tury of our national existence, was preeminently an idealist. "Do not," he said, "leave the sky out of your landscape." Another daring figure which thrills with the real Emersonian idealism is the often-quoted but never threadbare aphorism, "Hitch your wagon to a star." We are the sons of men and women who cherished ideals, who stood for the purity of the home, for personal integrity, for social helpfulness, and for a vital sense of the life of God in the soul of man. We belong to a generation which with no blot of selfishness upon our escutcheon helped to wage a great war. As a people and as individuals it is for us to conserve our honor, truth, and righteousness. The gleam that never was on land or sea must not be allowed to fade into the light of common day. Olympus cannot be crushed into a nutshell. The complex life of over a hundred million people cannot adequately be synthesized in a few paragraphs. Each American is not like every other American. We live in the land of magnificent distances, in an environment which develops rather than represses individuality. But our differences are more obvious than real. real. Superficially we are heterogeneous, but fundamentally we are alike. Beneath the surface differences and the in evitable distinctions arising from varying hereditary and environistic influences are found the traits which characterize the American. As the wheels of time make their ceaseless revolutions "The thoughts of man are widened with the process of the suns." We have not yet scaled the highest mountain nor placed our banner upon its loftiest peak. We must not be satisfied with the virtues of our fathers. The American of to-morrow must be bigger and better than the American of to-day. Every experience is a key which opens the doors of life to newer and richer experiences. We stand upon the shoulders of our fathers. To equal them we must surpass them. The problems of to-day must not be faced in any despicable spirit of "after us the deluge." is for us to pass the torch of idealism from the generations which have come and gone to those which are yet to be. It X PERMANENT VALUES IN THE BIGLOW PAPERS IN American literature in the field of satire we have nothing better to show than Lowell's Biglow Papers. They deal with the living issues of a vital period of our history. The series of 1846-1848 gave expression to the deeply rooted opposition which existed to the Mexican War especially in New England, while that of 1862-1868 naturally reflects the tumultuous days of the Civil War. These satires are keen, brilliant, and racy. Hosea Biglow, the forthright, hard-headed, exuberantly witty Yankee philosopher, is in himself a contribution to literature. Above all else the Biglow Papers are American. They could not have been written outside of New England. They savor not of the library but of the soil. Lowell knew the Yankee's mind as well as his dialect. It is not hard for us to understand the popularity of these satires with the generation for whom they were written. But taking them in their entirety they are not especially inspiring to the reader of to-day. It is hard for 163 a satire to win immortality. Most of us have little concern with the political quarrels of our grandfathers. Few care to lose themselves in the intricacies of midnineteenth-century politics. Literary material weighted down with the transient is not interesting to posterity. The perennial interest of "The Courtin'" is evidence of the gulf fixed between it and the work as a whole. Yet, buried in dialect and almost entirely overwhelmed by comment upon forgotten controversies, there is a veritable Golconda of sparkling wit and rugged wisdom hewn from the quarries of life. The underlying thought of the poems is now only of historic interest. But the works are worth reading for their by-products. Shrewd, aptly phrased epigrams, which "Poor Richard" himself might have coined are to be found on many otherwise tedious pages. And here the student of Lowell comes into contact with truths as vital and dynamic to-day as when they first came bounding from the rapid pen of the poet. Words which have to do with loyalty to principle do not deal with any evanescent theme. More than one pungent stanza in these poems satirizes cant and insincerity. Lowell makes the self-seeking politician say: The selections from Lowell are used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers. "I du believe in prayer an' praise But oh, I du in interest." Again we read: "A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler O' purpose thet we might our princerples swaller; It can hold any quantity on 'em, the belly can, An' bring 'em ready fer use like the pelican, Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is stranger) Puts her family into her pouch wen there's danger. Ain't princerple precious? then who's goin' to use it Wen there's resk o' some chap's gittin up to abuse it? I can't tell the wy on't, but nothin' is so sure Ez thet princerple kind o' gits spiled by exposure." With a few slight changes the following stanza would suit the self-seeking candidate of any time or place: "Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; I ain't a Wig, I ain't a Tory, I'm jest a canderdate, in short; To have me an' thin' in particler, It is also true that in some respects election to Congress has about the same influence |