Introducing the American Spirit

rit Out

ng impressions, he looked pale and was decidedly irritable; "for how could a man sleep or be expected to sleep in this business canyon, loud fr

politan Tower, the Woolworth Building and St. Pat

e churches and possibly the barber shops. Partly also, perhaps, because the Herr Director insisted upon eating lobster shortly before midnight, in spite of the fact that I warn

f leaving a great deal of food on our plates, and to impress

ngly. I think it was the Herr Director himself who had "got on my nerves," and I wa

uce my guests to the great American out-of-doors, and the

stination, which was Lake Mohonk, we had to cross the West Side where it is irredeemably tawdry and ugly, and take

, humid day, the car was crowded, and the s

ans and fools), and third when he travels incognito, for he is a thrifty soul. Nevertheless, he did not like our cars, they were "o

he wished to take off his collar, he would have to do it with two hundred or more human eyes fas

riticism may be. So sensitive am I, that had he reflected upon the good looks of my wife, he could scar

of whom he must face and two of whom might at any moment poke their elbows into his ribs; if he preferred to breathe air polluted by seven other people, and have a fresh supply of ozone only at periods and in quantities regulated by law, I did not admire his taste. As far as I was concerned I preferred to travel in this bi

ained about the draft: "Um Gottes Willen ein Zug!" I decided

while I, silently but fervently, prayed that this particula

y American. Of course nature knows no political boundary; the grass is green everywhere, the sky is blue, cattle and sheep, like man, have a long a

hose of the Slav begin. German fields and forests are trim and orderly; Slavic territory so ill kept and il

how much of the American out-of-doors, with its generous but not gentle aspect, its subdued but untamed spirit, is due to those valiant men who c

al it. When I suggested the likeness of the Hudson to the Rhine, the Herr Director took it as a personal affront and said you might as well com

would be complete if the Hudson had a ruined castle here and ther

the Rhine sacred to us; you also need generations of patiently plodding peasants who have made a sacrament of their toil. One glance at your rotting boats lying along the

unkempt-looking fields, asking me whether I still dared compare anything in this out-of-doo

ss-great defects in our national spirit, and most in evidence in our treatment of nature's beauty and wealth. We shall have to remedy that, in fact we are ju

esponsibility for the next generation. It is a new and most valuable asset of our national spirit; yet I must confess that I fear the com

t there always would be left over the baskets full of fragments. Somehow, in common with the rest of mankind, I ha

ous, American savages, who have a superabundance of the American spirit although they have not a drop of American blood in their veins. We passed a small mound of freshly mown hay and they promptly jumped into it, tossing

i!" cried the Herr Director and the

ten years ago, my children ha

I hope we may not lose that certain largeness of nature

flowers wasting their bloom, and berries and cherries enough for the wild things of the woods. May the future not bring more high walls and narrow lanes, big game preserves

kes him care for the soil and nourish it with a lover's passion. To him robbing the soil is as great a crime as it would be to rob his children. It is not only the Emperor who regard

trend to the city; but the tide is held back by the pride of the German farmer, who glories

e merely merchandizers in dirt who sell not only the pr

led, are all for sale, now that the soil is robbed of its fertility and the robbers have moved on to repeat the process elsewhere. We are doing something, he admitted, to ste

meeting-house stands. We met the descendants of those who sleep there, whose pride lies in the fact that their forefathers were the pioneers who fought the Indians, the fevers and each

we saw fine memorials to the past in churches and town halls and rode in their automobiles, to

ng with him in the field, and they were doing this strange thing as they pulled weeds from the onion beds-they were

tune our dull American ears, so that our farmers might catch the melody of the singing land and sing with it; if our boys and girls would love wild roses well enough to wear them-

people. There was deep silence everywhere; no sound except that of the birds, and they did not sing jubilantly as birds ought to sing in so blessed a place and on so glorious an evening. No one sang except the same Italian who was coming home with his wife and numerous progeny. He still w

and children to sing for us. His wife did not come but the children came. They would not sing an Italian song, it is true-that was just for themselves, in the fields where only God heard. They sang some sentimental thing they had heard in the "movies"-chewing gum the wh

American spirit, and the failure of it was "rubbed" in by the Herr Director, w

wo Ma

ch froeli

nchen haben k

e that we have no song beca