone to call forth, tho 
 never to justify, the retaliatory brutality of per 
 sonal assault. Reform is tarnisht, as Religion \ 
 is stained, when those who declare themselves 1 
 its followers discover themselves to be lacking in / 
 the ordinary decencies of civilization. There is 
 no denying that there are to-day among the so- 
 called anti-Imperialists and among those who 
 are now urging Total Abstinence, as there were 
 half a century ago among the Anti-slavery lead 
 ers, not a few, in good standing among their con 
 scientious associates, who have proved themselves 
 reckless in misrepresentation and malignant in 
 imputing evil motives to their opponents. Ap 
 parently, some of those who plant themselves on 
 a lofty pinnacle far above the common herd of 
 mankind, to proclaim a higher rule of life than 
 
 287 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 that which the rest of the world seems willing 
 to accept, feel themselves thereby freed from the 
 obligations prescribed for us all by every-day 
 courtesy, and sometimes even from those im 
 posed by common honesty. 
 
 Something of the same unscrupulousness, due 
 to intensity of conviction, has been discovered 
 also in certain religious enthusiasts; and George 
 Eliot, so Mr. G. J. Holyoake has recently re 
 corded, held it as a solemn conviction, the result 
 of a lifetime of observation, that, in proportion 
 as the thoughts of men and women are removed 
 from the earth in which they live to an invisible 
 world, they are led to neglect their duty to each 
 other. Whether this opinion of the emancipated 
 novelist is well founded or not, there is justification 
 for the belief that those who focus their thoughts 
 on a single object, in which the rest of us take a 
 less lively interest, and which is to be achieved 
 only by protracted agitation, are very likely to be 
 led after a while to see this single object out of 
 all proportion, overshadowing everything else in 
 the world. In time, opposition enrages them; 
 and they begin to feel that it can be due only to 
 the malign influence of a personal devil. They 
 are firmly assured that he who is not with them 
 is against them; and they are no longer in doubt 
 that he who is against them is an enemy of man 
 kind. Thus it was that Garrison, never a lovely 
 288 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 character, was moved to declare that if the Con 
 stitution of the United States protected slavery, 
 it was "a league with Death and a covenant with 
 Hell." In violence, as in vocabulary, this is 
 really not so very unlike the Tammany outcry, 
 "To Hell with Reform." 
 
 Even when the sincere Reformer of this type, 
 the disinterested and public-spirited citizen, is 
 able to refrain from vulgar outbreaks of temper, 
 he may yet yield to the temptation of despising 
 the heads and the hearts of all those who fail to be 
 moved by his appeals and who refuse to look at 
 the world from his special standpoint. It is 
 difficult indeed for him not to feel self-satisfac 
 tion in his own superior sagacity and in his own 
 more sensitive integrity; and this self-satisfaction 
 is perilously close to conceit. By the very fact 
 that he sees a need for action which others fail to 
 see, he can hardly help thinking himself more 
 far-sighted than the average. By the very act 
 of taking trouble for the general good, when his 
 fellows stand by inert, he is forced to find himself 
 more public-spirited than other citizens. He is 
 sorely tempted to regard his own cotery of come- 
 outers as the sole reservoirs of virtue and of wis 
 dom. 
 
 This leads him to resent bitterly all adverse 
 criticism of his acts; and it brings him sometimes 
 to the verge of unscrupulousness. Conscious of 
 289 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 his own rectitude, convinced of his own disinter 
 estedness, assured of his own sagacity, devoted 
 to the duty of hastening the delayed triumph of 
 .his cause, he is sometimes brought to accept the 
 indefensible theory that the end justifies the means. 
 He is sometimes only too willing to " fight the 
 devil with fire." Now, a good man who was 
 also a wise man would know that no maxim is 
 falser than that which suggests this method of 
 battling with Satan. Fire is the devil s own ele 
 ment, and he has has never any fear of the flames. 
 What he flees from is holy water; and the Re 
 former who allows the adversary the choice of 
 weapons is a dead man before the ground is paced 
 for the duel. 
 
 The Reformer of this type, sincere as he may 
 be, devoted and disinterested, often narrows his 
 outlook till he loses all sense of proportion; and, 
 when violence of speech is followed by unscrupu- 
 lousness of action, the last state of that man is 
 worse than the first. As he develops these un- 
 amiable qualities he is increasingly unlikely to 
 endear himself to his fellow-men; and he is there 
 by thrown back on his associates, many of them 
 already infected with similar failings. Or he 
 is forced to fellowship with himself alone; and 
 thus he is in danger of developing the deadly dis 
 ease whichhas aptly been termed "moral egotism." 
 As a shrewd observer has pointed out, "no ego- 
 290 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 tism is so vulnerable as moral egotism; and in no 
 field of action not even in religion is its in 
 fluence more hurtful than in politics." Against 
 this moral egotism few Reformers are immune, 
 only those of complete sanity of body and mind, 
 only those indeed whom nature has happily pro 
 tected by a double proportion of that universal 
 aseptic for which we have only an inadequate 
 name the sense-of-humor. 
 
 After all, "the best of men are but men at their 
 best," as the Puritan soldier said long ago;* and 
 Reformers of this type, ardent and sincere, al- 
 tho often violent and sometimes unscrupulous, 
 need to be separated sharply from Reformers of 
 another type, who almost justify Emerson s 
 dismissal of them as "canters." Not quite do 
 they justify it; for, altho their purpose is less 
 single and altho their public spirit is contaminated 
 by self-seeking, they are not altogether humbugs, 
 and they do really believe in what they preach. 
 They are honestly interested in the Reform they 
 are advocating, even tho they are far more in 
 terested in themselves. They urge it partly for 
 its own sake, no doubt, but partly also that they 
 may claim credit to themselves for its accomplish 
 ment. They do not so much identify themselves 
 with the movement as they identify the move 
 ment with themselves. They wish to see the 
 cause conquer, but they are even more eager to 
 291 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 push themselves into the best places in the tri 
 umphal procession, not too far behind the big 
 drum. They are ever voluble in interviews and 
 ever vociferous on the platform. They live in 
 the spot-light of publicity, and they are ever seek 
 ing the bubble reputation in the camera s mouth. 
 
 Far more than the over-strenuous enthusiasts 
 of the first type do these self-advertising notoriety- 
 mongers of this second type bring discredit on the 
 movements with which they see their advantage 
 in associating themselves. Even if they are not 
 wholly hypocrites, they stand forth offensive in 
 the sight of man. They justify Emerson s liking 
 for "the strong and worthy persons who support 
 the social order without hesitation or misgiving." 
 They justify the hearty contempt which the better 
 class of practical politicians, who are unpre 
 tentiously engaged in real work, so often ex 
 press toward Reformers in general, and which 
 Conkling crystallized in the cynical saying already 
 quoted. They are the originals of the sham Re 
 former whom Ibsen set on the stage in Stensgaard 
 and whom Sardou satirized as Rabagas altho 
 they often have commingled with their self-seeking 
 somewhat more honesty of purpose than we find 
 in the contemptible creatures etched by the Nor 
 wegian dramatist and by the Parisian playwright. 
 
 They are not plain hypocrites, like Tartuffe, 
 for not only do they lack the depth of that ap- 
 292 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 palling personality, but they are sincere, even if 
 they are shallow. With them Reform is no mere 
 cloak, snatcht up hurriedly in the hour of need; 
 it is the garment they have chosen to clothe them 
 selves in, that they may take part in the parade. 
 They are really soldiers in the cause whose uni 
 form they wear; and they are volunteers also, 
 but they have an eye to the bounty and to the 
 pension. That they are marching forward with 
 the flag never prevents them from seeking their 
 own profit, often in devious ways. Some of the 
 most contemptible intriguing it was ever my mis 
 fortune to behold was the work of one who was 
 forever "holding high the banner of the Ideal"; 
 and quite the most contemptible act of selfish 
 cowardice within my knowledge was committed 
 by one who stood before the public as the very 
 embodiment of Reform, and who as a Reformer 
 was perfectly sincere, although undeniably self- 
 seeking. When we come to contrast the two 
 types of Reformer that have been considered, we 
 find that it is difficult to draw a precise line mark 
 ing off the one from the other. At the head of 
 one type there is stalwart disinterestedness, and 
 at the foot of the other there is shallow self-seek 
 ing, but in the middle they shade into each other 
 by imperceptible degrees, since there is often 
 more than a suspicion of self-esteem in the one 
 and more than a leaven of sincerity in the other. 
 
 2 93 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 A third type there is, which it is not easy to set 
 off sharply from the second. In this class we 
 find the men whose fervor in behalf of a noble 
 cause seems to have its source, more or less, in 
 their desire to get into better company than their 
 reputation would warrant. They seek to put 
 forward their civic virtues as a plea in extenuation 
 for their private looseness or their business laxity. 
 They are the bad men who advocate one good 
 thing, possibly because no man is absolutely bad, 
 but more probably because they see in this 
 advocacy a chance to associate themselves with 
 good men, who would not otherwise be willing to 
 fellowship with them. Reform makes strange 
 bedfellows, and even men of the purest char 
 acter are rarely over-particular in refusing the aid 
 of voluntary allies whose own record is far from 
 spotless. Perhaps it would be unfair to call 
 them wolves in sheep s clothing, because the 
 wolf rarely appears in that costume until after 
 he has sated his hunger for lamb; but it is not 
 unfair to describe them as black sheep who are 
 seeking to smuggle themselves back into the flock 
 of honest folk. Perhaps, again, it would not be 
 just to dismiss them frankly as self-seeking hypo 
 crites; but there is no injustice in suggesting 
 that they are 
 
 Ready to make up for sins they are inclined to 
 By damning those they have no mind to. 
 294 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 Sometimes they persist in their own evil practices, 
 while denouncing virtuously the ill deeds of others. 
 For instance, one of the newspapers of New York, 
 which was energetic in proclaiming the necessity 
 of abolishing the spoils system and of introducing 
 the Australian ballot, was at that time the prop 
 erty of a notorious railroad -wrecker, who was 
 using its financial columns to support his own 
 stock-jobbing. But more often than not they 
 pretend to have abjured sack and to desire to live 
 cleanly. They resemble certain heroines of the 
 modern drama, in that they have "a past" which 
 they want to have overlookt or condoned in the 
 present. Thus, some years ago, there appeared 
 as the chief advocate of a so-called legal reform 
 a lawyer of commanding ability whose own inde 
 fensible practices as the counsel of Fisk and Gould 
 had brought him perilously near to being dis 
 barred. 
 
