"I wonder indeed if the people of this continental inland West know
how much of first-class _art_ they have in these prairies--how
original and all your own--how much of the influences of a character
for your future humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic and new? how
entirely they tally on land the grandeur and superb monotony of the
skies of heaven, and the ocean with its waters? how freeing, soothing,
nourishing they are to the soul?
"Then is it not subtly they who have given us our leading modern
Americans, Lincoln and Grant?--vast-spread, average men--their
foregrounds of character altogether practical and real, yet (to those
who have eyes to see) with finest backgrounds of the ideal, towering
high as any. And do we not see, in them, foreshadowings of the future
races that shall fill these prairies?
"Not but what the Yankee and Atlantic States, and every other
part--Texas, and the States flanking the south-east and the Gulf of
Mexico--the Pacific shore empire--the Territories and Lakes, and the
Canada line (the day is not yet, but it will come, including Canada
entire)--are equally and integrally and indissolubly this Nation, the
_sine qua non_ of the human, political and commercial New World. But
this favor'd central area of (in round numbers) two thousand miles
square seems fated to be the home both of what I would call America's
distinctive ideas and distinctive realities."
ON TO DENVER--A FRONTIER INCIDENT
The jaunt of five or six hundred miles from Topeka to Denver took me
through a variety of country, but all unmistakably prolific, western,
American, and on the largest scale.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244