244 Singing Valleys 



Grange picnics, Harvest Homes, camp meetings and Chau- 

 tauquas. At all of these, soon or late, someone was sure to 

 launch into a tribute to one of the three national symbols 

 which never fail to stir American audiences to enthusiasm. 

 These are the flag, our mothers and the American corn. 



Beside this flow of florid oratory the economy of Lincoln's 

 phrases becomes the most vivid evidence of his genius. 



Not that audiences objected to the rhetorical flights they 

 were treated to. They, too, were cornfed. They were bred to 

 lavish exuberance. They had no fear of giving vent to their 

 emotions. The gift for understatement which was no small 

 part of the genius of New England, and which resulted di- 

 rectly from their lean harvests, would have struck a corn-belt 

 audience as too stingy to be truly American. 



A cornfed culture is not nice in the sense of esthetics. Van 

 Wyck Brooks has called attention to the "village mind" of 

 Connecticut. This is keen, witty, carping. But not, truly 

 speaking, critical. In general, the American mind has de- 

 veloped small genius for analysis. That property belongs to 

 peoples who have threshed and winnowed small grains and 

 who have lived on small lands and in walled towns. It does 

 not mark those who have gathered into baskets four hundred- 

 fold. We produce propagandists and objectors, but, to date, 

 no great critics. 



Europeans are apt to find the sweeping gestures which 

 distinguish the American style particularly irritating. Ameri- 

 cans, who are childlike in their eagerness to like everybody 

 and to be liked, are frankly puzzled that English lecturers 

 will make derogatory remarks about a people who are so will- 

 ing to part with their dollars for tickets. They want to know 

 where the catch is. There is no catch; only the entirely natural 

 resentment of an underfed people toward the evidences of 

 another nation's wellfedness. 



New England boasted that its chief export to the Black 

 Wilderness was schoolmasters. Schools were as important as 



