I am not sure that this charge could not be brought against the Englishman, Frenchman, or German of to-day with almost equal justice, or, in other words, that it is a characteristic of the age rather than of our nation; but that conviction would merely solace our pride and could not assuage “that tired feeling” of which so many are conscious. At all events, if we do not work harder than our kinsmen across the sea, we seem to bear the strain less well. It may be the climate, as my wife has said, which causes our nervous systems to rebel; but then, again, we cannot change the climate, and consequently must adapt ourselves to its idiosyncrasies.
Ever since we first began to declare that we were superior to all other civilizations we have been noted for our energy. The way in which we did everything, from sawing wood to electing a President, was conspicuous by virtue of the bustling, hustling qualities displayed. But it is no longer high treason to state that our national life, in spite of its bustle, was, until comparatively recently, lacking in color and variety. The citizen who went to bed on the stroke of ten every night and did practically the same thing each day from one year’s end to the other was the ideal citizen of the Republic, and was popularly described as a conservative and a strong man. His life was led within very repressed limits, and anything more artistic than a chromo or religious motto was apt to irritate him and shock his principles. To be sure, we had then our cultivated class—more narrowly but possibly more deeply cultivated than its flourishing successor of to-day—but the average American, despite his civic virtues and consciousness of rectitude, led a humdrum existence, however hustling or bustling. There is a large percentage of our population that continues to live in much the same manner, notwithstanding the wave of enlightenment which has swept over the country and keyed us all up to concert pitch by multiplying the number of our interests. I feel a little guilty in having included Rogers among this number, for I really know of my own knowledge nothing about his individual home life. It may be that I have been doing him a rank injustice, and that his home is in reality a seething caldron of progress. I referred to him as a type rather than as an individual, knowing as I do that there are still too many homes in this country where music, art, literature, social tastes, and intelligent interest in human affairs in the abstract, when developed beyond mere rudimentary lines, are unappreciated and regarded as vanities or inanities.
On the other hand, there is nothing more interesting in our present national evolution than the eager recognition by the intelligent and aspiring portion of the people that we have been and are ignorant, and that the true zest of life lies in its many-sidedness and its possibilities of development along æsthetic, social, and intellectual as well as moral lines. The United States to-day is fairly bristling with eager, ambitious students, and with people of both sexes, young and middle-aged, who are anxiously seeking how to make the most of life. This eagerness of soul is not confined to any social class, and is noticeable in every section of the country in greater or less degree. It is quite as likely to be found among people of very humble means as among those whose earliest associations have brought them into contact with the well-to-do and carefully educated. Therefore I beg the pardon of Rogers in case I have put him individually in the wrong category. A divine yet cheery activity has largely taken the place of sodden self-righteousness on the one hand, and analytical self-consciousness on the other. The class is not as yet very large as compared with the entire population of the country, but it is growing rapidly, and its members are the most interesting men and women of the Republic—those who are in the van of our development as a people.
Overcrowded and congested lives signify at least earnestness and absorption. Human nature is more likely to aspire and advance when society is nervously active, than when it is bovine and self-congratulatory. But nerves can endure only a certain amount of strain without reminding human beings that strong and healthy bodies are essential to true national progress. Only recently in this country have we learned to consider the welfare of the body, and though we have begun to be deadly in earnest about athletics, the present generation of workers was, for the most part, brought up on the theory that flesh and blood was a limitation rather than a prerequisite. We are doing bravely in this matter so far as the education of our children is concerned, but it is too late to do much for our own nerves. Though stagnation is a more deplorable state, it behooves us, nevertheless, if possible, to rid ourselves of congestion for our ultimate safety.