 Another example is even more significant. In 
 one of the largest cities in the Union a few years 
 ago, in a truce of the interminable campaign 
 against municipal misrule, suddenly half a dozen 
 young men projected themselves into view as the 
 conspicuous champions of civic virtue in its 
 austerest attitude. They stood up to be counted 
 in favor of a procedure which did not commend 
 itself to older and wiser leaders. They came out 
 broadly in the full glare of newspaper notoriety. 
 
 2 95 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 But who were these obscure Reformers who 
 offered themselves up like imitators of Arnold 
 of Winkelried? However futile their act, at 
 least their intention was worthy ; and most people 
 dismissed them from mind as merely misguided 
 enthusiasts. But a gentleman with a wide ac 
 quaintance and a long memory happened to drop 
 the remark in a club that it was not a little curious 
 that two of these indiscreet Reformers had been 
 partners in business with different friends of his, 
 and that his friends had each of them been forced 
 to dissolve the partnership from disapproval of the 
 practices of the young men who were now pran 
 cing into the lists as knights of civic purity. He 
 had mentioned no names; but another member 
 of the club promptly spoke up and asked if Mr. 
 So-and-so was meant, mentioning one of the 
 half dozen. The answer was that Mr. So-and-so 
 had not been in the mind of the first speaker. 
 Whereupon the second said that Mr. So-and-so 
 could be added to the other two; "He was my 
 partner a few years ago, and I broke up the firm 
 because I did not like the way he did business." 
 The examples of this type of Reformer are far 
 less numerous than the examples of the two other 
 types; but a Reform movement is singularly 
 fortunate that has not among its adherents more 
 than one man of this unworthy character, often 
 thrusting himself into undue prominence. There 
 296 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 is yet a fourth group, which is likely to be the 
 largest of all, and also the least useful and the 
 least estimable. This consists of the men and 
 women who are forever longing for novelty for 
 its own sake, and who wish to see the establisht 
 order change, merely because it is the establisht 
 order, and merely because they themselves are 
 too flighty to feel the need of keeping the ancient 
 landmarks. They are not devoted to any one 
 Reform in particular, but to all Reforms in gen 
 eral. They are wholly without the discrimination 
 which warns us that, when a man is marching to 
 a tune inaudible to others, he may be keeping 
 step to the music of the spheres or he may be 
 following the footsteps of the Rat- Wife. 
 
 They are the faddists, the freaks, the cranks, 
 who take up with every passing whim of the mo 
 ment and who tag themselves to the tail of every 
 cause, whether it is wise or otherwise, incapable 
 of espousing a true Reform for its merits, and 
 ready to embrace a sham simply because it has 
 been accepted by others as scatter-brained as 
 they are themselves. To-day they may be vege 
 tarians, who clothe themselves only in animal 
 fiber; yesterday they revered the revelations of the 
 spirit-rappers ; to-morrow they will rely on absent 
 treatment for the relief of chronic disease. They 
 vaunt themselves as Theosophists for a season, 
 only to appear the next year as Christian Scientists. 
 297 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 We find them plentifully in the Salem witchcraft- 
 trials, in the more violent religious revivals, and 
 again in the Transcendental movement. In the 
 pages of Lowell s pungent paper on Thoreau, 
 we have the brilliant record of his recollection 
 of this riffraff of Reform as he had occasion to 
 observe it in his youth. They cling to the skirts 
 of every cause, impeding its advance and making 
 it more or less ridiculous. Sometimes they are 
 numerous enough to capture the control of the 
 organization, which is sure to founder then, even if 
 it had been in sight of port. Sometimes they are 
 weak-willed creatures who scarcely know what it 
 is that they really want; and sometimes they are 
 hysteric extremists who, in the apt phrase of the 
 late Charles Dudley Warner, will not be satis 
 fied until the President of the United States is a 
 black woman. 
 
 When John Morrissey, prize-fighter and ward 
 politician, once walkt from his gambling-house 
 at Saratoga to the town-hall to size up a Reform 
 convention then in session there, he came out 
 promptly, declaring that he was not afraid of 
 anything those fellows could do, since they were 
 "only a lot of long-haired men and of short-haired 
 women." What the ward politician treated with 
 contempt, the practical man has no respect for. 
 These feeble folk, light-witted and loud-voiced, 
 are forever warning away the hard-headed and 
 298 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 strong-armed men of affairs, without whose sym 
 pathy no cause is likely to make much progress, 
 and without whose active aid nothing lasting is 
 likely to be accomplisht. It is only when these 
 men of affairs conquer their disgust for the crea 
 tures of this type, and ally themselves with the 
 devoted enthusiasts of the first group, that any 
 Reform begins really to have a chance of success. 
 The enthusiasts supply the moral fervor, and the 
 men of affairs supply the solid common sense, 
 without an abundance of which nothing ever gets 
 itself done in this world. 
 
 These men of affairs, not original enthusiasts, 
 and only tardily converted by reasons which ap 
 peal to their intelligence, make up a fifth class 
 of Reformer, the men interested in a specific 
 cause and carrying it steadily to its final accom 
 plishment without haste and without rest. They, 
 and they alone, assure the victory. The original 
 enthusiasts must convert them or nothing will 
 happen; for until they are converted the case is 
 hopelesss. When they begin to join in sufficient 
 numbers, the end is near; the cause is won, and 
 the final triumph is then only a question of time. 
 They are not the profest philanthropists whom 
 Emerson shrank from; they are "the strong and 
 worthy men who support the social order," but 
 who have been made to see the danger of some 
 special leak in the ship of state and who are will- 
 299 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 ing to man the pumps and to lend a hand to the 
 calking, returning promptly to their own work 
 whenever this single task is finisht to their satis 
 faction. When they hold that the time has come, 
 they do not hesitate; they enlist "for three years 
 or the war." They take up the good work, 
 heartily, fixing their eye on that, and overcoming 
 their distaste for the company they have to keep. 
 They are resolved to get the job done, even if they 
 have to labor by the side of the freak and of the 
 fraud, of the wild -eyed crank and of the semi- 
 repentant crook. 
 
 Mr. Morley tells us that Gladstone had "none 
 of that detachment often found among superior 
 minds, which we honor for its disinterestedness, 
 even while we lament its impotence in result." 
 In other words, Gladstone was a practical poli 
 tician. He was constructive, and not merely 
 critical. He was not a moral egotist, but a pub 
 lic servant, who helped to get things done. No 
 doubt, the Abolitionists, in spite of their constant 
 wrangling with one another, and in spite of their 
 occasional lack of patriotism, did arouse the 
 attention of the country and did help to center it 
 on an evil that needed to be rooted up; but the 
 slaves were freed by Lincoln, the very practical 
 politician, who had at least one characteristic in 
 common with Gladstone, in that he never mis 
 took for "courage or independence the unhappy 
 300 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 preference for having a party or an opinion ex 
 clusively for one s self." Lincoln was patient 
 and long-suffering; he bided his time; he was 
 at once persuasive and fearless, but he was never 
 needlessly aggressive. He was wholly free from 
 the unpleasant and unprofitable characteristic 
 which Lowell declares to be a possession of too 
 many Reformers "that vindictive love of virtue 
 which spreads the stool of repentance with thistle- 
 burrs, before they invite the erring to seat them 
 selves thereon." 
 
 It is not the amateur enthusiast who achieves 
 lasting results, it is the professional politician of 
 the higher type, a class far more numerous in this 
 country than most of us are prepared to admit. 
 He takes care of his fences, of course, but he 
 serves the public faithfully to the best of his ability. 
 He knows how to get things done, as he does 
 not dwell alone in the clouds, but keeps his footing 
 solidly on the soil. His idealism is practical, no 
 doubt, but it is real enough. He is always an 
 opportunist, taking the most he can get at the 
 moment, however little it may be, and however 
 insufficient he may deem it. He is not easily dis 
 couraged, for he knows only too well that "poli 
 tics is one long second best"; and he is firmly 
 resolved to get a little more the next time of ask 
 ing, until which time he possesses his soul in 
 patience, not having his heart set on any single 
 301 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 cause. He finds solid comfort in his firm belief 
 that in the long run all Reforms are inevitable; 
 they are certain to be establisht sooner or later; 
 and if they never come to pass, the reason must 
 be sought in the fact that they are not really 
 Reforms, however plausible they may have ap 
 peared for a while. 
 
