America must necessarily develop away from us at an ever-increasing rate. Influenced as she is by Jews, Negroes, Germans, Slavs, more and more foreign constructions will creep into the language,—such things as "I should worry," derived from Russian-Jewish girl strikers. "She ast me for a nickel," said a Jew-girl to me of a passing beggar. "I should give her a nickel, let her work for it same as other people!" The I shoulds of the Jew can pass into the language of the Americans, and be understood from New York to San Francisco; but such expressions make no progress in Great Britain, though brought over there, just because we have not the big Jewish factor that the Americans have.
To-day the influence that has come to most fruition is that of the negro. The negro's way of speaking has become the way of most ordinary Americans, but that influence is passing, and in ten or twenty years the Americans will be speaking very differently from what they are now. The foreigner will have modified much of the language and many of the rhythms of speech. America will have less self-consciousness then. She will not be exploiting the immigrant, but will be subject to a very powerful influence from the immigrants. No one will then be so cheap as the poor immigrant is to-day. Much mean nomenclature will have disappeared from the language, many cheap expressions, much mockery; on the other hand, there will be a great gain in dignity, in richness, in tenderness.
XV THROUGH THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY
I have come to that portion of my journeying and of my story where all day, every evening, and all night long I was conscious of the odour of mown clover, of fields of ambrosia.
I was tramping along the border of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan, from Toledo to Angola, Indiana. I was entering the rich West. The fields were vast and square, the road was long and flat, and straight and quiet, the June haze hung over luxuriant meadows, and there was a wonderful silence and ripening peace over the country.
One evening, as the red sun sank into night-darkened mist, I talked with an old farmer, who was smoking his pipe at his gate.
"I came along this same road like you, with a bundle on my back, forty years ago," said he, "and I took work on a farm; then I rented a farm. Many's the lad I've seen go past of an evening. And one or two have stopped here and worked some days, for the matter of that."