One showed an iron coast and angry waves.
You seemed to hear them climb and fall
And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves,
Beneath the windy wall.
And here one of the Wesley brothers wrote the familiar hymn about the narrow neck of land and the divided seas.
One day, talking with an Englishman on the train, I raved about Warwickshire and about Devon. “Ah,” said he, “if you haven’t seen the valley of the Wye you haven’t seen England.” Accordingly, we went to the little town of Ross in the West; there we hired a rowboat, and two stalwart sons of Britain rowed us many miles down the stream. Occasionally, the river was so shallow they poled us over the pebbly bottom; sometimes it was so narrow we could almost touch the shores; then it would widen out nobly, and we saw the white-faced Hereford cattle feeding in green pastures. “What castle is that?” I asked, pointing to a ruin on a hill. “That is Goodrich Castle, sir.” And that is where Wordsworth met the little girl who knew her departed brother and sister were alive. We moved by Monmouth, sacred to Henry V, the Roosevelt of kings; we came to Tintern Abbey, and you may be sure we stopped there; whatever you see, don’t miss the valley of the Wye.
XLIX
SPIRITUAL HEALING
I believe that the average man or woman today needs one thing more than he needs anything else—spiritual healing. I believe this is truer of the men and women of our age than of those of any preceding epoch—and I believe they need it more than they need material luxuries, increase of mechanical resources, yes, more than they need mental tonics or emotional inspiration.
The people of the United States are suffering from “nerves.” Now the casualties in diseases of the nerves are large, because, as is well known, in cases of nervous prostration everybody dies except the patient. I shall not say that America won the war, but anyhow America was on the winning side. We were triumphantly victorious; we are the only rich and prosperous nation on earth. Americans are the only people in the world who are physically comfortable in bad weather. But although there is a steady increase in physical luxuries, I am not sure of a steady increase in serene happiness, in the calm that comes from mental contentment, in an approach toward universal peace of mind. What shall we say of a prosperous and rich nation whose prosperity and wealth are accompanied by an epidemic of suicide?
We are overwrought, tense, excited; our casual conversations are pimpled with adjectives; our letters are written in italics, and—a sure sign of fever—there has been an increase in cursing and swearing. Many respectable persons show a proficiency in this verbal art that used to be chiefly characteristic of lumberjacks and longshoremen. We become colossally excited about trivial things. Sometimes when I find myself in a state of almost insane irritation over some trifle I seem to hear the quiet voice of Emerson speaking from the grave—Why so hot, little man?