40 True Americanism 



the present day, the failure being of course most 

 conspicuous where the man takes up his abode in 

 Europe; where he becomes a second-rate European, 

 because he is over-civilized, over-sensitive, over-re- 

 fined, and has lost the hardihood and manly courage 

 by which alone he can conquer in the keen struggle 

 of our national life. Be it remembered, too, that 

 this same being does not really become a European ; 

 he only ceases being an American, and becomes 

 nothing. He throws away a great prize for the 

 sake of a lesser one, and does not even get the 

 lesser one. The painter who goes to Paris, not 

 merely to get two or three years' thorough train- 

 ing in his art, but with the deliberate purpose of 

 taking up his abode there, and with the intention 

 of following in the ruts worn deep by ten thousand 

 earlier travelers, instead of striking off to rise or 

 fall on a new line, thereby forfeits all chance of 

 doing the best work. He must content himself 

 with aiming at that kind of mediocrity which con- 

 sists in doing fairly well what has already been 

 done better; and he usually never even sees the 

 grandeur and picturesqueness lying open before the 

 eyes of every man who can read the book of Amer- 

 ica's past and the book of America's present. Thus 

 it is with the undersized man of letters, who flees 

 his country because he, with his delicate, effeminate 

 sensitiveness, finds the conditions of life on this 

 side of the water crude and raw; in other words, 

 because he finds that he can not play a man's part 

 among men, and so goes where he will be shel- 



