I
CERTAIN questions lie dormant for long periods and then, often with no
apparent provocation, assume an acute phase and cry insistently for
attention. The failure of the church to adjust itself to the needs of
the age; the shiftlessness of the new generation; the weaknesses of our
educational system--these and like matters are susceptible of endless
debate. Into this general classification we may gaily sweep the query
as to whether a small town is as promising a habitat for an aspiring
soul as a large city. When we have wearied of defending or opposing the
continuance of the direct primary, or have found ourselves suddenly
conscious that the attempt to decide whether immortality is desirable
is unprofitable, we may address ourselves valiantly to a discussion of
the advantages of the provinces over those of the seething metropolis,
or take the other way round, as pleases our humor. Without the
recurring stimulus of such contentions as these we should probably
be driven to the peddling of petty gossip or sink into a state of
intellectual coma.
There are encouraging signs that we of this Republic are much less
impatient under criticism than we used to be, or possibly we are
becoming more callous. Still I think it may be said honestly that we
have reached a point where we are measurably disposed to see American
life steadily and see it whole. It is the seeing it whole that is the
continuing difficulty. We have been reminded frequently that our life
is so varied that the great American novel must inevitably be the work
of many hands, it being impossible for one writer to present more
than one phase or describe more than one geographical section. This
is “old stuff,” and nothing that need keep us awake o’ nights. One of
these days some daring hand capable of wielding a broad brush will
paint a big picture, but meanwhile we are not so badly served by those
fictionists who turn up their little spadefuls of earth and clap a
microscope upon it. Such novels as _Miss Lulu Bett_ and _Main Street_
or such a play as Mr. Frank Craven’s _The First Year_, to take recent
examples, encourage the hope that after all we are not afraid to look
at ourselves when the mirror is held before us by a steady hand.
A serious novel that cuts close to the quick can hardly fail to
disclose one of our most amusing weaknesses--our deeply ingrained local
pride that makes us extremely sensitive to criticism in any form of
our own bailiwick. The nation may be assailed and we are philosophical
about it; but if our home town is peppered with bird shot by some
impious huntsman we are at once ready for battle. We do like to brag of
our own particular Main Street! It is in the blood of the provincial
American to think himself more happily situated and of a higher type
than the citizens of any other province. In journeys across the
continent, I have sometimes thought that there must be a definite line
where bragging begins. I should fix it somewhere west of Pittsburgh,
attaining its maximum of innocent complacency in Indiana, diminishing
through Iowa and Nebraska, though ranging high in Kansas and Colorado
and there gathering fresh power for a dash to the coast, where stout
Cortez and all his men would indeed look at each other with a mild
surmise to hear the children of the Pacific boast of their landscape
and their climate, and the kindly fruits of their soil.
When I travel beyond my State’s boundaries I more or less consciously
look for proof of Indiana’s superiority. Where I fail to find it I
am not without my explanations and excuses. If I should be kidnapped
and set down blindfolded in the midst of Ohio on a rainy night, I
should know, I am sure, that I was on alien soil. I frequently cross
Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, and never without a sense of a change of
atmosphere in passing from one to the other. Kansas, from territorial
days, has been much more strenuously advertised than Nebraska. The very
name Kansas is richer in its connotations. To think of it is to recall
instantly the days of border warfare; John Brown of Osawatomie, the New
England infusion, the Civil War soldiers who established themselves on
the free soil after Appomattox; grasshoppers and the days of famine;
populism and the Sockless Socrates of Medicine Lodge, the brilliant,
satiric Ingalls, Howe’s _Story of a Country Town_, William Allen White
of Emporia, and _A Certain Rich Man_, down to and including the present
governor, the Honorable Henry J. Allen, beyond question the most
beguiling man to sit at meat with in all America.