The Art of Living

I

Now that more than a century has elapsed since our independence as a nation was accomplished, and we are sixty million strong, what do we stand for in the world? What is meant by the word American, and what are our salient qualities as a people? What is the contribution which we have made or are making to the progress of society and the advancement of civilization?

There certainly used to be, and probably there is, no such egregiously patriotic individual in the world as an indiscriminately patriotic American, and there is no more familiar bit of rhetoric extant than that this is the greatest nation on earth. The type of citizen who gave obtrusive vent to this sentiment, both at home and abroad, is less common than formerly; nevertheless his clarion tones are still invariably to be heard in legislative assemblies when any opportunity is afforded to draw a comparison between ourselves and other nations. His extravagant and highfalutin boastings have undoubtedly been the occasion of a certain amount of seemingly lukewarm patriotism on the part of the educated and more intelligent portion of the American public, an attitude which has given foreigners the opportunity to declare that the best Americans are ashamed of their own institutions. But that apparent disposition to apologize already belongs to a past time. No American, unless a fool, denies to-day the force of the national character, whatever he or she may think of the behavior of individuals; and on the other hand, is it not true that every State in the Union has a rising population of young and middle-aged people who have discovered, Congress and the public schools to the contrary notwithstanding, that we do not know everything, and that the pathway of national progress is more full of perplexities than our forests were of trees when Daniel Boone built his log cabin in the wilds of Kentucky? In short, the period of unintelligent jubilation on one side, and carping cynicism on the other, have given place to a soberer self-satisfaction. We cannot – why should we? – forget that our territory is enormous, and that we soon shall be, if we are not already, the richest nation on earth; that the United States is the professed asylum and Mecca of hope for the despondent and oppressed of other countries; and that we are the cynosure of the universe, as being the most important exemplification of popular government which the world has ever seen. At the same time, the claims put forth by our progenitors, that American society is vastly superior to any other, and that the effete world of Europe is put to the blush by the civic virtues of the land of the free and the home of the brave, are no longer urged except for the purposes of rodomontade. The average American of fifty years ago – especially the frontiersman and pioneer, who swung his axe to clear a homestead, and squirted tobacco-juice while he tilled the prairie – really believed that our customs, opinions, and manner of living, whether viewed from the moral, artistic, or intellectual standpoint, were a vast improvement on those of any other nation.

But though most of us to-day recognize the absurdity of such a view, we are most of us at the same time conscious of the belief that there is a difference between us and the European which is not imaginary, and which is the secret of our national force and originality. International intercourse has served to open our eyes until they have become as wide as saucers, with the consequence that, in hundreds of branches of industry and art, we are studying Old World methods; moreover, the pioneer strain of blood has been diluted by hordes of immigrants of the scum of the earth. In spite of both these circumstances, our faith in our originality and in the value of it remains unshaken, and we are no less sure at heart that our salient traits are noble ones, than the American of fifty years ago was sure that we had the monopoly of all the virtues and all the arts. He really meant only what we mean, but he had an unfortunate way of expressing himself. We have learned better taste, and we do not hesitate nowadays to devote our native humor to hitting hard the head of bunkum, which used to be as sacred as a Hindoo god, and as rife as apple-blossoms in this our beloved country.

