An English essayist [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Fallacy of the Young
Nation," in his "Heretics," pp. 247-266.] has estimated that we of the
United States are no longer young and finds in the fact that we have
produced great artists the intimations of age. The art of Whistler and the
letters of Henry James are to him the "sweet and startling" but
"unmistakable cry of a dying man." But this essayist could not have known
the men of the valley which is the heart of the nation as it is the heart
of the country, the place of its dominant spirits. That valley, so rapidly
exploited of its resources that it has grown ages poorer, is yet virile,
youthful in its faults and its achievements. It has no "fine futility" as
yet, and the cry is not "sweet" though it may be "startling." It is the
shout of a young god, of a Jason driving the bulls in the fields of
Colchis. The attenuations of distance may easily deceive one's ears who
listens from across the ocean and the mountains.
I think it was this same essayist who said that to understand a people one
must study them with the "loyalty of a child" and the patience not of a
scientist but of a poet.
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