An active man or woman stopping to think in the morning may well be appalled at the variety of his or her life. The ubiquity of the modern American subconsciousness is something unique. We wish to know everything there is to know. We are interested not merely in our own and our neighbors’ affairs—with a knowledge of which so many citizens of other lands are peacefully contented—but we are eager to know, and to know with tolerable accuracy, what is going on all over the world—in England, China, Russia, and Australia. Not merely politically, but socially, artistically, scientifically, philosophically, and ethically. No subject is too technical for our interest, provided it comes in our way, whether it concern the canals in Mars or the antitoxin germ. The newspaper and the telegraph have done much to promote this ubiquity of the mind’s eye all over the world, but the interests of the average American are much wider and more diversified than those of any other people. An Englishman will have his hobbies and know them thoroughly, but regarding affairs beyond the pale of his limited inquiry he is deliberately and often densely ignorant. He reads, and reads augustly, one newspaper, one or two magazines—a few books; we, on the other hand, are not content unless we stretch out feelers in many directions and keep posted, as we call it, by hasty perusals of almost innumerable publications for fear lest something escape us. What does the Frenchman—the average intelligent Frenchman—know or care about the mode of our Presidential elections, and whether this Republican or that Democrat has made or marred his political reputation? We feel that we require to inform ourselves not only concerning the art and literature of France, but to have the names and doings of her statesmen at our fingers’ ends for use in polite conversation, and the satisfaction of the remains of the New England conscience. All this is highly commendable, if it does not tend to render us superficial. The more knowledge we have, the better, provided we do not fall into the slough of knowing nothing very well, or hunt our wits to death by over-acquisitiveness. There is so much nowadays to learn, and seemingly so little time in which to learn it, we cannot afford to spread ourselves too thin.
The energy of our people has always been conspicuous in the case of women. The American woman, from the earliest days of our history, has refused to be prevented by the limitations of time or physique from trying to include the entire gamut of human feminine activity in her daily experience. There was a period when she could demonstrate successfully her ability to cook, sweep, rear and educate children, darn her husband’s stockings, and yet entertain delightfully, dress tastefully, and be well versed in literature and all the current phases of high thinking. The New England woman of fifty years ago was certainly an interesting specimen from this point of view, in spite of her morbid conscience and polar sexual proclivities. But among the well-to-do women of the nation to-day—the women who correspond socially to those just described—this achievement is possible only by taxing the human system to the point of distress, except in the newly or thinly settled portions of the country, where the style of living is simple and primitive.
In the East, of course, in the cities and towns the women in question ceased long ago to do all the housework; and among the well-to-do, servants have relieved her of much, if not of all of the physical labor. But, on the other hand, the complexities of our modern establishments, and the worry which her domestics cause her, make the burden of her responsibilities fully equal to what they were when she cooked flap-jacks and darned stockings herself. In other countries the women conversant with literature, art, and science, who go in for philanthropy, photography, or the ornamentation of china, who write papers on sociological or educational matters, are, for the most part, women of leisure in other respects. The American woman is the only woman at large in the universe who aims to be the wife and mother of a family, the mistress of an establishment, a solver of world problems, a social leader, and a philanthropist or artistic devotee at one and the same time. Each of these interests has its determined followers among the women of other civilizations, but nowhere except here does the eternal feminine seek to manifest itself in so many directions in the same individual.
This characteristic of our womanhood is a virtue up to a certain point. The American woman has certainly impressed her theory that her sex should cease to be merely pliant, credulous, and ignorantly complacent so forcibly on the world that society everywhere has been affected by it. Her desire to make the most of herself, and to participate as completely as possible in the vital work of the world without neglecting the duties allotted to her by the older civilizations, is in the line of desirable evolution. But there is such a thing as being superficial, which is far more to be dreaded than even nervous prostration. Those absorbed in the earnest struggle of modern living may perhaps justly claim that to work until one drops is a noble fault, and that disregard of one’s own sensations and comfort is almost indispensable in order to accomplish ever so little. But there is nothing noble in superficiality; and it would seem that the constant flitting from one interest to another, which so many American women seem unable to avoid, must necessarily tend to prevent them from knowing or doing anything thoroughly.
As regards the creature man, the critics of this country have been accustomed to assert that he was so much absorbed in making money, or in business, as our popular phrase is, that he had no time for anything else. This accusation used to be extraordinarily true, and in certain parts of the country it has not altogether ceased to be true; though even there the persistent masculine dollar-hunter regards wistfully and proudly the æsthetic propensities of the female members of his family, and feels that his labors are sweetened thereby. This is a very different attitude from the self-sufficiency of half a century ago. The difficulty now is that our intelligent men, like our women, are apt to attempt too much, inclined to crowd into each and every day more sensations than they can assimilate. An Englishwoman, prominent in educational matters, and intelligent withal, recently expressed her surprise to my wife, Barbara, that the American gentleman existed. She had been long familiar with the American woman as a charming, if original, native product, but she had never heard of the American gentleman—meaning thereby the alert, thoughtful man of high purposes and good-breeding. “How many there are!” the Briton went on to say in the enthusiasm of her surprise. Indeed there are. The men prominent in the leading walks of life all over this country now compare favorably, at least, with the best of other nations, unless it be that our intense desire to know everything has rendered, or may render, us accomplished rather than profound.