As in the sky above us the architectures of the world strive to blend and fuse, making a mighty new impress; so below, these colonies to the right and colonies to the left, like the huge limbs of some ill-shapen monster, try to blend into America.
What is it all to be when blended?
Of course we went to the theater. We saw a German problem play made over to please the American taste. The Herr Director knew the play almost by heart, and he nearly jumped upon the stage in righteous indignation when in the last act, where the author drops all his characters into a bottomless pit and everything ends in confusion, the play ended in the conventional “God-bless-you-my-children,” “happy-ever-after” manner.
We walked the streets of New York until past midnight, and finally looked down upon it from the roof of our hostelry. We could see the moon creeping out and shedding its mellow glow over the gayly lighted city. The noises were almost musical up there—like sustained organ notes—and we talked about the play with its happy ending.
“You are right,” I said; “that happy ending is foolish and childish. Things do not always end happily; but this thing, this experiment in making a nation out of torn fragments, this founding of cities in a day out of second and third hand material, this experiment in man-making and nation-building must end well; for, if it doesn’t, God’s great experiment has failed. Shall I say, God’s last experiment has failed? You see we mustn’t fail—it must end well.”
The streets were all but silent. From the great clock on the Metropolitan tower hanging in mid-air, came the flashes that marked the morning hour. Thick mists floated in from the sea and filled the narrow, chasm-like streets with weird, fantastic shapes.
The Herr Director said good-night. The Frau Directorin did likewise. They said it very solemnly, as behooves those who have looked deep into the heart of a great mystery who have felt the touch of a mighty spirit striving, struggling, agonizing to shape a new nation out of the world’s refuse.
II
Our National Creed
THE Herr Director and the Frau Directorin wished to go to church on Sunday, and after eating a piously late breakfast I spread before them New York City’s religious bill of fare, bewildering in its variety and puzzling in its terminology.
I gave them a choice between four varieties of Catholics: Roman, Greek, Old and Apostolic; more than twice that number of Lutherans, separated one from the other by degrees of orthodoxy and nearness to or farness from their historic confessions.