 This, indeed, is what most sharply sets off the 
 practical politician of the better class from the 
 narrower and more eager Reformers. He is a 
 professional; and they are amateurs. He is free 
 from the irascible impatience that makes them 
 feverish. He is interested in many movements; 
 and they have centered their energy on only one. 
 He is likely to have far more confidence in the 
 education of public opinion than in any swift 
 overturning due to hasty legislation. Bitter ex 
 perience has taught him that mere lawmaking is 
 often worse than useless, since a law is never en 
 forced properly when it has not public opinion 
 behind it, and since the law itself is easily ob 
 tained and easily enforced when it is only the crys 
 tallization of the wish of the people. The ama 
 teurs put far too much faith in special measures 
 and in legislative devices of one kind or another. 
 The professional has a deep contempt for these 
 patent-medicines of lawmaking; and he does not 
 expect human nature to be changed in the twin 
 kling of an eye just because a bill has been past 
 302 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 by the legislature. He does not believe that bad 
 men will renounce their evil ways overnight, or 
 that the millennium will certainly arrive the 
 morning after election. 
 
 But the amateurs, the ardent advocates of a 
 single cause, lack this self-restraint just as they 
 lack the sense of proportion. The more hectic 
 and hysteric their impatience, the more bitter 
 their disappointment at the delay of the one Re 
 form they have espoused. And their language 
 is often as bitter as their disappointment; for 
 enthusiasm is like milk, in that even boiling will not 
 always prevent it from turning sour. They are 
 likely to suffer from acute attacks of moral dys 
 pepsia, in which they feel that all is for the worst 
 in the worst of all possible worlds. They think 
 scorn of the rest of us whom they have failed to 
 convert; and they pour out the vials of their 
 wrath on us. Their exacerbated invective is 
 often sad evidence of the wisdom of Mr. Morley s 
 assertion that "love of truth is, more often than 
 we think, only a fine name for temper." They 
 are prompt to predict the direst of calamities, 
 since mankind has refused so far to adopt their 
 sole specific for all evils; and not infrequently 
 they seem to regret that their prophecies of evil 
 are not swiftly enough fulfilled. 
 
 These unlovely characteristics account for the 
 repulsion which many a worthy citizen feels for 
 
 33 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 the profest Reformers. He dislikes their over- 
 vehemence; and he detests what seems to him 
 their unpatriotic readiness to vilify their own 
 country. He is swift to smile when he reads the 
 contemptuous words of Emerson and Lowell and 
 Curtis. But he is derelict to his duty as a good 
 citizen if he is content to dismiss the Reformers 
 from his mind and to go on his way self-satisfied, 
 leaving things as they are and letting the affairs 
 of the commonwealth take care of themselves. 
 Eternal vigilance is the price of progress also, and 
 he is not a good citizen if he is willing to relinquish 
 full control to the professional politicians, who 
 are not all faithful servants of the Republic and 
 who have in their ranks a large proportion of the 
 baser sort, selfish spoilsmen, seeking power for 
 their own pocket all the time. 
 
 The mob of Reformers may be made up of 
 men of every degree of sincerity and disinterest 
 edness, and it may include all the varieties differ 
 entiated in the preceding paragraphs. Some of 
 its members may be narrow and impetuous; some 
 may be perfervid and foolish; some may be self- 
 seeking and unscrupulous; and only a few may 
 be unselfish and wise and efficient. We may smile 
 at their exaggerations and at their diatribes; we 
 may laugh at their conceit and their absurdities; 
 we may be irritated by their perversities; but it is 
 only at our peril that we stop our ears absolutely 
 34 
 
REFORM AND REFORMERS 
 
 to their appeals and their warnings. Reformers, 
 lofty or lowly, perform a needed function; and 
 in the machinery of society even the eccentric and 
 crank may be useful. 
 
 We ought not to let our own sense-of-humor 
 overcome our sense of duty. We may scoff at 
 Reformers if we like, but we ought to work with 
 them, when we must, profiting by their zeal and 
 utilizing their energy. Even if there is warrant 
 for suspicion sometimes, there is ever a core of 
 true disinterestedness at the center; and, after 
 all, even the long-haired men and the short- 
 haired women may be agents in the uplift which 
 gives a higher hope for humanity in the future. 
 To refuse, once for all, to join hands with Re 
 formers, because of distaste for some of their 
 deeds and of disgust at some of their work, is to 
 stand by while the clock of progress is stopt. It 
 is to help to stiffen the body politic into a Chinese 
 lethargy. It is to renounce the keen pleasure 
 of struggling sturdily for the establishment of 
 justice. It is to lag lazily behind, when nobler 
 men are striving to prove the everlasting truth of 
 a fine saying of Pascal s, which has been rendered 
 into rhythmic English: "Ebbing and flowing, 
 yet ever progressing, the tides of life creep up the 
 sands of Time." 
 
 (1905-) 
 
 305 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 IN one of the later decades of the nineteenth 
 century a politician who felt himself to be 
 pre-eminently practical, sought to dismiss all 
 further consideration of a certain proposed meas 
 ure by the discourteous assertion that it was ad 
 vocated only by a lot of "those damned literary 
 fellows." This practical politician probably 
 prided himself on being one of the plain people; 
 and no doubt he believed that he was appealing 
 to a widespread prejudice. Certainly he would 
 have been as deeply pained as he would have 
 been astonisht could he have foreseen the second 
 administration of the twentieth century, when 
 the President of the United States, the Secretary 
 of State, the Ambassador of the French Republic 
 and later the Ambassador of the British Empire, 
 should be, all of them, literary fellows. Had he 
 survived to behold this strange coincidence, it 
 would not have been easy for him to account for 
 the high esteem in which Mr. Roosevelt and 
 Mr. Hay, M. Jusserand and Mr. Bryce were held 
 by the practical politicians and by the plain 
 people also. 
 
 Yet there ma v be profit for men of letters as a 
 
 309 
 
class, if we take time to ask ourselves what under 
 lay the distrust of this practical politician and to 
 inquire what warrant he had for it and what sup 
 port he might hope to find in the opinion of the 
 average man upon whose sympathy the pro 
 fessional office-seeker must ever rely. And we 
 may begin by admitting that this plain-spoken 
 spoilsman was only voicing an opinion long 
 standing and widespread. However inexplicable 
 it may seem to us, it is a fact, that both the plain 
 people and the practical politicians have often 
 displayed an undeniable suspicion of the literary 
 fellow; and they have often acted on the belief 
 that he was likely to be little better than an im 
 practical theorist. And this is no new thing; 
 Machiavelli, for example, was a man of letters, 
 with the acutest insight into practical politics, 
 as the game was played in his time and in his 
 country; and yet the code of practise which he 
 drew up for the guidance of his prince was not 
 rewarded by the gift of responsible office. The 
 little Italian republics of the Renascence, like 
 the great American republic centuries later, 
 often availed themselves of their men of letters as 
 envoys to other powers; but they rarely entrusted 
 these literary fellows with positions of authority. 
 However ably and adroitly Dante and Boccaccio 
 and Petrarch might acquit themselves of their 
 missions abroad, they were not rewarded at home 
 310 
 
by being made rulers of men. And here in the 
 United States, while we have been glad to see 
 ourselves worthily represented in foreign parts 
 by Irving, Bancroft and Lowell, we have not 
 often been moved to elect men of letters to high 
 place in the nation or the state; and even when 
 we have seemed to choose them for office the 
 election has generally gone to a statesman who 
 was also an author rather than to an author who 
 was also a statesman. The fervid rhetorician 
 who wrote the Declaration of Independence and 
 the historian of the Winning of the West, are 
 the only men of letters who have ever risen to 
 the presidency; and their interest in politics is 
 plainly acuter than their interest in authorship. 
 In the opening chapter of Cooper s Path 
 finder, an old sailor on a trip thru the woods is 
 told by an Indian that the smoke they see curling 
 above the trees must come from a fire made by a 
 white man, since it is denser than it should be, 
 because it arises from wood wetter than any 
 fuel a redskin would ever use. "Tuscarora too 
 cunning to make fire with water," the Indian ex 
 plains; " pale-face too much book and burn any 
 thing; much book, little know." And the old 
 sailor readily admits that this is reasonable and 
 that "the chief has sensible notions of things in 
 his own way." A little later in the same tale, 
 Leatherstocking himself declares that he never 
 
"believed much in the learning of them that 
 dwell in towns, for I never yet met with one that 
 had an eye for a rifle or a trail." What is this 
 but a belated echo of Festus s saying? "Too 
 much learning hath made thee mad." 
 
 Perhaps a part of the hostility toward Cooper 
 himself, which was rampant about 1840, was 
 due to the disgust of the journalists of that pro 
 vincial period, evoked by the spectacle of a man 
 of letters, a mere teller of tales, who ventured to 
 hold firmly and to express frankly opinions of 
 his own about the social order, about politics 
 and about statecraft. These were themes which 
 the newspaper men reserved for themselves and 
 which no literary fellow had a right to meddle 
 with. The journalists of those days may have 
 been irritated by Cooper s plain speech and by 
 his curt contempt; but they had a deeper griev 
 ance. They deemed it a gross piece of imperti 
 nence for a novelist to stray from his story-telling 
 and they bade him stick to his last. In like man 
 ner the practical politicians of a New England 
 state have recently waxed indignant at the un 
 warranted interference of one of Cooper s dis 
 ciples as a historical novelist when this story-teller 
 made bold to protest against political conditions 
 which seemed to him intolerable. 
 
