Space, Sun, and Air 



All things invite this earth's inhabitants 



To rear their lives to an unheard of height, 



And meet the expectation of the land. Henry D. Thoreau. 



"THE EXPECTATION of the land!" Writing in 1926, Lewis Mumford 

 echoed this phrase of Thoreau's, and added, "One comes upon that phrase 

 or its equivalent in almost every valid piece of early American thought." 



It is plain that in recent years our expectation of the land is faltering. In 

 the same book, The Golden Day, 1 Mumford spoke of "the bucolic innocence 

 of the Eighteenth Century, its belief in a fresh start, and its attempt to achieve 

 a new culture." Against that belief and hope he posed a picture of destruc- 

 tion: "The epic march of the covered wagon, leaving behind it deserted 

 villages, bleak cities, depleted soils, and the sick and exhausted souls that 

 engraved their epitaphs in Masters' Spoon River Anthology." 



Later in his book Mumford declares: "What Thoreau left behind is still 

 precious. Men may still go out and make over America in the image of 

 Thoreau. What the pioneer left behind, alas, was only the burden of a 

 vacant life." 



Our early pioneers left us, indeed, much to answer for. But the drubbing 

 they have been taking from modern American writers lately seems, on the 

 whole, excessive. If anything at all certain may now be said to come out of 

 all our talk about the pioneer forebears, their faults and virtues, it is this: 



1 Entered, as are all books here noted, in the Bibliography, page 285, Appendix. 



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