What is the recipe for Americanism – that condition of the system and blood, as it were, which even the immigrant without an ideal to his own soul, seems often to acquire to some extent as soon as he breathes the air of Castle Garden? It is difficult to define it in set speech, for it seems almost an illusive and intangible quality of being when fingered and held up to the light. It seems to me to be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled with a determination to make the most of self. One great force of the American character is its naturalness, which proceeds from a total lack of traditional or inherited disposition to crook the knee to any one. It never occurs to a good American to be obsequious. In vulgar or ignorant personalities this point of view has sometimes manifested itself, and continues to manifest itself, in swagger or insolence, but in the finer form of nature appears as simplicity of an unassertive yet dignified type. Gracious politeness, without condescension on the one hand, or fawning on the other, is noticeably a trait of the best element of American society, both among men and women. Indeed, so valuable to character and ennobling is this native freedom from servility, that it has in many cases in the past made odd and unconventional manner and behavior seem attractive rather than a blemish. Unconventionality is getting to be a thing of the past in this country, and the representative American is at a disadvantage now, both at home and abroad, if he lacks the ways of the best social world; he can no longer afford to ignore cosmopolitan usages, and to rely solely on a forceful or imposing personality; the world of London and Paris, of New York and Washington and Chicago, has ceased to thrill, and is scarcely amused, if he shows himself merely in the guise of a splendid intellectual buffalo. But the best Americanism of to-day reveals itself no less distinctly and unequivocally in simplicity bred of a lack of self-consciousness and a lack of servility of mind. It seems to carry with it a birthright of self-respect, which, if fitly worn, ennobles the humblest citizen.

This national quality of self-respect is apt to be associated with the desire for self-improvement or success. Indeed, it must engender it, for it provides hope, and hope is the touchstone of energy. The great energy of Americans is ascribed by some to the climate, and it is probably true that the nervous temperaments of our people are stimulated by the atmospheric conditions which surround us; but is it not much more true that, just as it never occurs to the good American to be servile, so he feels that his outlook upon the possibilities of life is not limited or qualified, and that the world is really his oyster? To be sure, this faith has been fostered by the almost Aladdin-like opportunities which this great and rich new country of ours has afforded. But whatever the reason for our native energy and self-reliance, it indisputably exists, and is signally typical of the American character. We are distinctly an ambitious, earnest people, eager to make the most of ourselves individually, and we have attracted the attention of the world by force of our independent activity of thought and action. The extraordinary personality of Abraham Lincoln is undoubtedly the best apotheosis yet presented of unadulterated Americanism. In him the native stock was free from the foreign influences and suggestions which affected, more or less, the people of the East. His origin was of the humblest sort, and yet he presented most saliently in his character the naturalness, nobility, and aspiring energy of the nation. He made the most of himself by virtue of unusual abilities, yet the key-note of their influence and force was a noble simplicity and farsighted independence. In him the quintessence of the Americanism of thirty years ago was summed up and expressed. In many ways he was a riddle at first to the people of the cities of the East in that, though their soul was his soul, his ways had almost ceased to be their ways; but he stands before the world to-day as the foremost interpreter of American ideas and American temper of thought as they then existed.

In the thirty years since the death of Abraham Lincoln the country has been inundated with foreign blood. Irish, Germans, English, Poles, and Scandinavians, mainly of the pauper or peasant class, have landed in large numbers, settled in one State or another, and become a part of the population. The West, at the time of the Civil War, was chiefly occupied by settlers of New England or Eastern stock – pioneers from the older cities and towns who had sought fortune and a freer life in the new territory of prairies and unappropriated domain. The population of the whole country to-day bears many different strains of blood in its veins. The original settlers have chiefly prospered. The sons of those who split rails or followed kindred occupations in the fifties, and listened to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, are the proprietors of Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Topeka. Johann Heintz now follows the plough and in turn squirts tobacco-juice while he tills the prairie; and Louis Levinsky, Paul Petrinoff, and Michael O’Neil forge the plough-shares, dig in the mine, or work in the factory side by side with John Smith and any descendant of Paul Revere who has failed to prosper in life’s battle. But this is not all. Not merely are the plain people in the dilemma of being unable to pronounce the names of their neighbors, but the same is getting to be true of the well-to-do merchants and tradespeople of many of our cities. The argus-eyed commercial foreigner has marked us for his own, and his kith and kin are to-day coming into possession of our drygoods establishments, our restaurants, our cigar stores, our hotels, our old furniture haunts, our theatres, our jewelry shops, and what not. One has merely to open a directory in order to find the names in any leading branch of trade plentifully larded with Adolph Stein, Simon Levi, Gustave Cohen, or something ending in berger. They sell our wool; they float our loans; they manufacture our sugar, our whiskey, and our beer; they influence Congress. They are here for what they can make, and they do not waste their time in sentiment. They did not come in time to reap the original harvest, but they have blown across the ocean to help the free-born American spend his money in the process of trying to out-civilize Paris and London. As a consequence, the leading wholesale and retail ornamental industries of New York and of some of our Western cities are in the grip of individuals whose surnames have a foreign twang. Of course, they have a right to be here; it is a free country, and no one can say them nay. But we must take them and their wives and daughters, their customs and their opinions, into consideration in making an estimate of who are the Americans of the present. They have not come here for their health, as the phrase is, but they have come to stay. We at present, in our social hunger and thirst, supply the grandest and dearest market of the world for the disposal of everything beautiful and costly and artistic which the Old World possesses, and all the shopkeepers of Europe, with the knowledge of generations on the tips of their tongues and in the corners of their brains, have come over to coin dowries for their daughters in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Many of them have already made large fortunes in the process, and are beginning to con the pages of the late Ward McAllister’s book on etiquette with a view to social aggressiveness.

Despite this infusion of foreign blood, the native stock and the Anglo-Saxon nomenclature are still, of course, predominant in numbers. There are some portions of the country where the late immigrant is scarcely to be found. True also is it that these late-comers, like the immigrants of fifty years ago, have generally been prompt in appropriating the independent and energetic spirit typical of our people. But there is a significant distinction to be borne in mind in this connexion: The independent energy of the Americans of fifty years ago, whether in the East or among the pioneers of the Western frontier, was not, however crude its manifestations, mere bombastic assertiveness, but the expression of a faith and the expression of strong character. They were often ignorant, conceited, narrow, hard, and signally inartistic; but they stood for principle and right as they saw and believed it; they cherished ideals; they were firm as adamant in their convictions; and God talked with them whether in the store or workshop, or at the plough. This was essentially true of the rank and file of the people, no less true and perhaps more true of the humblest citizens than of the well-to-do and prominent.

There can be little doubt that the foreign element which is now a part of the American people represents neither a faith nor the expression of ideals or convictions. The one, and the largest portion of it, is the overflow and riff-raff of the so-called proletariat of Europe; the other is the evidence of a hyena-like excursion for the purposes of plunder. In order to be a good American it is not enough to become independent and energetic. The desire to make the most of one’s self is a relative term; it must proceed from principle and be nourished by worthy, ethical aims; otherwise it satisfies itself with paltry conditions, or with easy-going florid materialism. The thieving and venality in municipal political affairs of the Irish-American, the dull squalor and brutish contentment of the Russian-Pole, and the commercial obliquity of vision and earthy ambitions of the German Jew, are factors in our national life which are totally foreign to the Americanism for which Abraham Lincoln stood. We have opened our gates to a horde of economic ruffians and malcontents, ethical bankrupts and social thugs, and we must needs be on our guard lest their aims and point of view be so engrafted on the public conscience as to sap the vital principles which are the foundation of our strength as a people. The danger from this source is all the greater from the fact that the point of view of the American people has been changed so radically during the last thirty years as a secondary result of our material prosperity. We have ceased to be the austere nation we once were, and we have sensibly let down the bars in the manner of our living; we have recognized the value of, and we enjoy, many things which our fathers put from them as inimical to republican virtue and demoralizing to society. Contact with older civilizations has made us wiser and more appreciative, and with this growth of perspective and the acquirement of an eye for color has come a liberality of sentiment which threatens to debauch us unless we are careful. There are many, especially among the wealthy and fashionable, who in their ecstasy over our emancipation are disposed to throw overboard everything which suggests the old régime, and to introduce any custom which will tend to make life more easy-going and spectacular. And in this they are supported by the immigrant foreigner, who would be only too glad to see the land of his adoption made to conform in all its usages to the land of his birth.

The conduct of life here has necessarily and beneficially been affected by the almost general recognition that we have not a monopoly of all the virtues, and by the adoption of many customs and points of view recommended by cosmopolitan experience. The American people still believe, however, that our civilization is not merely a repetition of the older ones, and a duplication on new soil of the old social tread-mill. That it must be so in a measure every one will admit, but we still insist, and most of us believe, that we are to point the way to a new dispensation. We believe, but at the same time when we stop to think we find some difficulty in specifying exactly what we are doing to justify the faith. It is easy enough to get tangled up in the stars and stripes and cry “hurrah!” and to thrust the American eagle down the throats of a weary universe, but it is quite another to command the admiration of the world by behavior commensurate with our ambition and self-confidence. Our forefathers could point to their own nakedness as a proof of their greatness, but there seems to be some danger that we, now that we have clothed ourselves – and clothed ourselves as expensively as possible and not always in the best taste – will forget the ideas and ideals for which those fathers stood, and let ourselves be seduced by the specious doctrine that human nature is always human nature, and that all civilizations are alike. To be sure, an American now is apt to look and act like any other rational mortal, and there is no denying that the Atlantic cable and ocean greyhound have brought the nations of the world much closer together than they ever were before; but this merely proves that we can become just like the others, only worse, in case we choose to. But we intend to improve upon them.

To those who believe that we are going to improve upon them it must be rather an edifying spectacle to observe the doings and sayings of that body of people in the city of New York who figure in the newspapers of the day as “the four hundred,” “the smart set,” or “the fashionable world.” After taking into full account the claims of the sensitive city of Chicago, it may be truthfully stated that the city of New York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk. The rest of us are in a measure provincial. Many of us profess not to approve of New York, but, though we cross ourselves piously, we take or read a New York daily paper. New York gives the cue alike to the Secretary of the Treasury and (by way of London) to the social swell. The ablest men in the country seek New York as a market for their brains, and the wealthiest people of the country move to New York to spend the patrimony which their rail-splitting fathers or grandfathers accumulated. Therefore it is perfectly just to refer to the social life of New York as representative of that element of the American people which has been most blessed with brains or fortune, and as representative of our most highly evolved civilization. It ought to be our best. The men and women who contribute to its movement and influence ought to be the pick of the country. But what do we find? We find as the ostensible leaders of New York society a set of shallow worldlings whose whole existence is given up to emulating one another in elaborate and splendid inane social fripperies. They dine and wine and dance and entertain from January to December. Their houses, whether in town or at the fashionable watering-places to which they move in summer, are as sumptuous, if not more so, than those of the French nobility in its palmiest days, and their energies are devoted to the discovery of new expensive luxuries and fresh titillating creature comforts. That such a body of people should exist in this country after little more than a century of democratic institutions is extraordinary, but much more extraordinary is the absorbing interest which a large portion of the American public takes in the doings and sayings of this fashionable rump. There is the disturbing feature of the case. Whatever these worldlings do is flashed over the entire country, and is copied into a thousand newspapers as being of vital concern to the health and home of the nation. The editors print it because it is demanded; because they have found that the free-born American citizen is keenly solicitous to know “what is going on in society,” and that he or she follows with almost feverish interest and with open-mouthed absorption the spangled and jewelled annual social circus parade which goes on in the Paris of America. The public is indifferently conscious that underneath this frothy upper-crust in New York there is a large number of the ablest men and women of the country by whose activities the great educational, philanthropic, and artistic enterprises of the day have been fostered, promoted, and made successful; but this consciousness pales into secondary importance in the democratic mind as compared with realistic details concerning this ball and that dinner-party where thousands of dollars are poured out in vulgar extravagance, or concerning the cost of the wedding-presents, the names and toilettes of the guests, and the number of bottles of champagne opened at the marriage of some millionaire’s daughter.