 It is only fair to admit unhesitatingly that there 
 is not a little to be urged in behalf of this belief 
 312 
 
that men of letters, when they see fit to discuss 
 political affairs, often talk before they think. 
 They frequently obtrude political opinions, which 
 are not the cautious result of a deliberate exam 
 ination of the whole situation. Perhaps the nov 
 elist and the poet are inclined to be somewhat im 
 practical; and perhaps they are not more likely 
 than any other member of the community to be 
 gifted with political sagacity and with statesman 
 like insight into the needs of the future. Perhaps 
 too many literary fellows are wont to take them 
 selves too seriously and to claim that their pos 
 session of "the vision and the faculty divine" 
 makes them wiser than the rest of the world. 
 When Brand es suggested to Ibsen in 1870 that 
 the dramatist had not studied politics enough to 
 be entitled to express opinions, he retorted that 
 knowledge came to him by intuition, asserting 
 that "the poet s essential task is to see, not to 
 reflect. For me, in particular, there would be 
 danger in too much reflection." Victor Hugo s 
 habitual attitude was as absurdly self-sufficient 
 as Ibsen s. Even poets and novelists of indisputa 
 ble rank have often revealed themselves fantastic 
 and absurd in their rash adventures into political 
 speculation. In the ideal communities they have 
 vaguely glimpst, there is frequently a thin un 
 reality. They are wont to balloon themselves 
 up into a rarefied atmosphere where the ordinary 
 
 3*3 
 
man cannot breathe. The plain people would 
 have been sadly misguided had they attempted 
 to take their politics from Shelley, for one, or 
 from Balzac, for another; nor would they have 
 found a much more solid support in Hugo or in 
 Hawthorne. Cooper stands out as an exception 
 among later poets and novelists, in that he had 
 thought seriously about the organization of 
 society. 
 
 It is in his delightful biography of the author 
 of the Leatherstocking Tales that Professor 
 Lounsbury has occasion to refer to the alleged 
 poet, Percival; and the witty critic tells us that as 
 this versifier "invariably proved himself entirely 
 destitute of common sense in his ordinary con 
 duct, he was led to fancy that he was not only a 
 man of ability, but a man of genius." Not a 
 few half-baked geniuses seem to have accepted 
 the theory implied, that genius is always half- 
 baked. And not a few of those who ought to 
 know better lazily consent to this false view, ad 
 mitting a plea of the irresponsibility of genius 
 as an adequate excuse for the weaknesses of 
 Coleridge and Poe and for the vagaries of Villon 
 and Musset. But nothing ought to be clearer 
 than that real genius never shirks responsibility 
 and that it is ever buttrest by common sense. 
 The truly great men have been idealists who had 
 a sustaining grasp on the realities of life. 
 3H 
 
A mandarin complacency is not a character 
 istic of the truly great man of letters. Rather is 
 it the truly small literary fellow who is likely to 
 reveal an insufferable self-sufficiency and to as 
 sume that his gift of expression supplies him also 
 with opinions worth expressing. The narrow- 
 mindedness of the mere literary fellow of this 
 shallow species was never more cruelly self-ex 
 posed than in the journal of the Goncourts. They 
 had a pretty gift of description and even a cer 
 tain felicity of sentimental analysis; but they 
 were appallingly ignorant and fundamentally un 
 intelligent. They were absolutely incapable of 
 apprehending a stimulating generalization; and 
 yet their marvellous conceit prevented their see 
 ing the pitiful figure they presented at the Magny 
 dinners when Taine and Renan were discussing 
 questions of large importance. Not only were 
 their minds hermetically closed to a new idea, 
 but they were actually unaware that it was new 
 and that it was an idea. 
 
 Even in discussing his own special art, the poet 
 and the novelist may disclose his sharp limitations. 
 While many of the most suggestive and inspiring 
 of esthetic essays have been due to the pens of 
 the practitioners of the several arts, Fromentin 
 and Mr. La Farge, for instance, Stevenson and 
 Mr. Howells, artists who happened also to 
 possess a keen insight into the principles of their 
 
several crafts, a large proportion of the treatises 
 on poetry and on fiction written by the poets 
 themselves and by the novelists are devoid of any 
 real value. The writers reveal the fact that even 
 tho they may have the gift of the lyrist or of the 
 story-teller, they lack the gift of the critic. These 
 essays prove once again that the artist does not 
 need to know more about his art than how to 
 practise it and that he may himself apply his prin 
 ciples unconsciously and yet satisfactorily, altho 
 he is quite unable to formulate them for others, 
 in default of the philosophic endowment which is 
 not a necessary part of the artistic equipment. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons and Signer Salvini were great 
 actors, beyond all question; but the papers they 
 prepared on the art of acting were entirely with 
 out significance. Victor Hugo was the fore 
 most of French poets; but his famous manifesto 
 of revolt, the preface to Cromwell, in which he 
 sought to declare a body of doctrine and to lay 
 down the law of poetic evolution, is a revelation 
 of his incapacity for critical thought. So also the 
 series of strenuous essays in which Zola, a novel 
 ist of epic power, undertook to forecast the de 
 velopment of fiction, shows that he failed to 
 understand even his own method. Now, if these 
 artists and these men of letters are sometimes 
 discovered to be hopelessly at sea when they set 
 out to consider their own special departments of 
 
" THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 human endeavor, how much more astray are they 
 likely to find themselves when they go outside 
 the boundaries of their own calling. 
 
 It was in his incisive essay on Shakspere that 
 Bagehot, shrewdest of observers, was moved to 
 explain "the reason why so few good books are 
 written." He asserted that it was because "so 
 few people that can write, know anything. In 
 general, an author has always lived in a room, 
 has read books, has cultivated science, is ac 
 quainted with the style and sentiments of the 
 best authors; but he is out of the way of employ 
 ing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to 
 hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum." 
 This may seem harsh; but it is not unjust to a 
 large proportion of mere literary fellows. They 
 know little or nothing except books. They have 
 cultivated the means of expression; but they 
 have to express only what they find in their 
 libraries. They do not know the world beyond 
 their bookshelves. They are men of letters, 
 not men of action; and often they are not men 
 of thought. When one of them happens to have 
 a doctrine he can so wing his message with flame 
 that it reaches the hearts of men; and this is 
 what made Rousseau so powerful and so danger 
 ous. And, on the other hand, when the man of 
 action happens also to have the gift of expression, 
 we get one of the books the world will not willingly 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 let die, the Commentaries of Caesar, for in 
 stance, the Autobiography of Cellini, and the 
 Memoirs of Grant. 
 
 The attitude of the practical politician and of 
 the plain people is thus seen to have a certain 
 justification in the frequent willingness of liter 
 ary fellows to declare opinions which are not the 
 result of study and which, therefore, had better 
 not be made public. To say this is to suggest 
 that the man of letters who uses his power of 
 expression as tho it gave him a right to speak with 
 authority about themes on which he has bestowed 
 only superficial attention, is really a traitor to his 
 craft, in that he exposes the whole guild of au 
 thors to a contempt which is not without excuse. 
 
 Altho it may be confest that literary fellows 
 have not infrequently laid themselves open to 
 the reproach of talking when they really had 
 nothing to say, it needs to be noted that some 
 portion of the vague distrust of the plain people 
 here in the United States has had another origin. 
 It seems to be a survival of our inheritance from 
 early colonial conditions, when the sturdy settler 
 had more or less reason to look with suspicion on 
 all possessors of superior education as likely to 
 be supporters of the aristocratic tradition which 
 he was striving to disestablish. "In the minds 
 not only of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, but 
 also, and in even stronger degree, in those of the 
 
 318 
 
Quakers, the Huguenots and the Palatinate 
 Germans, intellectual activity that went beyond 
 the limits set by theology or practical politics 
 was associated with culture," so Professor 
 Giddings has reminded us; and "culture was 
 associated with leisure, opportunity, worldly 
 indulgence. These, in turn, were associated with 
 oppression." The same acute observer suspects 
 that there was in the early American days a 
 feeling of hostility to worldly learning that par 
 took of class-conscious antagonism; "to be over 
 much interested in merely intellectual pursuits 
 was to be in a degree disloyal to the common 
 cause." 
 
 Closely akin to this easily understood hostility, 
 there is another inherited feeling born of our 
 primitive conditions and still surviving here and 
 there long after those conditions have departed. 
 In a new community, blazing its way in a new 
 land as best it can, everyone must do everything 
 for himself, since there is no one at hand to do 
 it for him. There can be no division of labor, 
 no specialization of function; and every man 
 is compelled to be a jack-of-all trades. This 
 breeds in the race self-reliant resourcefulness; 
 it stimulates ingenuity and inventiveness. Men 
 forced to find out new ways of doing old things 
 are trained to face an emergency and to front the 
 unexpected need. This undaunted facility in 
 
turning one s hand to anything is now an ac 
 quired characteristic of the American people, 
 and it is one of our most precious assets in the 
 economic struggle for the markets of the world. 
 
 But this transmitted inheritance has one ob 
 vious disadvantage. It tends to spread abroad 
 a belief that any man can do anything about as 
 well as any other man can do it. It leads to the 
 assumption that any man is fit for any post. It 
 makes us contemptuous of all special knowledge 
 and resentful of all expert advice. It accentu 
 ates the suspicion which the average man of our 
 English-speaking stock has been wont to show 
 toward the " theorist," and which has often 
 tempted him to the overt absurdity of declaring 
 that certain things "may be all very well in theory 
 but they won t work!" 
 
 Once more candor compels the confession that 
 now and again the practical man s contempt for 
 the theorist has been intensified by the occasional 
 mistakes of those experts who were not quite so 
 expert as they thought themselves. Once upon 
 a time a theorist proved to his own satisfaction 
 that a ship could not possibly cross the Atlantic 
 under steam because it never could carry coal 
 enough. And a later theorist was moved to ex 
 plain that an ice-yacht could not possibly go 
 faster than the wind. 
 
 It has happened also that rule-of-thumb read- 
 320 
 
iness has sometimes achieved an immediate re 
 sult not so swiftly attained by a more scientific 
 thoroness. In the early days of the Civil War 
 a general halted his troops on the banks of a river 
 half a mile wide, ordered his engineers to make 
 plans for a bridge and informed a New England 
 colonel that the building of the bridge would 
 be confided to the Yankee regiment. The next 
 afternoon the colonel called on the general, who 
 told him that the engineers would soon have the 
 plans ready. The colonel smiled as he answered : 
 "I don t much care about the pictures; you see, 
 my boys have got the bridge built!" 
 
