Prejudices, fourth series

PREJUDICES FOURTH SERIES
OUT OF PRINT
TRANSLATIONS
NEW YORK: ALFRED · A · KNOPF
By H. L. MENCKEN
PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI · NEW YORK · BY
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. · PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1924 · SET UP, AND ELECTROTYPED BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · PAPER FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK. · PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS. ·
THE FIRST EDITION OF “PREJUDICES: FOURTH SERIES” CONSISTS OF THIRTY-SIX HUNDRED AND TEN COPIES AS FOLLOWS: ONE HUNDRED AND TEN ON BORZOI ALL RAG PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR NUMBERED FROM 1 TO 100, AND A TO J; AND THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED COPIES ON ENGLISH FEATHER-WEIGHT PAPER.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREJUDICES: FOURTH SERIES
Ever since Dr. William Crary Brownell, de l’Académie Américaine , published his little volume, “Standards,” in 1917, a vast hullabaloo has been going on among the native, white, Protestant Gelehrten of the Republic, particularly in the great open spaces of the South and Middle West, in favor of what they call the American tradition in letters. Perhaps I libel Brownell, a worthy if somewhat gummy man, by hinting that he started this whooping; it may be that its actual generator was George Creel, the Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, the Hon. James M. Beck, the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer or some other such master-mind of that patriotic and intelligent era. Whatever its parentage, it was at least born in the holiest of wedlock, and to the applause of all right-thinking men; and if I now presume to pull its ear I surely hope that no one will suspect that I thereby question its legitimacy. It is, in fact, absolutely and irrefragably American from snout to os calcis , not only in outward seeming and demeanor, but also in inner essence, and anyone who flouts it also flouts everything that is most sacred in the spirit of Americanism. To that business I herewith address myself briefly.