When their blood is heated, they are hard hitters, fierce fighters. But give them time to cool down, and they are generous peacemakers. Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” strikes the key-note. In the “mild concerns of ordinary life” they like to cultivate friendly relations, to show neighbourliness, to do the useful thing.
There is a curious word of approbation in the rural dialect of Pennsylvania. When the country folk wish to express their liking for a man, they say, “He is a very common person,”—meaning not that he is low or vulgar, but approachable, sympathetic, kind to all.
Underneath the surface of American life, often rough and careless, there lies this widespread feeling: that human nature everywhere is made of the same stuff; that life’s joys and sorrows are felt in the same way whether they are hidden under homespun and calico or under silk and broadcloth; that it is every man’s duty to do good and not evil to those who live in the world with him.
In literature this feeling has shown itself in many ways. It has given a general tone of sympathy with “the under dog in a fight.” It has led writers to look for subjects among the plain people. It has made the novel of American “high life” incline generally to satire or direct rebuke. In the typical American romance the hero is seldom rich, the villain seldom poor.
In the weaker writers the humane sentiment dwindles into sentimentality. In the stronger writers it gives, sometimes, a very noble and manly note. In general you may say that it has impressed upon American literature the mark of a moral purpose,—the wish to elevate, to purify, to fortify the mind, and so the life, of those who read.
Is this a merit or a fault in literature? Judge for yourselves.
No doubt a supremely ethical intention is an insufficient outfit for an author. His work may be
“Chaste as the icicle
That’s curded by the frost from purest snow
And hangs on Dian’s temple,”
and yet it may be without savour or permanence. Often the desire to teach a good lesson bends a book from the straight line of truth-to-the-facts, and makes a so-called virtuous ending at the price of sincerity and thoroughgoing honesty.
It is not profitable to real virtue to dwell in a world of fiction where miracles are worked to crown the good and proper folk with unvarying felicity and to send all the rascals to prison or a miserable grave. Nor is it a wise and useful thing for literature to ignore the lower side of life for the sake of commending the higher; to speak a false and timid language for fear of shocking the sensitive; to evade the actual problems and conflicts which men and women of flesh and blood have to meet, for the sake of creating a perfectly respectable atmosphere for the imagination to live in.