 In a community where this sort of thing could 
 happen, there need be no wonder that the practical 
 man was impatient of the theorist and of the ex 
 pert. He was sufficient to himself, and he had 
 no use for them. But as backwoods conditions 
 disappeared, division of labor had to appear. 
 Specialization of function is the mark of advan 
 cing civilization. There is no better evidence of 
 our progress than the avidity with which the 
 practical men in charge of our mighty industrial 
 enterprizes are now seeking out experts and 
 snapping up all the theorists within reach. And 
 the results of this broadening of vision are in 
 creasingly evident outside the field of industry. 
 The American public is apparently awakening to 
 the fact that its servants had better be trained 
 321 
 
for service, and that its consuls, for instance, will 
 be able to benefit the commerce of the country 
 more amply if they have been forced to fit them 
 selves for their special work. 
 
 Probably this broadening of vision will sooner 
 or later effect a wholesome change in the attitude 
 of the plain people toward the expert, the theorist 
 and the literary fellow. Possibly it may even 
 modify the curiously inaccurate opinion which 
 the average man seems to have as to the college 
 professor. This opinion is apparently a sur 
 vival from the days when any superannuated 
 clergyman was accepted as an adequate occupant 
 for any chair in any institution of learning. Half 
 a century ago the program of studies in all of our 
 colleges was narrow and rigid; and anybody who 
 had taken the course in his youth held himself 
 ready in his old age to give instruction in any of 
 the prescribed studies. A little more than a score 
 of years ago, whenever any chair at Columbia 
 College happened to fall vacant, an application 
 was promptly presented by a certain aged alum 
 nus who proffered himself as the proper person 
 for the post, equally willing to impart instruction 
 in Greek or in mathematics, in economics or in 
 history. While this worthy clergyman failed of 
 his appointment at Columbia, there were other 
 men no better equipt who did secure chairs in 
 other institutions, as tho to confirm the departed 
 322 
 
" THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 belief that those who had failed in everything 
 else were at least capable of teaching. 
 
 The program of studies has been enormously 
 extended of late and it now covers many new 
 subjects, biology, sociology, psychology, as to 
 which the man in the street can have only the 
 haziest notions. With the usual conceit of ignor 
 ance he is unwilling to take the unknown for the 
 magnificent. Only too often is he inclined to 
 dismiss these new sciences as futile and to hold 
 those who teach these novel subjects as vain 
 triflers, not to be taken seriously. And here 
 once more, the fault is sometimes to be laid at 
 the door of the professors themselves rather than 
 at that of the plain people. Now and again one 
 of them, not restrained by the caution his scien 
 tific training ought to have instilled in him, rashly 
 adventures himself in fields in which his own 
 special knowledge gives him no advantage, and 
 in which he himself is no wiser than the next 
 man. It is indeed a sorry spectacle to see a pro 
 fessor of rhetoric holding forth on hypnotism and 
 a professor of experimental psychology emitting 
 empty opinions about the condition of English 
 orthography and the administration of the crim 
 inal law. Bumptious outpourings of this type can 
 not fail to bring a certain discredit upon scholar 
 ship itself and to confirm the man in the street 
 in a contemptuous distrust of the man of science. 
 323 
 
Professor Lounsbury has reminded us that 
 general information is often but another name for 
 specific ignorance. And the reverse of this is 
 true also, since special knowledge is not infre 
 quently accompanied by a lack of general in 
 formation. Excessive specialization may lead to 
 excessive narrowness of vision. Many a professor, 
 scientifically trained in Germany and conscien 
 tiously confining himself to the dative case, may 
 go thru life without ever attaining that knowledge 
 of the world and that wider outlook upon life, 
 which a broad education ought to nave bestowed. 
 
 While there are a few professors nere and there 
 who are lacking in breadth, and wnile there are 
 also a few who are not afraid to go out of their 
 depth at the risk of floundering in muddy water, 
 a large proportion of the men who now hold the 
 more important chairs in our more important 
 universities have not allowed their scholarship 
 to crush them. They are scholars, first of all, 
 of course, and this they should be; but they are 
 also good citizens, seriously interested in the teem 
 ing life about them and taking a manly part in 
 the movement for social uplift. They profit by 
 their academic detachment from the business of 
 making money to attain a wider perspective. 
 They tend to be idealists, like the men of let 
 ters; they want to peer into the future and to re 
 late what must be done to-day with what will 
 3 2 4 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS 7 
 
 have to be done to-morrow. Therefore they are 
 dissatisfied with the makeshift devices of the 
 practical politicians, who often seek only to remove 
 the symptoms of a distemper in the body politic 
 without regard to the real cause of the disease. 
 
 As they have no hesitation in expressing their 
 disapproval of quack legislation, they are likely 
 to come into frequent collision with both the busi 
 ness man who wants an evil condition remedied 
 in a hurry and with the professional politician 
 who is swift to pass any act which he thinks the 
 people want, regardless of its ultimate effect. And 
 here is a solid reason for the hostility they often 
 arouse. The practical man of affairs, whether 
 in business or in politics, is prone to take short 
 views and to hold that sufficient unto the day is 
 the evil thereof. Therfore he is moved to swift 
 wrath when the college professors provoke him 
 by their calm assertion that no pill has ever yet 
 cured the earthquake. 
 
 While the well-meaning man who wishes to 
 have everything made better overnight is offended 
 by the disinterested attitude taken by the college 
 professor and by the literary fellow toward pub 
 lic questions, the man who is actually profiting 
 by present conditions is fiercely resentful. He is 
 belligerent in defending his own, and he is skeptical 
 as to the disinterestedness of his opponents. He 
 impugns their good faith; he imputes unworthy 
 
 325 
 
motives; and he relieves his feelings by lumping 
 the literary fellow and the college professor in a 
 comprehensive anathema. And here he exhibits 
 a class-conscious antagonism too frankly selfish 
 not to defeat itself by self-disclosure. 
 
 It is an evidence of the common sense of the 
 American people that the prejudice against the 
 college professor, like that against the man of 
 letters, is rapidly dying down and that there is 
 beginning to be public recognition and public ap 
 preciation of the service they are rendering to the 
 Commonwealth. This recognition is displayed 
 in the increasing frequency with which their ad 
 vice and their aid is sought in solving the prob 
 lems of society, and in the greater weight which 
 is attacht to their opinions upon the subjects they 
 have studied. This appreciation is due partly 
 to the fact that the public is at last discovering the 
 improvement in the quality of the professors in 
 consequence of the development of the American 
 university, more especially in the larger urban 
 communities; and it is due also in part to a grow 
 ing understanding of the real value and impor 
 tance of the expert and the theorist. 
 
 It is easy to give striking instances of this in 
 creasing reliance of the public upon the university 
 for expert aid; and perhaps I may be pardoned 
 if I present a few of them from the recent history 
 of the institution with which I am most familiar. 
 326 
 
Probably it would not be difficult to select ex 
 amples as significant from the later experiences 
 of any other of the larger universities in the larger 
 cities. The admirable school-law of New York, 
 now incorporated in the charter of the city, was 
 due largely to the skill and foresight of one 
 Columbia professor; and another Columbia pro 
 fessor was a member of the commission which 
 prepared the charter itself. A third sat on the 
 commission for revising the tax-system of the 
 state; and a fourth had a seat in the Panama 
 Canal commission. A fifth went out to San 
 Francisco to take charge of the relief-work im 
 mediately after the earthquake; and a sixth has 
 had to ask for leave twice, first to act as assistant 
 Secretary of State and then to serve as secretary 
 of the commission which signed the treaty of 
 peace between Spain and the United States. 
 Two of my colleagues have recently declined calls 
 to take charge of the Museum of Fine Arts in 
 Boston and of the Smithsonian Institute in Wash 
 ington, while a third has accepted the presidency 
 of the Carnegie Institution. 
 
 It would be easy also to bring forward many 
 instances of the practical efficiency of men of 
 letters. One literary fellow, here in New York, 
 laid the solid foundation of tenement-house re 
 form. Another, in Washington, prevented the 
 dismemberment of the Chinese Empire. A 
 
 3 2 7 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 third had establisht the Naval Academy at An 
 napolis against the protests of the practical poli 
 ticians of his time. It was a literary fellow, risen 
 to be prime minister of Great Britain, who had 
 the daring imagination which led him to acquire 
 control of the Suez Canal, and thus to bring about 
 the ultimate supremacy of his country over Egypt. 
 And it is to the undying honor of the men of 
 letters of France the so-called " intellectuals "- 
 that in the blackest hours of the Dreyfus iniquity, 
 they stept forward to insist on the duty of doing 
 right even tho the heavens should fall. 
 
 We can see a good augury for the future in 
 the prominent position now awarded by public 
 opinion in America to the college president. 
 The more or less tolerant contempt which the 
 average man has sometimes displayed toward 
 the mere professor he has never felt toward the 
 president. He knows little enough about the 
 work of the professor and about the needful quali 
 fications for any particular chair; but he cannot 
 help perceiving that the president must be a man 
 of affairs, having a knowledge of the practical 
 things of life, such as the president of a bank or 
 of a railroad needs must have. Altho the man 
 in the street does not happen to know it, the 
 American college president occupies a position 
 without parallel in Europe; and this position, 
 lofty and detacht, gives him a platform from 
 328 
 
"THOSE LITERARY FELLOWS" 
 
 which to speak with authority. Any one who 
 will call the roll of the men now at the head of 
 our older institutions of learning cannot fail to 
 be struck with the fact that almost every one of 
 them is a scholar, who is also far more than a 
 mere scholar. And yet they are, all of them, 
 professors who have been promoted from the 
 ranks. 
 
