AN INTERVIEWER'S ITEM
Oct. 17, '79_.--To-day one of the newspapers of St. Louis prints the
following informal remarks of mine on American, especially Western
literature: "We called on Mr. Whitman yesterday and after a somewhat
desultory conversation abruptly asked him: 'Do you think we are to
have a distinctively American literature?' 'It seems to me,' said
he,'that our work at present is to lay the foundations of a great
nation in products, in agriculture, in commerce, in networks of
intercommunication, and in all that relates to the comforts of vast
masses of men and families, with freedom of speech, ecclesiasticism,
&c. These we have founded and are carrying out on a grander scale
than ever hitherto, and Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and
Colorado, seem to me to be the seat and field of these very facts and
ideas. Materialistic prosperity in all its varied forms, with those
other points that I mentioned, intercommunication and freedom, are
first to be attended to. When those have their results and get
settled, then a literature worthy of us will begin to be defined. Our
American superiority and vitality are in the bulk of our people, not
in a gentry like the old world. The greatness of our army during the
secession war, was in the rank and file, and so with the nation. Other
lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the
bulk of the people. Our leading men are not of much account and never
have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all
history.
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