New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-11-20

American attitude. not because it is an
attitude characteristic OF all Americans,
for there are many, born in America,
who still find themselves bewlldered
and disconnected immigrants in the
land, but because il is the attitude OF
one imbued with the spirit that has led
so many of tho best OF mankind 10 be-
hold in the achievement OF the Amerl-
can ideal the hope of mankind. And as
Lincoln, in whom this spirit was so
nobly incarnated. asked. Where will
one find better or equal hope?
zone, even a prophet, is apt to grow
vague and hay when he begins to dis
cuss the form anything will take in the
future, especially anything so spiritual
as art, and | shall not idly speculate
about something Of which in reality !
can know nothing. We are living in a
solemn hour of change; the world Will
never again be the world we knew. But
/ think the best of our novels will con-
tinue TO be more and more Of that hu-
man spirit We have been considering.
One is always reading that realism has
passed, or is passing, or is about TO
pass, but it will pass only when the de-
sire for truth passes from the human
heart. II has never known any final
form, nor ever will, any more than
truth will, but in each of its stages 1T
makes a little more progress toward
perfection, as the race does, and 1t
makes progress only along that way
in which there is freedom and equality
for all.
America Waits.
"To the imagination of the old world
there has always been something per.
picking, troubling. in the dim vision OF
America, lying off there in the west,
vast, vague and mysterious in her pos
session of other standards and Ideals.
Time and time again the old world
writers have crossed the seas on their
hurried visits, desperately determined
to understand her, to tear her secre;
from her. Some of them were polite
and complimentary; some, like young De
Tocaueville, sympathetically reported
on her institutions and inte!ligentiy
criticised them, while others, noting
only superficial manner and jOtting
down with relish any crudity. any eau
cherie they might detect. returned to
cover her with contempt and snobbish
scorn. And not one of them seems ever
TO have envisagcd her. ever to have
OWNED her, not one of them seems
ever to have caught the faintest con-
oeption of her spiritual significance or
to have beheld even so much of the
vision as glows any morning IN dark
eyes on Ellis Island; all failed in that
poetic insight which alone can inter
pref her meaning and apprehend her
relation to the development OF Man the
Individual.
And ali the while America, impas-
sive. inscrutable, patient, amused,
waited for her poet to interpret and
reveal her. conscious that her dream
was for the poet alone. And her poet
will come. some day, out of the stress
and strain and turmoil, out of the dust
and tears and sweat of common life,
from the world Of common men. Tie
will have no illusions about them; he
will know their folly. their foibles and
their sins.as we'll as their wisdom, their
virtues and their sacrifices. and, thus
knowing them, understanding them.
loving them, as one of their very own,
will reveal them not only TO them
selves but to those others who are pre-
cisely like them in all essentials ex-
cept in the weakness of imagining
themselves somehow uncommon. differ
ent and better. and By the revelation
OF his art transmute into life The truth
and beauty of the dream"