 College professor and literary fellow, expert 
 and theorist, seem at last to be coming into their 
 own. It was in the nineteenth century that the 
 professional politician was guilty of the sneer 
 which has served as a text for these random 
 remarks. Long before the twenty-first century 
 shall loom before us, we may expect to find that 
 the man in the street will have experienced a 
 change of heart. Perhaps we may even hope for 
 a happy day when no smile will come to any lip 
 on reading the cry of Napoleon s soldiers in 
 Egypt as they formed square to repel the charge 
 of the Mamelukes: " Asses and savans to the 
 center!" 
 
 But in order that this change of opinion may 
 be effected, it is incumbent on the literary fel 
 lows and the college professors, on the theorists 
 and the experts, so to control their utterances and 
 so to direct their energies that the plain people 
 will have no excuse for resuming again the suspicious 
 attitude of bygone days. It will be their duty to 
 
 329 
 
seek to attain to the type of the cultivated man 
 as set forth by President Eliot, " not a weak, 
 critical, fastidious creature, vain of a little ex 
 clusive information or of an uncommon knack 
 in Latin verse or mathematical logic," but "a 
 man of quick perceptions, broad sympathies and 
 wide affinities, responsive yet independent, self- 
 reliant but deferential, loving truth and candor 
 but also moderation and proportion, courageous 
 but gentle, not finisht but perfecting." And 
 the closer we can come up to this ideal, which is 
 Emerson s also, the less we shall fall behind that 
 of Isocrates, who declared that by an educated 
 man he understood "one who can deal with all 
 that comes upon him day by day; who is honest 
 and mannerly in society; who rules his desires; 
 who is not spoilt by good fortune." 
 
 (1909.) 
 
 330 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
[This address was delivered at the centenary of Miami 
 University in June, 1909, and again at the opening ex 
 ercises of Columbia University in September, 1909.] 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 NOT long ago a distinguisht lawyer of the 
 Middle West, pleading the cause of one 
 of the societies for improving civic conditions, 
 riskt the assertion that the higher life of the 
 American people "has been drugged with a spirit 
 of mercenary materialism," and that "political 
 self-seeking and unlimited corporate greed have 
 become a national religion," while material ag 
 grandizement is "leading us in the direction of 
 national decay." Altho this charge is overdrawn 
 and is likely to be thrown out by the grand jury 
 of enlightened public opinion, there is conviction 
 in his later statement that mere material pros 
 perity is what is too commonly known as "suc 
 cess in life," whereas "in reality it is failure," 
 for "it confounds the end with the means," 
 since we have reacht only "the portals of success 
 when we have become wealthy and influential. 
 Our culture is more or less shallow, and our lives 
 are more or less limited and crippled, unless we 
 are patriotic and unselfish. We are like plants 
 333 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 which put forth the buds of promise but never 
 reach the blossoming stage." 
 
 It may be admitted, at once, that in the mouth 
 of the ordinary American of to-day the word 
 success" is usually interpreted to mean material 
 prosperity, the attainment of a comfortable 
 fortune, the acquisition of the assured position 
 which money generally gives. But when we ask 
 whether this interpretation is either specially 
 American or specially novel, we are likely to 
 come to the conclusion that it is neither, and that 
 ever since our modern civilization emerged out 
 of the Dark Ages, there has never been a time 
 or a place when the average man found any other 
 meaning in the word. To the large majority of 
 mankind always and everywhere the outward 
 and visible sign of success is "money in the 
 bank," or whatever may be the immediate 
 equivalent of this. 
 
 Indeed, this must needs endure so long as most 
 men have to spend their lives battling with the 
 waves in the strenuous effort to keep themselves 
 afloat. To measure success in terms of material 
 prosperity may be sordid and it may be dangerous 
 to the commonwealth; but it is natural enough 
 and it marks no sudden fall from grace. Even 
 tho this standard of success may seem to some 
 to be more exclusively accepted by us just now, 
 the acceptance is not at all peculiar to the Ameri- 
 334 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 can of the twentieth century. It is only what 
 has long been visible both in France and in Eng 
 land ; and the industrial development in Germany 
 has brought about the same state of affairs even 
 in that land of soldiers and philosophers. When 
 one of my Columbia colleagues was a student at 
 Berlin thirty years ago, he was once told by a 
 native that the Americans "worshipt the dollar," 
 to which he promptly retorted that the Germans 
 had a similar god, who was only one-quarter as 
 powerful. 
 
 The real question that confronts us when we 
 seek to attain an understanding of the present 
 attitude of the American people is not whether 
 success is here taken to mean material prosperity, 
 but whether material prosperity is not received 
 by us as the final test of success and as the sole 
 touchstone of a finisht career. And this is a 
 question as important as it is difficult to answer. 
 If we are admitting that the acquisition of money 
 is the only standard of a well-spent life, then in 
 deed are we in danger of confounding the end 
 with the means. Then are we hailing the man 
 who has merely entered the portal as tho he 
 had conquered the inner citadel. " What shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul?" 
 
 While material prosperity is, of necessity, the 
 immediate aim of the average man, in the thick 
 335 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 of the struggle for life, it ought not to be his only 
 aim; and just so soon as he can feel his feet firm 
 on the ground beneath him, it ought not to be his 
 chief aim. And what may be, for a while, al 
 most the whole duty of the inferior man, is only 
 a small part of the duty of the superior man. 
 When the desperate dread of want is no longer 
 driving us to leisureless toil, and when a fair 
 measure of material prosperity has been achieved 
 by abundant energy or by early advantage, then 
 the further accumulation of wealth ceases to de 
 serve exclusive attention, since it is no longer need 
 ful to the individual or to the community. To 
 continue to put forth all one s power for the sake 
 of needless acquisition is a short-sighted selfish 
 ness which is not success but failure. It is a 
 failure of the individual, which, if widely multi 
 plied, must be fatal to the community. 
 
 There is no denying that there are now in the 
 United States glaring examples of this failure, 
 masquerading as success; nor can it be doubted 
 that many if not most of those who are in the thick 
 of the strife are willing enough to welcome this 
 sham as tho it was the genuine article. They 
 are, as it were, hypnotized by the revolving glit 
 ter before their eyes; and they are in no condition 
 to appreciate the truth of Beecher s saying that 
 " there are a great many poor men who are rich and 
 a great many rich men who are poor." They do 
 33 6 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 not see that if they got what they are seeking, 
 they would swiftly discover the imposture that 
 they played on themselves. They cannot be 
 expected to find this out until it is too late, until 
 they have failed according to their own tempo 
 rary standard, or until they have succeeded ac 
 cording to the standard which will betray them 
 in the end. They have energy and determination 
 and ability; but they are bending their powers 
 to the attainment of an object which will never 
 adequately reward the effort. They have not 
 taken time to plan the journey before them and 
 to decide whether they really want to arrive at 
 the port for which they seem to be steering. 
 "Most men," so Lowell has told us, "make the 
 voyage of life, as if they carried sealed orders, 
 which they were not to open until they were in 
 mid-ocean." 
 
 But while there are too many men in the United 
 States who are now recklessly making this blunder, 
 they have had predecessors not a few in other 
 lands. Even the wisest of men, who might be 
 expected to have laid out the course carefully 
 and cautiously, have been not infrequently ship- 
 wreckt by the false charts they have made for 
 themselves and by the faithless compass they 
 have chosen to follow. For example, consider 
 the career of Bacon; no one ever sought success 
 more deliberately than he did and with more 
 
 337 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 abundant faculties; and his essays, wherein we 
 may read that "all rising to great place, is by a 
 winding stair," might be the handbook of those 
 who wish to make their way in the world by worldly 
 ways. But who is there now who wants the suc 
 cess that Bacon attained at the last? Or turn to 
 Machiavelli, whose powerful intellect was only 
 a little inferior to Bacon s; no one ever laid down 
 more boldly the principles whereby a ruthless 
 man might carve his path to success as he saw it; 
 and his precepts seem to be accepted as valid 
 and to be relentlessly applied by certain of the 
 industrial princes of to-day. Yet the name of 
 Machiavelli is now a by-word and a hissing; 
 and the fact that this fate is not wholly deserved 
 does not help him. 
 
 Contrast Bacon and Machiavelli with Franklin, 
 whose moral code may be lacking in elevation, 
 but whose practical wisdom was lofty enough 
 He preached a humdrum doctrine, that honesty 
 is the best policy, that a penny saved is a penny 
 gained, and that if you keep your shop your shop 
 will keep you, precepts which bore fruit in the 
 lives of countless thousands of his future fellow- 
 citizens. But he accomplisht the rarer feat of 
 conforming his practise to his preaching; and 
 thereby he found himself in his maturity in the 
 possession of a comfortable fortune, whereupon 
 he gave up the task of making any more money 
 
 338 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 and lookt out for an ampler and more congenial 
 field of labor. To a man of active mind and ener 
 getic body, leisure could be but the liberty of 
 choice of a more interesting occupation. In his 
 own freedom from mere money-making he saw 
 the opportunity for a larger public service. He 
 has told us that he early made the rule of never 
 asking for an office and of never declining one; 
 and in the second half of his career he was labor 
 ing as effectively for the public as in the first half 
 he had toiled for himself. 
 
