We discern after long years the sounds of its realization. We
see the iridescence of the John Law bubble shining over the turbid waters
of that river for a moment. We see the raising and lowering of flags of
various colors. We hear Napoleon's representative saying: "May the
inhabitants of this valley and a Frenchman never meet upon any spot of the
globe without feeling brothers!" We see the general who is later to embody
the west's crude democratic ideals, Andrew Jackson, victorious in the last
struggle of independence from Europe. We see the red worshippers of the
sun in their white cloaks crossing the river, vanishing toward its
setting; and we see the black shadows of men, the negro slaves, creeping
out of Africa after the white heralds of Europe in America. Seeing and
hearing all this, we have seen and heard the intimations of the glory of
France in the new world, the birth of a world-power, the United States,
the infancy of a new democracy, the disappearance of the aboriginal
Indian, the menace of the black shadow that had made a nation half slave
and half free, and the prophecy of the triumphant coming of the new-age
producers and poets, the men of the Land of the Western Waters.
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