The Little Russians, Slovaks, Poles, Great Russians bring patience to endure suffering, but withal a spirit of anarchism which prompts them to do astonishing things without apparent cause, mystical piety, charity, much sin, much intemperance, much love and human tenderness. They bring also the Tartar commercial spirit, and a zest for haggling over prices and for making deals.
The French bring economy, vivacity, journalistic genius.
But what do they not bring, all these peoples? There are marvellous gifts closed in all of them, mysterious potentialities that it were folly to attempt to name.
Each race has its special function, its organic suitability and psychic value. There are male races like the Jews; female races like the Germans. There are races that bring spirit, races that bring body.
German goes down the middle with English; Swedish with Irish; Russian with Pole; Jew with each and all. It is not always with the negro that the negro dances, not always with the Italian that the Italian is partnered, nor Hungarian with Hungarian, nor Lithuanian with Lithuanian. Secretively, unexpectedly, on unanticipated impulses, strangers obey the magic wand and rhythmical gestures of the Great Conductor of the dance, and become one with another in the evolution of America. The dance has been open some time, but it is only now becoming general. The waiting throngs on all sides are just beginning to break up and go mingling up and down and in and out, carrying messages, making sacrifices, performing rites. The victims are blindfolded; the conquerors have the light of destiny on their brows.
A spectacle for the Gods! In the Old World the heavenly powers have looked down more or less on the antagonism of the races, war and enmity and all that results from great battles, the rout of armies, the sacking of cities, the sinking of ships—
Looking over wasted lands.
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.