 Franklin was able to aid in achieving the liberty 
 of his native land, only because he had first 
 won freedom for himself. "Those only are free 
 men," said Froude, "who have had patience to 
 learn the conditions of a useful and honorable 
 existence, who have overcome their own igno 
 rance and their own selfishness, who have become 
 masters of themselves." It was because Franklin 
 had been untiring in overcoming his ignorance 
 and because he was masterful in conquering his 
 own selfishness that he was able to fill out perhaps 
 the most outwardly successful career yet achieved 
 by any American, even if we admit that his lim 
 itations shut him out from certain of the high 
 est things in life. His later and larger success 
 was due to his never being satisfied with mere 
 material prosperity, to his never confounding the 
 means with the end, and to his generous under- 
 339 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 standing of the duty of every man toward his 
 fellows. 
 
 It was Lamennais who declared that "human 
 society is founded on the self-surrender or sacri 
 fice of man to men, or of every man to all men; 
 and sacrifice is the essence of every true society. " 
 Franklin might have smiled at the eloquence of 
 the phrase; but he would have acknowledged 
 its truth, and he might even have explained 
 that self-surrender and sacrifice need not be 
 painful and that in the long run they are often 
 pleasurable in the highest degree. Certainly 
 he would have approved of a passage in one of 
 President Butler s addresses, which insists that 
 "the moral education of the individual human 
 being to the point where he realizes the squalid 
 poverty of selfishness and the boundless riches 
 of service, will alone lift civilization to a higher 
 plane and make true democracy secure." 
 
 The moral education of the average human 
 being, here and now, in the United States, at the 
 beginning of the twentieth century, has not reacht 
 this point. Indeed, it may be doubted whether 
 it has ever been reacht or whether it will ever 
 be reacht by the average human being in any 
 country at any time, for reasons which are ob 
 vious enough. And it may be that the accept 
 ance of material prosperity as the sole standard 
 of success has been wider in the past few years 
 340 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 in America than it ever was before. But to ad 
 mit this, is not to admit that " political self-seek 
 ing and unlimited corporate greed have become 
 a national religion," with the result of drugging 
 the higher life with a " spirit of mercenary mate 
 rialism." The evidence is plain to-day that even 
 tho we may have started along the road to na 
 tional decay, lured by the glamor of the success 
 which glitters, we have seen the danger-signals in 
 time, and that we are now ready to retrace our 
 steps, even if we have not yet regained the right 
 path. 
 
 II 
 
 IT is a good sign that the attitude toward the 
 very rich seems to be changing of late. They are 
 beginning to feel themselves more or less under 
 suspicion, however much the society-reporter 
 may delight in snobbish adulation. No longer is 
 there a belief that the mere heaping up of money 
 is a sufficient service to the community. There 
 is an increasing tendency to apply a stricter moral 
 standard and to ask embarrassing questions. 
 There is a desire to know where the money came 
 from and whether it was honestly come by. There 
 is a manifest intention to sharpen the laws so 
 that processes of acquisition which may have been 
 legal even if they were immoral shall hereafter 
 be under the control of the courts. There is 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 awakening to the value of social service. There 
 is a keener recognition of the fact that the really 
 useful citizens cannot be measured by the money 
 they possess. There is a closer scrutiny of char 
 acter and a higher appreciation of its loftier types. 
 There is a cordial welcome for those new men 
 in public life, to some of whom it is possible 
 to apply the noble words in which the younger 
 Pliny described one of his friends, "who did 
 nothing for ostentation but all for conscience, 
 who sought his reward of virtue in itself and not 
 in the praise of men." 
 
 On the other hand, it is not a little unfortunate 
 that there seems to be intensifying a prejudice 
 toward the very rich as a class, without due dis 
 crimination between those who have inherited 
 fortunes honestly gained and those who have 
 amassed large wealth by predatory devices. At 
 times, this prejudice may bear hardly on those 
 "who think their innoxious indolence their se 
 curity," to borrow Burke s phrase. But there 
 are only too many among the inheritors of honest 
 fortunes who mistake notoriety for fame and 
 who alienate sympathy by foolish prodigality 
 and by silly display. Some of them seem to 
 spend large sums merely as a means of killing 
 time, forgetting that there is no known way of 
 killing eternity. Some of them reveal the laxity 
 of morals which is ever likely to result from the 
 342 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 conjunction of wealth and idleness. Some of 
 them have taken part in that matrimonial ex 
 portation of heiresses, which seems especially 
 revolting to the plain people. Most of them have 
 failed to grasp the fact that an industrial com 
 munity offers few opportunities to the selfish idler 
 who has come into the stored savings of a father 
 honored for his industry. A spendthrift who 
 wastes the wealth he has inherited is likely to 
 get his money s worth of repentance, sooner or 
 later; but not a few of the fortunes recently in 
 herited have been so vast that the weakling heir 
 is really in no danger of reducing himself to actual 
 poverty. He goes on his way, leading an empty 
 life of lavish luxury, setting up a false standard 
 for others and having very little real enjoyment 
 himself. 
 
 The same unfortunate fate seems to have be 
 fallen some of those who, after a youth of honest 
 toil, have suddenly found themselves in full man 
 hood in the possession of large fortunes which 
 they do not know how to put to any good use. 
 Perhaps this class is larger just now in the United 
 States than it has ever been before anywhere else, 
 in consequence of the recent gigantic combina 
 tions of industrial enterprizes, whereby compar 
 atively young fellows who had been engaged in 
 building up the several businesses, laboring with 
 all their might and rinding their fun in their hard 
 343 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 work, have suddenly discovered themselves out of 
 a job, and paid off with a huge sum of money 
 which a few years earlier would have seemed to 
 them beyond the dreams of avarice. It is not 
 to be wondered that some of them lose their heads 
 and that sometimes they lose their feet also. 
 
 It is in his narrative of Catiline s conspiracy 
 that the shrewd Sallust points out the reason for 
 the failure of certain of his earlier contemporaries 
 in the final years of the Roman republic. "Men 
 who had easily borne misery and danger and who 
 had gone thru the most embarrassing and the 
 most painful difficulties without weakness, bent 
 beneath the weight of leisure and wealth. What 
 made their misfortune was that they had attained 
 what men ordinarily desire." In those dark 
 days the social organization of Rome was crum 
 bling and private corruption hastened public 
 disintegration. Here in the United States the 
 social organization seems to be sound, and to be 
 able to adjust itself in time to changing condi 
 tions. Even if society is injured by the mis 
 deeds and by the dangerous example of these 
 energetic possessors of new wealth, it is not actually 
 imperilled. They can harm the commonwealth 
 only a little, even tho they wreck their own lives. 
 
 They may even be entitled to some small share 
 of sympathy, for they are not ill-meaning even 
 if they are ill-doing. Their early years have 
 344 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 been arduous, but full and rich in satisfactory 
 achievement. By personal experience they were 
 proving the truth of Stevenson s assertion that 
 "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to ar 
 rive, and the true success is to labor." All at 
 once their work has been taken from them; and 
 they have had no time to teach themselves how 
 to play. They find themselves with no restrain 
 ing duties of the kind they are accustomed to; 
 and they have the widest opportunities for so- 
 called " pleasure-seeking." At first they can 
 scarcely be expected to bear in mind that real 
 relaxation is possible only in the interstices of 
 solid work. They can hardly help rushing forth 
 ardently; and by a strenuous pleasure-seeking 
 for its own sake, they soon atrophy the function 
 of wholesome enjoyment. In this pursuit, for 
 which they have had no preparation, they have 
 no models before them but the idlers of inherited 
 wealth. Trained to make money only and not 
 to spend it, they are tempted to set up as rivals 
 of these idlers and to devote themselves to a dis 
 play which is wasteful as well as unsatisfactory, 
 and to a self-indulgence which has been relaxt 
 from all restraint. 
 
 It would be evidence in favor of the contention 
 that the higher life of the American people "had 
 been drugged with a spirit of mercenary materi 
 alism," if we found that the average man was 
 345 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 looking up to these lusty and lustful spenders as 
 creatures to be envied and to be copied. In 
 deed, if this vulgar extravagance was widely ac 
 cepted as the proof of success in life, then might 
 we be tempted to despair of the republic. But 
 this is not the case; in fact, it is very far from being 
 the case. The attitude of the average man toward 
 those guilty of this splurging magnificence is 
 rarely envious; rather is it to some extent con 
 temptuous. For the most part their doings have 
 awakened an amused scorn, when they have not 
 aroused a wholesome anger. The temper of the 
 people is healthy enough, even if the judgments 
 of the people are often swift, unsympathetic and 
 unsparing. Probably the spectacle of the pitiful 
 efforts of these workers turned idlers to get some 
 thing for their money has not been without profit 
 to the body politic, in that it has stirred the con 
 science to insist on a stricter accountability to 
 the moral law. 
 
 It was in the first half of the nineteenth century 
 that Lowell wrote to his nephew a word of ad 
 vice, which is as valid to-day as it was three score 
 years ago. "Pin this up in your memory, 
 that Nature abhors the credit system and that 
 we never get anything in life till we have paid 
 for it. Anything good, I mean; evil things we 
 always pay for afterwards, and always when we 
 find it hardest to do it." And this is curiously 
 346 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 like a statement of his own creed that Huxley 
 once wrote to Kingsley, "The ledger of the 
 Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has 
 the balance of his operations paid over to him at 
 the end of every minute of his existence." The 
 antics of the idlers, whether their wealth is in 
 herited or suddenly thrust upon them, are a spectacle 
 for gods and men; but there is no doubt who will 
 have to pay the piper for their dancing. It is 
 with little desire to figure in the whirling that the 
 most of us gaze at the sorry show. 
 
