As the reader, if he wishes, may discover without undue delay, the little
volume of modern prose selections that he has before him is the result of
no ambitious or pretentious design. It is not a collection of the best
things that have lately been known and thought in the American world; it is
not an anthology in which "all our best authors" are represented by
striking or celebrated passages. The editor planned nothing either so
precious or so eclectic. His purpose rather was to bring together some
twenty examples of typical contemporary prose, in which writers who know
whereof they write discuss certain present-day themes in readable fashion.
In choosing material he has sought to include nothing merely because of the
name of the author, and he has demanded of each selection that it should be
of such a character, both in subject and style, as to impress normal and
wholesome Americans as well worth reading.
The earlier selections--President Roosevelt's noble eulogy upon Lincoln,
Secretary Lane's two addresses on American tradition and heritage, and
Governor Coolidge's address at Holy Cross--remind the reader of the high
significance of our national past and indicate the promise of a rightly
apprehended future. There follow two articles--"Our Future Immigration
Policy," by Commissioner Frederic C. Howe, and "A New Relationship between
Capital and Labor," by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.--on subjects that press
for earnest consideration on the part of all who are intent upon the
solution of our problems. Mr. Alvin Johnson's playful yet serious essay on
"the biggest, kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal head that ever
lived" completes the group of what may be termed "Americanization" Papers.
Perhaps the best of the many magazine articles that President Wilson has
written is that which serves as a link--for those to whom links, even in a
miscellany, are a satisfaction--between the earlier selections and those
that follow. "When a Man Comes to Himself," expressing as it does in
English of distinction the best thought of the best Americans concerning
the individual's relation to society and to the state, will probably be
widely read, with attention and gratitude, for many years to come.
Associated with Mr. Wilson's article are three selections presenting
various aspects of self-realization in education. One of them, "The
Fallow," deals in signally happy manner with the insistent and vital
question of the study of the Classics.
That scholarly and competent literary criticism need not be dull or
deficient in charm is obvious from an examination of Mr. Bliss Perry's
masterly study of James Russell Lowell and Mr. Carl Becker's subtle and
discriminating analysis of _The Education of Henry Adams_. Both writers
attack subjects of considerable complexity and difficulty, and both succeed
in clarifying the thought of the discerning reader and inducing in him an
exhilarating sense of mental and spiritual enlargement.
From the many notable autobiographies that have appeared during recent
years the editor has chosen two from which to reprint brief passages. The
first is Booker T. Washington's _Up from Slavery_, the simple and
straightforward personal narrative of one whom all must now concede to have
been a very great man; the other is that human and poignant epic of the
stranger from Denmark who became one of us and of whom we as a people are
tenderly proud. _The Making of an American_ is in some ways a unique book;
concrete, specific, self-revealing and yet dignified; a book that one could
wish that every American might know.
Also concrete and specific are the chapters from Mr. Ralph D. Paine and Mr.
Burton J. Hendrick. In "Bound Coastwise" Mr. Paine has treated, with
knowledge, sympathy, and imagination, an important phase of our commercial
life. As an example of narrative-exposition, matter-of-fact yet touched
with the romance of those who "go down to the sea in ships," the excerpt is
thoroughly admirable. Mr. Hendrick, in entertaining and profitable wise,
tells the story of what he considers "probably America's greatest
manufacturing exploit."
Dr. Finley "starts the imagination out upon the road" and "invites to the
open spaces," especially to those undisturbed by "the flying automobile."
"Walking," he says eagerly, "is not only a joy in itself, but it gives an
intimacy with the sacred things and the primal things of earth that are not
revealed to those who rush by on wheels."
In "Old Boats" Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton, in a manner of writing that has
of late years won him a large place in the hearts of readers, thoughtfully
contemplates the abandoned farmhouse, and lingers wistfully beside the
beached and crumbling craft of the "unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." Few
can read, or, better, hear read, his closing paragraph without thrilling to
that "other harmony of prose." That such a cadenced and haunting passage
should have been published as recently as 1917 should assure the doubter
that there is still amongst us a taste for the beautiful. "I live inland
now, far from the smell of salt water and the sight of sails. Yet sometimes
there comes over me a longing for the sea as irresistible as the lust for
salt which stampedes the reindeer of the north. I must gaze on the unbroken
world-rim, I must feel the sting of spray, I must hear the rhythmic crash
and roar of breakers and watch the sea-weed rise and fall where the green
waves lift against the rocks. Once in so often I must ride those waves with
cleated sheet and tugging tiller, and hear the soft hissing song of the
water on the rail. And 'my day of mercy' is not complete till I have seen
some old boat, her seafaring done, heeled over on the beach or amid the
fragrant sedges, a mute and wistful witness to the romance of the deep, the
blue and restless deep where man has adventured in craft his hands have
made since the earliest sun of history, and whereon he will adventure,
ardently and insecure, till the last syllable of recorded time."