Dr. Finley "starts the imagination out upon the road" and "invites to the open spaces," especially to those undisturbed by "the flying automobile." "Walking," he says eagerly, "is not only a joy in itself, but it gives an intimacy with the sacred things and the primal things of earth that are not revealed to those who rush by on wheels."
In "Old Boats" Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton, in a manner of writing that has of late years won him a large place in the hearts of readers, thoughtfully contemplates the abandoned farmhouse, and lingers wistfully beside the beached and crumbling craft of the "unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." Few can read, or, better, hear read, his closing paragraph without thrilling to that "other harmony of prose." That such a cadenced and haunting passage should have been published as recently as 1917 should assure the doubter that there is still amongst us a taste for the beautiful. "I live inland now, far from the smell of salt water and the sight of sails. Yet sometimes there comes over me a longing for the sea as irresistible as the lust for salt which stampedes the reindeer of the north. I must gaze on the unbroken world-rim, I must feel the sting of spray, I must hear the rhythmic crash and roar of breakers and watch the sea-weed rise and fall where the green waves lift against the rocks. Once in so often I must ride those waves with cleated sheet and tugging tiller, and hear the soft hissing song of the water on the rail. And 'my day of mercy' is not complete till I have seen some old boat, her seafaring done, heeled over on the beach or amid the fragrant sedges, a mute and wistful witness to the romance of the deep, the blue and restless deep where man has adventured in craft his hands have made since the earliest sun of history, and whereon he will adventure, ardently and insecure, till the last syllable of recorded time."
[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]
The editor's thanks are due to the holders of copyrights who have generously permitted him to include selections from books and magazines published by them. More particularly he would express his gratitude to the Yale University Press, to Harper and Brothers, to Henry Holt and Co., to Doubleday, Page and Co., to the Macmillan Company, to the Century Company, to the Frederick A. Stokes Company, to the P. F. Collier and Son Company, to the Houghton Mifflin Company, to the Outlook Company, to the Indiana University Bookstore, to the editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, to the editors of the American Historical Review, and to Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Specific indications as to the extent of the editor's borrowing will be found with the selections.
Authors from whose work the editor has wished to quote have been invariably gracious. To President Wilson for his essay "When a Man Comes to Himself," to Governor Coolidge for his Holy Cross College address, to Secretary Lane for two addresses, and to Commissioner Howe for his article on immigration, he would express his gratitude. President John Finley, Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton, Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., President W. L. Bryan, Mr. Alvin Johnson, Mr. John Matthews Manly, Miss Edith Rickert, Mr. Carl Becker, Mr. Ralph D. Paine, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, Mr. Philip Littell, and Mr. Bliss Perry have freely accorded permission to reprint the selections that bear their names. Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and Mr. R. W. Riis have courteously granted the use of the excerpt from The Making of an American. The editors of The New Republic and the editors of The University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin have kindly consented to the reprinting of articles that originally appeared in their periodicals. To Mr. Will D. Howe, whose assistance has been constant and invaluable, the editor would extend his hearty thanks.
MODERN AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS
[ABRAHAM LINCOLN][1]
Theodore Roosevelt
We have met here to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the two greatest Americans; of one of the two or three greatest men of the nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in the world's history. This rail-splitter, this boy who passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a struggle from which the nation emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to a loftier life.
After long years of iron effort, and of failure that came more often than victory, he at last rose to the leadership of the Republic, at the moment when that leadership had become the stupendous world-task of the time. He grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success came to him, but never happiness, save that which springs from doing well a painful and a vital task. Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed, but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the destinies of his people. His great and tender heart shrank from giving pain; and the task allotted him was to pour out like water the life-blood of the young men, and to feel in his every fibre the sorrow of the women. Disaster saddened but never dismayed him.