Introducing the American Spirit

oul and the A

st of Niagara Falls, so that one might be able to take strangers to that wonderful cataract w

anna, Wilkes Barre, Mauch Chunk, etc. From the hilltops we had glimpses of great valleys below, valleys which are mined and furr

certainty, and by the same signs, I knew the nationality of the people who worked there, and had faith enough to build steeples in the shadow of mine shafts and coal breakers. It was an atmosphere tense from

murred; but when the Frau Directorin added her plea to mine, he reluctantly yielded. I was able to promise them an interesting meeting with an idealistic, young Russian priest, who ha

t to the raising of the national flag. The Slavic soul is thoroughly Christian in its quality of patient endurance, in which it has had long and hard tutelage. At the same ti

on to the American Spirit, being large enough to express that Spirit in its varied manifestati

the large cities and the small towns which we had thus far visited, it has all the usual bustle, and is full of vigorous rivalry with other like cities in the same valley. Whatever one city d

body and spirit. He made a splendid foil to the Russian priest who is all soul, Russian soul and as little at home in the United States as the

ss by taking us through his institution which is American enough to have challenged the Herr Director's attention. In great good humor he, with the rest of us, followed the secretary from the bowling alley to the roof garden, looked i

mortgage and its relation to our religious institutio

iving baths was new to him. Newer and more interesting still was the clerical machinery with its c

demands that he attract new members, raise a generous budget, pay off a mortgage and at odd moments look after his own business; for besid

kably adaptable, and while this secretary may permit his religion to suffer before his business, I know h

, the secretary insisted upon accompanying us. As he put his automobile at our disposal, and the Slavic settlements were out of reach by the ordinary means of locomotion, we r

ourteous attention to the ladies-and automobiles. We took just one street car ride in New York City, having be

e Russian parish was located I did not reckon with the fact that it was three years since I had last

raphy over night. What was a hill becomes a hollow, and the reverse process also

h in later years that intervening coal props have been removed, and ho

isited them had not only let them down from their eminence, but had developed a stagnant pool on one side, while refuse from the mines had enc

osy" were lying about, adding to the general untidiness. A parish register lay upon the desk. It contained the names of more than a thousand souls with the chronicle of their comi

ght by the ever moving tide of revolt he had "sown his wild oats," which consisted of disseminating revolutiona

men, and his suffering on that score was acute. I have watched the manifestation of national or racial characteristics in indivi

at kind of affection, and it is as different from the violent love of the Herr Dire

something unconquerable and defiant. There is a capacity for suffering and sacrifice of which no other people seem to be capable. There is also a confidence in the goodness of hu

t it certainly is Russian, and one may indeed speak of the soul of a peo

more apparent in contrast with the complex spirit of the American secretary, in whom Teuton and Celt were b

come acrimonious, the secretary, hoping to create a diversion, asked the priest why he did not encourage his parishioners to come to the

e the children of the miners received their religious instruction and as much of secular education as they craved. The teacher was a lean youth who looked as

tor remarked that in Germany this would be regarded as treason to the state. The priest declared that it was his mission in America not only to ke

in intimacy with God and regards that relation of the supremest importance. "The American," he continued, "

d on account of his provincialism, and the priest would not admit because of his official position, namely: that neither the Russian State nor the Russian Church represents the Russian Soul. Its common people, although nearly crushed by the one and

Tolstoy and Dostoyewsky, has reached us and taught us the greatest lesson which we self-right

ass, "Lord have mercy! O Lord have mercy!" The Russian peasant always knew that men are stricken by crime as by a disease; and when he passed those consigned to prison, he cried out incessant

called, received his inspiration from Tolstoy, and that the tendency to change our prisons

ctice, and what prosaic, impossible preachers they make. To which I replied that their failures are due to th

ion of Russian Soul. He almost doubted that the delving miners whom we saw coming home from the mines, sooty and begrimed, possessed that soul. Nor did the Herr Director realize that all his Germanic searching a

German respects authority, and has scant respect for the individual. The Russian respects man and k

never spent a happy day since he has been in America which he

lain in that dreadful mine, and no one in the Company or in the town cares how they were buried. These Americans have no souls. They send an undertaker who wants to bury them like dogs, and the quicker the thing is done the better. Th

to argue with Niagara Falls. I did tell him that while the Russian here must bend his back over his work, he does not have to bend it at every corner before

and kissed me, he said: "No, even yo

t when the secretary's turn came he fled. To be kissed by

ls and these cities shall have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, and your churches and Y. M. C. A. may have vanished because it did not pay t

nt cleaning them up, good hausfrau that she is. The secretary was thinking deeply, and when he deposited us at the hotel, he thanked me for revealing something which, although so

ector's coolness towards our natural wonder, for he had seen it thirty years before; but his wife's attitude was inexplicable, until she told me what I had all

only to begin her journey again, I suggested that it was like the American Spirit in its daring; but the Herr Director, with truer ins

h to move the street railways of half a dozen cities, and change the night of a million people into day. As we listened to the engineer's account of almost miraculous ac