198 MY LIFE [Chap. 



the few only can succeed while the many must fail ; and 

 where all are doing their best in their several ways, with their 

 special capacities and their unequal opportunities, the result 

 is very much of a lottery, and there is usually no real merit, 

 no specially high intellectual or moral quality in those that 

 succeed. 



It is the misfortune of the Americans that they had such 

 a vast continent to occupy. Had it ended at the line of the 

 Mississippi, agricultural development might have gone on 

 more slowly and naturally, from east to west, as increase of 

 population required. So again, if they had had another 

 century for development before railways were invented, 

 expansion would necessarily have gone on more slowly, the 

 need for good roads would have shown that the rectangular 

 system of dividing up new lands was a mistake, and some of 

 that charm of rural scenery which we possess would probably 

 have arisen. 



But with the conditions that actually existed we can 

 hardly wonder at the result. A nation formed by emigrants 

 from several of the most energetic and intellectual nations 

 of the old world, for the most part driven from their homes 

 by religious persecution or political oppression, including 

 from the very first all ranks and conditions of life — farmers 

 and mechanics, traders and manufacturers, students and 

 teachers, rich and poor — the very circumstances which drove 

 them to emigrate led to a natural selection of the most 

 energetic, the 7nost independent, in many respects the best 

 of their several nations. Such a people, further tried and 

 hardened by two centuries of struggle against the forces 

 of nature and a savage population, and finally by a war of 

 emancipation from the tyranny of the mother country, would 

 almost necessarily develop both the virtues, the prejudices, 

 and even the vices of the parent stock in an exceptionally 

 high degree. Hence, when the march of invention and 

 of science (to which they contributed their share) gave 

 them the steamship and the railroad ; when California gave 

 them gold and Nevada silver, with the prospect of wealth to 

 the lucky beyond the dreams of avarice ; when the great 



