Caroline Hazard
OUR NATIONAL IDEALS[C]
[C] Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
Foremost among the ideals which have characterized our national life is the spirit of self-reliance. The very first chapter of our national history records the story of a man, who arose from among the toilers of his time, and whom eighteen years of disappointed hopes could not dismay. It tells how this man, holding out the promise of a new dominion, at last overcame the opposition of royal courtiers, and secured the tardy support of reluctant rulers. And when, at Palos, Columbus flung to the breeze the sails of his frail craft, and ventured upon that unknown ocean from which, according to the belief of his age, there was no hope of return, he displayed the chief characteristic of the American people—the spirit of self-reliance.
What is this spirit? Emerson has expressed it in a sentence: "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds." This was the spirit which animated that little group of colonists who preferred the unknown hardships of the new world to the certain tyranny of the old; who chose to break old ties, to brave the sea, to face the loneliness and perils of life in a strange land—a land of difficulties and dangers, but a land of liberty and opportunity....
In order that our country may continue this proud record of self-reliance, each one of us has a special obligation. Every citizen in his individual life should live up to the same ideal of self-reliance. The young citizen who relies on himself, who does honest work in school, never cheating or shirking, who is always, ready to do a little more than is actually required of him, who thinks for himself, acts rightly because he loves right actions—such a citizen is doing his part in helping to achieve our national ideal of self-reliance.
William Backus Guitteau
I believe in my country. I believe in it because it is made up of my fellow-men—and myself. I can't go back on either of us and be true to my creed. If it isn't the best country in the world it is partly because I am not the kind of a man that I should be.
Charles Stelzle
BIBLIOGRAPHY