He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the people—their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in him. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a single face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the things that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and the little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big ones shall look big.
They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with America. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance. All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington face. The face merely lacks features and an expression.
This is what a President is for—to give at last the Face of the United States an expression!
If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the official mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the weariness of the day he looks away—he looks up—he leans his head upon his hand—through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main street of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of the people go.
If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the organizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public made visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He speaks and gestures the United States—if he is a poet about us—when he beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he says, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of the people of the United States.
I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me, these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of the mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross out—rises around me. In a minute more—minute by minute that I am counting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and fold away these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, Gentle Reader, and you will get away! And the book will get away!
There is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say what I have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about our all being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons a hundred years after he is dead.
But I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has no printing-presses rolling over him—will say:
One cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow Karl Marx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats by this time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, and Republicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton.