Various

“ She could yet be loved, like other women. The darkness without would not be so dreadful, if all those lamps that Heaven meant to be lighted in a woman's soul were glowing!
They reached the crest of the knoll, where a dozen ragged white pines towered. Beneath them curved the lake, growing darker already as the western sky began to blaze. Olivia seated herself against one of the pines, and, removing her hat, leaned back contentedly. It was so good to breathe deep and free, to feel the breeze at her temples, to have the man who loved her reclining at her feet. ”

“ Hence the continued existence at the New York Custom-house of the shameless bribe-taker in all his disgusting variety. Authority from time to time puts on a semblance of integrity and discipline, but the home-comer continues to gloat over the old story of double deceit, his own and another's. Is this the best Americanism? Yet these are American citizens who offer the bribe, who pocket it, and who allow the abuse to exist by solemnly or good-naturedly ignoring it. Consider the diversity of our divorce laws. ”

“ Under the insidious influence of this mode of enlightenment the everyday keen American citizen goes about with his head in the air, knowing in his secret heart that one-half of what he hears from the lips of those who represent him in public is buncombe, but content with the shadow for the substance, and wearing a chip on his shoulder as a warning to those who would assert that we are not really as virtuous and as noble as our spokesmen have declared. ”

“ The struggle with which we are concerned is more intense and broader than theirs: It is the progress of human society. You, whom I am addressing, find yourself a unit in a vast, heterogeneous population and a complex civilization. You live in the midst of the most modern aspirations and appliances, and cheek by jowl with the joy and sorrow, the comfort and distress, the virtue and vice of a great democracy. ”

“ The difficulty which imagination finds in expressing itself in the new terms is natural enough, for the poet and painter and musician are seemingly deprived of color, the color which we associate with mystic elegance and aristocratic prestige. Yet only seemingly. Externals may have lost the dignity and lustre of prerogative; but the essentials for color remain—the human soul in all its fervor—the striving world in all its joy and suffering. ”

“ We have, as I have intimated, passed through the pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large cities—in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of treating with originality the old problems which confront complex societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the consequent elevation of individual character. ”

“ The materialist is no new figure in human civilization. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," is but the ancient synonyme for "we shall be a long time dead." A deep, abiding faith in the serious purposes of humanity has ever been obvious to us Americans as a national possession, however foreigners may deny it to us, but the American nature is at the same time, as I have suggested, essentially practical, level-headed, and inquiring, and is ever ready with a shrewd jest to dispute the sway of traditions founded on cant or out-worn ideas. ”

“ To demonstrate that the American woman, when she has all the opportunities which health, wealth, and leisure can bestow, is content to become a mere quick-witted, shallow voluptuary?
You will be told that these people are very inconsiderable in number, that they really exercise a small influence, and that one is not to judge the men and women of the United States by them. It is true that they are not very numerous, though their number seems to be increasing, and I am fain to believe that they are not merely out of sympathy with, but alien in character to, the American people as a whole ”

“ It is that, only that. There can be no pain where there is no flesh to suffer."
"And no sorrow?" asked Anne.
"Sorrow," replied Marian, "that is of the mind, and the mind is part of ourselves."
"Separation is the worst," replied Anne. "Separation." "Suppose," she thought, "that I am really in another existence, where then is my dear, old John, my husband?"
"Marian," she cried out, "I must go home; at once!"
"But my dear," said Marian, "you cannot; as a mortal you could not come here; how then can you now go there? Oh, Anne, there are many loved ones waiting for you here. Many who loved you. ”

“ Mountains are introduced which are several miles away, and show in relief against a pale sky, every detail of the mountain being rendered as the eye could have seen it from the point of view occupied by the painter, and the whole wrought into a wonderfully glowing panorama of green passing into blue against the green mystery of the firmament. There are also among these drawings pictures which are Turnerian in their love of and sympathy with mist and vapor and their enjoyment of pure and delightful color produced by sunlight upon such vapor. ”

“ His painting takes nothing away from the solidity of the wall which it invests. The upright mass retains its rigidity and weight, it still carries the roof, it still holds firmly to the adjoining walls, it is a massive and trustworthy part of the construction, and the painted picture has added to rather than taken from its permanent and resting quality. How this is done is fully as inexplicable as is the glow and splendor of color itself. ”

“ It was an American who bade you hitch your wagon to a star, and you have only to reflect in order to recall the spiritual vigor, the righteous force of will, the strength of aspiring mind, the patriotic courage, the tireless soul-struggle of the early generations of choicely educated, simply nurtured Americans. ”

“ Americanism to-day stands in a sense more accurate than before as the experiment of government of the people, for the people, and by the people, and for the most complete amalgamation of the blood of Christendom which the human race has ever known. ”

“ We will proceed then on the understanding that, whatever its past, the present civilization of the United States reveals the every-day human being in his or her infinite variety, and that the true American must grasp this fact in order to fulfil his destiny. If our nation is to be a lamp to the civilized world, it will be because we prove with time that poor human nature, by virtue of the leaven called Americanism, has reached a higher plane of intelligent virtue and happiness than the world has hitherto attained. ”

“ But though the possession of wealth and social sophistication are no longer regarded as un-American, the public sentiment against open or tacit assumption of social superiority, or a lack of sympathy with democratic principles, is as strong as ever. It is incumbent, therefore, on you, if you would be an American in the best sense, to fix your ideal of life high, and at the same time to fix it in sympathy with the underlying American principle of a broad and progressive common humanity, free from caste or discriminating social conventions. ”

“ A window is, when considered as a work of fine art in color, a translucent composition, there being no part of it which can appeal to the eye by other than transmitted light. The artist has, then, the need of something strong to lean upon, some background, some fond upon which to relieve his more brilliant pieces of translucency; for it can be easily understood that color composition which is wholly translucent will tend toward feebleness, toward paleness, toward a certain evanescent and doubtful character of its colors, from which it must be saved. ”

“ To talk for effect with the thinly concealed purpose of deceiving a part of the American 108 people all of the time has been and continues to be a favorite practice with many of the politicians of the country. Yet this public trick of proclaiming sentiments and opinions with the tongue in the cheek is the conspicuous surface-symptom of a larger vice which is fitly described as hypocrisy. There is a way of looking at this accusation which deprives it of part of its sting, yet leaves us in a predicament not very complimentary to our boasted sense of humor. ”

“ I think of him now only as the best type of the farmer's boy of the early time; as the great example of the New England character of the day of his earlier manhood; as the great defender and lover of Massachusetts, as the orator who first taught his country her own greatness, and who bound fast with indissoluble strength the bands of union; as the first of American lawyers, the first of American orators, the first of American statesmen, and as the delightful citizen and neighbor and friend, of whom the people of his town said when he was laid in the grave:
"How lonesome the world seems;" ”

“ The Worshipper of False Gods.—It is a commonplace of foreign criticism that the free-born American is insatiate for money, and that everything else pales into insignificance before the diameter of the mighty dollar. That is the favorite taunt of those who do not admire our institutions and behavior, and the favorite note of warning of those who would fain think well of us. No one can deny that the influence and power of money in this country during the last thirty years have been enormous. ”

“ For Americans of the best type, those who have learned to be reverent without losing their independence and without sacrifice of originality, the problem of living is simplified through the elimination of the influence of these symbols and conventions. Their outlook is not confused or deluded by the specious dogmas of caste. They perceive that the attainment of the welfare and happiness of the inhabitants of earth is the purpose of human struggle, and that the free choice and will of the majority as to what is best for humanity as a whole is to be the determining force of the future. ”

“ There is only one product of the human mind which can be compared with it; a musical composition of the highest class; a symphony of Beethoven, alone, can be compared to a great composition by Titian. That such a color-gift and such a color-purpose are to be seen in all of Mr. La Farge's work alike would be hardly too much to say. The touch of the consummate colorist is not as evident, but is as discoverable by one who knows how to look, in a piece of nature-study from Fiji, six inches square, as it is in a large composition of saints and angels. ”

“ Thus it happened that, while the Major and I were sitting enjoying an extraordinary season of calm, suddenly there came a thundering sound from the stairway. A troop of horse could hardly have made a greater uproar, and yet I knew that less than half a dozen people were ascending the steps. Some one stumbled and caught himself, and the multiplied and magnified reverberations were as loud as if the roof had caved in, carrying the better part of the structure with it. ”

