The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-11-20
THE AMERICAN OPTIMIST.

Mr.. Chauncey Depew, in his speech be-
fore the Union League Club after the cleo
ton, was as cheerful as Mark Twain's
mourner who expressed his satisfaction by
saying that 1.-The deceased made a nice,
quiet CORPSE" Mr.. Depew is always a
very brilliant American optimist; to his
eyes the American flag is always safe no
matter who holds 1t; no matter who
threatens it; the American eagle is the
one altogether lovely bird, chief among
ten thousand, no matter whether it IS
perched like a falcon on the wrist of
Benjamin Harrison or Grover Cleveland.
The mood of Mr.. Depew is the mood of
the average American who has not lived
long enough abroad to become an Anglo.
maniac. 1t was this mood that excited
the astonishment and contempt, mingled
with compassion, of Dickens when he saw
US in 1912, and it excites the wonder of
Europe today. Europe cannot understand
how G5,000,oO0 of people can go through
desperately hard fought political cam
paign and momentous election and come
up smiling the next morning. The French
and German newspapers express their adj
miration that We can hold our national
election and acquiesce SO quietly in a de-
cision that means most important
change of economic policy that nobody
could tell By the stock list or the behavior
Of business men that an election of the
slightest consequence had taken place.
This is the American characteristic; We
~
bridge until we are sure that We shall
have TO cross the stream and are satisfied
that we cannot ford it. Business men do
not deny that 4 radical change of economic
policy would seriously affect their inter-
ests. but until they know exactly what to
meet they whistle and never worry. 1t has
been said that Emerson was an optimist,
while Matthew Arnold was a pessimist;
this was only saying that Emerson was a
thoughtful, liberal, intellectual American,
while Arnold was a thoughtful, liberal,
intellectual Englishman; it was not n diff
ference of temperament half so much as it
was a difference of Lifelong circumstance.
of atmosphere and action. An old clviii-
cation that has outgrown its original
skin and is painfully and often hopelessly
irving to cast it, always breeds pessimists.
while n young, vigorous, growing, ex-
panding nationality always grows opti-
mists.
Youth leaps and laughs in the bright,
rosy morning, but Old age signs appre-
hensively if it is gentle. or snarls ike q
diving tiger if i. is grabbed and sour. All
highlands best thinkers. whether liberal
or tory, are Ike Arnold, pessim-
lists; Thaekeray, George Eliot. Steven
son in fiction: CARLYLE. Ruskln and
Froude in criticism; Tennyson in
his latest poetry. Some of them
pipe their pessimism with the
mellow p!aintiveness Of ployer's note;
others bark il rs hoarsely as g savage dog
with a sore head, but in al Eugland's
most brilliant, If not her best, thinking
there is either the gentle sigh of hopeless
ness or the sharp, drowning cry OF despair.
On the other hand. all our best American
thinkers. unless it be Hawthorne, are
optimisiS. ike Emerson and his apostles
both early and late. Since we have
| shaken Of slavery We have not had a
pessiguis; n our politics. Even Lowell
! was an op;imist until he was spoiled by
wears Of foreign diplomatic life. No
American OF intellectual eminence IS
| other than an optimist who has spent
the most OF his days. as Emerson did. in
America. OF course partisan politicians
| in both parties alternate between optimism
! when I'VE are In power" and pessimism