We often speak of Europe as the home of the arts and their uplifting influences. It is true enough, of course, but here is one of the ironies of that old cradle of misery. This is only the gloss of barbarism. How many Americans remember Europe is also the home of the illiterate and utterly incurable mob of low and bestial intelligences? How many Americans, in thinking of the low ebb of intellectual life here, ever consider that a great deal of intellectual and aesthetic interest and activity in this country, among Americans of English descent, is smothered and strangled by the popular pandering to the appetites of an unassimilated mass of low intelligences, only to be reached by coarse sensationalism and vulgar prints?
We are recommended to go to Europe for aesthetic training. We could get along much better with a sturdy stock of native observers, if we could only keep out the hordes of ignorant and degraded savages that flock here from every hell-hole in Europe, and then spread like a great itch throughout the country.
When one looks at the great blotches of ignorant and inferior races which dot the map of the United States in different industrial sections, one wonders where and when an “American” literature or “American” anything will come in. Emigration is all right when it comes from the right quarters, but the recent social history of this country shows how it is absorbing the barbaric scum of Europe.
Jonathan Penn.
DEPENDENCE.
She.
Since thou hast come, dear heart, I live no more
Save in the hours when thou art by. Thy grave,
Full penetrating voice and speech I crave,