“ To those who argue that the majority must always be wrong, and that as a corollary the will of the cheap man will prevail, this drift of society is depressing. The good American in the first place, recognizing the inevitability of this drift, declines to be depressed; and in the second, without subscribing to the doctrine that the majority must be wrong, exercises the privilege of his own independent judgment, subject only to the statute law and his conscience. ”

“ To vie with each other in lavish outlay, to visit Europe with frequency, to possess steam-yachts, to bribe custom-house officers, to sneer at our institutions and, save by an occasional check, to ignore all the duties of citizenship, is an off-handed epitome of their existence. ”

“ Mendarva's forge stood on a triangle of turf beside the high-road, where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll's Farm in the valley. And Mendarva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like those you see on the statues of Nineveh. On Sundays he parted his beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon; but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest. He had one assistant whom he called "the Dane;" a red-haired youth as tall as himself and straighter from the waist down. Mendarva's knees had come together with years of poising and swinging his great hammer. ”

“ It is easy to go through the streets of a large city and note only the noise and smoke and stir, coarse circumstance and coarser crime, neglecting to remember that beneath this kernel of hard, real life the human heart is beating high and warm with the hopes and desires of the spirit. ”

“ With some difficulty she found the path and hurried downward, stumbling often and once falling. But her courage rose with the very play of her muscles. She had to grope with her hands to find the canoe, so thickly hung the mist already above the lake. There were lights moving at old Felix's boat-house, but Olivia could not see them. She seated herself in the Water-Witch, took her bearing from the vague masses of mountain shadow, and began to paddle with long, firm strokes. As the canoe shot into deep water, she was conscious that something scraped its frail side. ”

“ Almost on the moment a flame answered it from the point where the lighthouse stood; and within ten minutes the horizon of the towans was cressetted with these beacon-fires; surely (thought Taffy) with many more than usual. And he remembered that Jacky Pascoe had thrown out a hint of a great revival to be held on Baal-fire Night (as he had called it) .
The night was sultry and all but windless. For once the tormented sands had rest. The flame of the bonfires shone yellow—orange-yellow—and steady. ”

“ It behooves you then, if you would be a true American, to beware overstepping the limit which separates aspiring, intelligent, winsome common-sense from the philosophy of mere materialism. There lies one of the great perils of democracy; and unless the development of democracy be toward higher spiritual experiences, Americanism must prove a failure. Keen enjoyment of living is a noble thing, so too is the ambition to overcome material circumstances, and to command the fruits of the earth. ”

“ Without the blare of trumpets and without the inspiring strains of music the same heroes that came home fever-stricken, wan, and worn from that terrible struggle before Santiago are again facing a more subtle danger and fighting none the less hard and all in the same cause, but now there are no flaring headlines in our daily press, no bulletins to tell of the fight, because it is only against an unseen foe and there is no noise—but the hard work is there. ”

“ The conditions peculiar to a sparse population in a new country rich in resources have almost ceased to exist, and, though a young nation still, we are face to face with the problems which concern a seething civilization where almost every calling seems full. Now and again some lucky seeker for fortune still finds it in a brief twelve-month, but for the mass of American young men the opportunities for speedy, dazzling prosperity have ceased to exist. ”

“ So they say of us that the American hero is the man of material successes, "the smart man" who "gets there" by hook or crook, and that we are content to ask no embarrassing questions as to ways and means, provided the pecuniary evidences of attainment are indisputable. The patriotic American resents this as a libel, and maintains that this type of hero-worship is but a surface indication of the public soul, just as the horrors of the divorce court are but a surface indication of the general conditions of married life. ”

“ It is a startling proposition that man's inhumanity to man is less than woman's, but the time seems to give it some proof. At any rate, a man evidently disabled would not be allowed to stand in a public conveyance in which able-bodied men were seated, even in the most unchivalrous part of our country, which I have given some reasons for believing to be the city of New York. And, if that be true, it seems that the assumption of the right of an able-bodied woman to remain seated while a disabled man is standing is an assumption that the claims of chivalry are superior to those of humanity. ”

“ This is of the essence of the American idea, which has been, however, slow to subdue imagination, which is the very electric current of art, to its use by reason chiefly of the seeming discord between it and common life, and partly from the reluctance of the world to renounce its diet of highly colored court, heaven and fairy-land imagery ”