Introducing the American Spirit

tor Meets the

ith: "You may tell that to some one who has never been in the United States; but not to me who have travelled through the length and breadth of it three times." He said it in an ungenerous, impatient way, although his last visit

come over the next time

nious, but not thorough; you have fine clothes, but no style; churches, but no religion; universities, but no learning. No, I have been there three times. That's enough. I know all about it. Fertig!" And with that he dismissed me without givi

ship at the Hamburg-American dock, which of course I promptly did. The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin stepped onto the soil of the United States with a

eavor I seemed to be supported by that divine providence which watches over the whole world in general, but over the United States in particular. The weather was perfect, the

t they worried and fussed about their baggage, although there was nothing to worry or fuss about, for it was safe on its way to the hotel. They were shot under the rive

mplained because they were not as big as barns and the ceilings not as high as a cathedral. The Frau Directorin eyed the bath-room almost in silence; but

en they were each face to face with half a grapefruit of vast circumference, reposing upon a bed of crushed ice. Their smiles broadened when they had introduced their palates to an American breakfast food, a crispy bit o

knew that my prayers were being answered, and that th

; a country whose glory you have gloried in before the whole world, but whose halo has so many rust spots that you wish you might have had a chance to use Sapolio on it ere you let it shine before your visitors? A country of one hundred million inhabitants, of whom every fourth person smells of the steerage, when you wish that they all smelled of the Mayflower; a country where more pe

egin to do it in New York, beats showing off bab

nd-swept prairies. They were mighty spirits who came to the edges of civilization and drove the wilderness farther and farther back by drawing furrows, sowing wheat, and planting trees-those men whom heat and a relentless desert could not separate from that other ocean with its Golden Gate to the sunset and the oldest world. Determining to have and to hold it till time is no more, they proceeded to unite the two

same type of people to do pioneering among the clouds. Public lands being exhaust

uld discover in it the Spirit of America, the daring spirit of the pioneers who built Towers of Babel, though reversing the process; for they began with a confu

u Directorin doing likewise. The Flatiron Building with its accentuated leanness lured them on until

Frau Directorin said: "Um Gottes Himmels Wille

I ever had an American city introduced to me thr

which tells the time of day up there "among the dizzy flocks of sky-scrapers"; but I did know that the tower represen

u Directorin. We walked on, looking up, higher and higher still, until our eyes met another tower,

o stone lace and lilies, hideous gargoyles and brave flying buttresses, aisles and naves and rose windows. Yes, they are quite wonderful. But to turn spools of thread, granit

y fostering America's art sense. It ought not to come in the Old World's way-by glorifying dogmas and creeds, by petrifying religion into buttresses and incasing our dead in tombs of beryl and onyx. It ought not to come with its mixture of paganism and r

hings on bits of ivory, or exhaust their energy in painting a lock of hair-wh

self in an Old World cathedral. The chant was not a Miserere, but a call to entrust one's self to the depths of the earth-to descend into tubes of steel, beneath the river, and then travel to the fair cities of the living, throbbing, thriving West. It was a railway terminal without choking smoke, blinding dust, or deafening noise; al

orning's walk; but, after being properly refre

fifty times; or a Gothic church, and attenuate it; or a Romanesque cathedral, and support it by Ionic pillars; or a cigar box,

nergy merely to express himself. The result is confusion. You can feel that unrest, that discord,

ssing the collective spirit of the Old World. They both retired for a long res

ents, their wearied Old World nerves rested, and, after being s

d it is crowded by the clerks who served them, the cashiers who received their money, the girls

lsing machine which has been going at a dangerous speed. They go from it eagerly, with a brave show of courage, as if the ten hours' labor had no

railway trains, and crowd them, and c

crawl through the busy streets, so heavy are th

those noisy catacombs. They walk by companies, regiments, and great armies, d

such a silent good nature, with such a sense of self-reliance, and with so

d suffocate in that throng, and the Frau Directorin cr

owd did not lose its head; there were discomforts, but little display of ill nature; each for hi

is separated from the other, and one has to zigzag between these pens until he reaches the official's window. Crowding is rend

in a moment it is organized, it obeys itself-or rather, it obeys its spiri

other side of its spirit. It is heterogeneous, like the architec

hey had to slink along with shuffling gait and da

e soil, prodded by the goad, moved ox-like along

ic with his age-long burdens, with his fie

-man, the shackles of whose

ing them all is this strident, giant child of the Anglo-Saxon race whose wind-swept cradle was

etard the race; yet they are trying to keep up, and by their efforts, by delving in the deep, by feed

o longer travels in the prairie schooner, but in the automobile-now that he wield

reakers of Newport as well as on

xclusive club as once he led

hare with my guests as I guided them; for we were to spend the ev

s of sandalwood, and its stronger odors wafted from the Bowery. We visited Russia, and saw its ghetto-dwellers more numerous than Abraham ever thought his progeny would become; we spent some time in Hungary, with its Gulyas and Czardas. We went to Bohemia, with its Narodni Dom; to Ita

king a mighty new impress; so below, these colonies to the right and colonies to t

all to be w

by heart, and he nearly jumped upon the stage in righteous indignation when in the last act, where the author drops all his characters into

ostelry. We could see the moon creeping out and shedding its mellow glow over the gayly lighted city. The noi

n out of torn fragments, this founding of cities in a day out of second and third hand material, this experiment in man-making and nation-building must

ing in mid-air, came the flashes that marked the morning hour. Thick mists floated i

as behooves those who have looked deep into the heart of a great mystery who have felt the touch