 While the public attitude toward the idle rich 
 of either breed is never admiring, rarely envious 
 and generally contemptuous, its attitude toward 
 the powerful group of masterful manipulators 
 of the necessities of life is distinctly hostile. Their 
 example has been as demoralizing as their mis 
 chievous activity has been dangerous. But this 
 the plain people now perceive; and as a result 
 the plain people are asking for laws which have 
 iron teeth and for prosecutions which will put 
 prison-stripes on a few of these predatory finan 
 ciers. Probably these self-seeking captains of 
 industry have been astonisht of late when they 
 discovered their unfortunate position in public 
 opinion. Possibly they may even be moved to 
 inquire whether the success they have achieved 
 is really worth while, whether it is worth what 
 they have paid for it. Certainly they may 
 
 347 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 awaken to the fact that a man can scarcely be 
 called successful in life when a large proportion 
 of his fellow-citizens not only believe that he 
 ought to be in jail, but would like to see him 
 there. Success is at least a little dubious when 
 men of immense wealth have to go into hiding 
 or to escape out of the country to avoid the 
 subpena that might force them to the alternative 
 of perjury or of testifying against themselves. 
 
 There is no abiding benefit in a material pros 
 perity, however swollen, when its possessors are 
 under the ban of obloquy, when the organs of 
 public opinion are united in holding them up to 
 scorn and even to execration, and when no voice 
 is ever raised in their defence except by those 
 whose consciences have been purchased by gifts. 
 Perhaps there is even a hint of hysteria in the 
 perfervid denunciation of the criminal rich; but 
 even hysteria may have its significance. A re 
 morseless crushing down of other men is likely 
 in time to create a social vacuum; and we all 
 know how hard it is for man to live alone. We 
 crave, every one of us, the good opinion of our 
 fellow-men. There is little companionship in mere 
 money. A man who has lived for himself, with 
 out service and without sacrifice, driven by greed 
 or impelled by the sheer exhilaration of the game 
 he is playing, is not likely to find much satisfaction 
 in a solitary counting up of the stakes he has won. 
 348 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 He may be very slow to make this discovery, 
 since he is likely to be sheathed in self-esteem, 
 an almost inevitable accompaniment of a life 
 devoted to mere money-making. Here indeed 
 is another disadvantage of starting out with the 
 amassing of wealth as the only goal of ambition. 
 If this heart s desire is ever attained, it can only 
 be at the cost of a disintegration of character. 
 It is almost impossible for any one who has heapt 
 up a fortune unaided not to be conceited. While 
 the artist and the author may have wholesome 
 doubts as to the abiding value of their works, 
 the man who has made money can measure it 
 with precision. There it is before him, to be 
 reckoned fairly in dollars and cents; and the 
 simple operation of elementary addition is the 
 solid support of his high opinion of himself. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To be raised above immediate want, to be 
 well-to-do, to have inherited or acquired a com 
 fortable fortune, this is a thing not to be de 
 spised, since it sets us free for work more inter 
 esting than barren self-support. But to have 
 much more than this, to be possest of immense 
 wealth, is to be heavily handicapt. The tale is 
 told of a multi-millionaire who had inherited his 
 gigantic fortune and who complained that he 
 349 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 had had no fun in life. He is reported as saying 
 that he believed he had ability but he was not 
 sure, as he had had no chance to prove it, no in 
 centive to put forth the best that was in him. 
 His excessive riches had disqualified him for tak 
 ing part in any of the struggles which give zest 
 to life, and he had found himself forced into a 
 career of empty idleness. This seems to be a 
 confirmation of a remark reported to have been 
 made half a century ago by the man who was 
 then supposed to be the wealthiest in New York, 
 to the effect that any one who had half a mil 
 lion "was just as well off as if he was rich." And 
 this again recalls the remark of a clever old lawyer 
 to a client of moderate means whom he was try 
 ing to dissuade from a risky venture; "There 
 isn t really so much difference between having a 
 hundred thousand dollars and having a million; 
 but there s an enormous difference between hav 
 ing a hundred thousand and having nothing at 
 all!" After all, there is sense in Ben Tonson s 
 saying, "What need hath nature of silver dishes, 
 multitudes of waiters, delicate pages, perfumed 
 napkins? She requires meat only, and Hunger 
 is not ambitious." 
 
 Probably many Americans who have made 
 
 colossal fortunes have not been urged by avarice, 
 
 by the naked desire for gain; rather have they 
 
 been taken captive by the lure of the game itself, 
 
 350 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 unwilling to draw out so long as they could sit 
 in at the table. Perhaps some of them may be 
 victims of the false reasoning which encourages a 
 belief that as a moderate fortune helps us to en 
 joy life, a fortune ten times as large will provide 
 ten times as much enjoyment. To argue in this 
 way is to ignore the law of diminishing returns; 
 and it is to commit the grosser blunder of sup 
 posing that pleasure can be bought with a price. 
 But we all know that there is no shop where pleas 
 ure is sold, at least there is none where the 
 products are guaranteed under the pure food law. 
 Pleasure cannot be purchased, and it cannot even 
 be sought for, with any chance of success in the 
 pursuit. If we go gunning for pleasure, we are 
 certain to come home with an empty bag, as well 
 as with empty pockets; and the man who seeks 
 that kind of sport generally starts out with an 
 empty soul. 
 
 The truth is that pleasure is a by-product of 
 work. The man who has something to do that 
 he wants to do intensely and that he is able at 
 last to do, gets pleasure as a fee, as a tip, as an 
 extra allowance. Perhaps the keenest joy in 
 life is to accomplish what you have long sought 
 to do, even if you feel that the result might be a 
 little better than you have achieved. Possibly 
 the most exquisite gratification comes from the 
 consciousness of a good job well done. The fool- 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 ish talk about the "curse of labor" is responsible 
 for much of the haste to gain wealth that we may 
 retire into idleness. But if we are honest with 
 ourselves we know that labor is never a curse, 
 that it is ever a blessing. The theory that work 
 in itself is painful, or that it is the duty only of 
 inferiors, is essentially aristocratic and funda 
 mentally feudal; it is hostile to the democratic 
 ideal. Work is what sweetens life and gives de 
 light to all our days. That man is happiest and 
 gets the utmost out of life who is neither poor nor 
 rich and who is in love with his job, joying in the 
 work that comes to his hands. And that man 
 is truly accurst who is refused the privilege of 
 congenial toil because he has too much money. 
 There is a significant passage in one of the 
 letters that Taine wrote toward the end of his 
 well-spent life, an honorable career which had 
 been crowned with all the outer rewards of suc 
 cess. "To my mind," he declared, "the hope of 
 success, even success itself, does not suffice to 
 sustain us; man needs an aim, something loved 
 for its own sake, sometimes money or high place, 
 which is the case of ordinary ambition ; sometimes 
 an object he will enjoy all by himself, a science 
 he wishes to master, a problem which he wishes 
 to solve to have done with it." The ordinary 
 ambition, as Taine calls it here, money or high 
 place, is a false beacon, and when he who is pos- 
 352 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 sest by it attains to his promised land he finds 
 it to be only a slough of despond, if it has led him 
 to starve his capacity for getting out of life the 
 things that are really worth while. He may seem 
 to have succeeded, but he is left lonely amid those 
 whose ambitions have been better inspired. 
 
 In spite of much that may seem like evidence 
 to the contrary, the American people as a whole 
 are not now setting up false standards of success. 
 It is not true that they are drugged with "the 
 spirit of mercenary materialism." There is 
 really little reason to believe that the average 
 man here in the United States, however much he 
 may wish to be better off than he is, weighs his 
 fellow-men by their balance in the bank. In fact, 
 the average man to-day is not without a pretty 
 high opinion of those whose minds are not set on 
 money-making; and he is in no danger of de 
 nouncing as a dire failure a career devoted to the 
 loftier things of life. He may at times display 
 too much curiosity about the methods and the 
 amassed money of Mr. Midas and of Mr. Croesus; 
 but he does not reveal any too great esteem for 
 their persons. He does not actually envy them, 
 even tho he may wish that he also had a little 
 more of the material prosperity of which they have 
 too much. It may even be doubted whether he 
 holds them to have been more successful than the 
 men whom he admires as the leaders of public 
 
 353 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 opinion and as the possessors of the things that 
 money cannot buy. He may gossip about the 
 latest entertainment or the latest benefaction of 
 inordinately wealthy men, but he does not set 
 them as high as he rates certain college presidents, 
 certain artists, certain men of letters, certain in 
 ventors, whose power and success cannot be 
 measured in money. He would not dispute 
 Bacon s assertion that "no man s fortune can 
 be an end worthy of the gift of being . . . and 
 often the worthiest men abandon their fortunes 
 willingly that they may have leisure for higher 
 things." 
 
 All those who are old enough to remember 
 the funeral of Peter Cooper and its outpouring of 
 affectionate regard from all classes in the city he 
 had made a better place to live in, will not need 
 to be assured that the average American clings 
 sturdily to the belief that public service, in office 
 or out of it, is the true gage of a life. The most 
 useful citizen is in fact the most successful; and 
 it is those who have given loyal service to the com 
 munity whom the community holds in highest 
 regard. Probably the average American, if he 
 were forced to give thought to it, would admit 
 willingly that the unknown settlement-workers, 
 who put behind them all desire for gain and who 
 give their lives gladly to unostentatious service, 
 have achieved a fuller measure of success than 
 354 
 
STANDARDS OF SUCCESS 
 
 the most of the men who have been conspicuous 
 in amassing millions. 
 
 Not what we have, but what we use; 
 Not what we see, but what we choose 
 These are the things that mar or bless 
 The sum of human happiness. 
 
 Not as we take, but as we give; 
 Not as we pray, but as we live 
 These are the things that make for peace, 
 Both now and after Time shall cease. 
 
 (1909.) 
 
 355 
 
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