Say what you please, and it is easy to say too much, of the
imitativeness of American literature as Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne,
Longfellow, Thoreau, Twain, and Howells wrote it, nevertheless, it
was more than justified by the human significance it gave to mere
land in America; and it is richer and more valuable than much
later writing just because of this attempt. Without Hawthorne and
Thoreau, New England would have lost its past; without Cooper and
Parkman the word "frontier" would mean no more than "boundary" to
most of us.
It is foolish to lay a burden on art, and to say, for example,
that American novelists must accept the same obligation to cities
and country to-day. But we may justly praise and thank them when
they do enrich this somewhat monotonous America that has been
planed over by the movies, the _Saturday Evening Post_, quick
transportation, and the newspaper with its syndicated features,
until it is as repetitive as a tom-tom.
After the Civil War every one began to move in America, and the
immigrants, moving in, moved also, so that roots were pulled up
everywhere and the town one lived in became as impersonal as a
hotel, the farm no more human than a seed-bed.
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