"To show the influence another way, I've often thought of this parallel. Compare the languages of Europe and America. The Eskimo, harshly explosive and guttural, corresponds to the Russian; the freezing air chops off the final syllable into a bark or cough. The dialects of the Iroquois and northern Algonquins are similar to the harshness of Teutonic and Scandinavian countries; the soft melodiousness of Spanish, French, Italian, is found in words like 'Miami,' 'Appalachicola,' 'Tuscaloosa,' 'Monongahela,' with their easy liquids and lazy final vowels. The country itself creates the language, the facial expressions, the bodies and habits of men."
"That's true—and new, to me. Of course it's a platitude that the little fragments of Greece, locked apart by mountain and sea, were themselves the cause preventing Greece from uniting into a great nation——"
"Just as the long western field of Italy fitted her to be a unifying world power."
She confessed, "I've since found the same idea expanded charmingly by Fairgrieve. Phœnicia and Israel were important because they were on the way connecting the Nile to the twin rivers——"
"The earth's hand is in it all. Great cities follow the rivers, or the newer streams of iron we call railroads; civilizations grow where differing cultures touch, as at the meeting of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Think what its location—sea-walled and sea-warmed—has made of the island miles of England!... Mountains breed freedom-lovers; my mountain made me."
"My thanks to it! It has stirred up trouble——"
"Yes." He continued slowly, "All we have been through in Adamsville—that was only the mountain speaking through its human mouthpieces. Our country's first democracy was squabbling competition; then came selfish coöperation, for the few on top: trusts and monopolies. The hill's rich heart expresses that in the mining companies ... in my father. But it gives enough worth to the plain man to allow him to unite with his fellows, and mold this destructive selfishness into saner brotherhood, wider coöperation—the labor movement, groping after democracy; I and the others are the mountain speaking in that. It is the prime mover, the hero and the villain, shifting us about at its will to express all that lies hidden in its rich interior."
"We must make it join the local.... I hope it favors suffrage."
"Joyful joker!"
"I like what you say about the vastness of America," she repeated.