For a Preface [pp. 169]

8]For a Preface.
It is not surprising that travel is encouraged by Europe. It is a rich source of revenue to the national railroads, museums, and
galleries; to hotels and to producers generally from Ultima Thule to the Isles of
Greece.
Again, the same "respectable class" of
Wendell Phillips are the principal offenders.
They go to Europe with growing families for
residence and education, and generally with
the purpose to return. And every shipload of
returning tourists of this sort is a Trojan horse
of danger. They become familiar with a
life inimical to ours, and what they do not
learn to enthusiastically admire they passively tolerate. This is true of manners, morals, thought, tastes, and government. They
are no longer staunch in their love of country, a sentiment which they are informed by
foreign critics is "a narrow provincialism."
No longer do they put any value on political
privileges, and they become oblivious at last
to the historic struggles which resulted in
human freedom. Travel affords them the
luxury of being without a country, and they
are proud of their new condition as "citizens of the world." Of Europe they unqualifiedly approve. They say that the men and
women abroad are more cultivated, the peas
ants more picturesque, the governments better conducted, the capitals more gorgeous,
and existence more enjoyable than at home.
Everything seems to be done for the people,
and they are not required to do anything for
themselves. With such surface observations
they are content. They do not suspect that
ceremonies, forms, and pageantry are all designed to act upon the imagination of the
crowd, and keep them in awe of authority,
and that authority, in its turn, acts as a cloak
to despotism. They do not see the resultant misery, the denial of freedom, religious
and civil, the enforced conscription, the burdens upon industry, and the chronic impoverishment of the people. A true knowledge
of the past and contemporaneous history of
Europe would make better Americans of
such travelers, whose information now is
gleaned on delusive fields.
International intercourse may be instrumental in civilizing America, but is it not on
the old lines condemned by the Fathers?
Is there not danger, by too close contact with
Europe, of losing all that is distinctive in
American life? And, notwithstanding the
strictures of foreign criticism, is not American nationality, such as it is, worth preserving?
J. D. Phelan.
FOR A PREFACE.
I HAVE stood shivering in November days The sour November days that threatened frost WVatching the birds that, summer long, had crossed
And crossed so oft my quiet garden ways,
I knew and loved them as I did the rays
Of sunshine there, wing southward until lost
At the far, misty world brim, cloud embossed,
Where summer still lay warm in drowsy haze.
They found the summer? That I do not know.
Mayhap'twas not for them-nor yet for these,
My books. I only stand as they depart,
Miss them and wait, not eager that they please
So much as wistful that they bring the glow
Of lacking summer to some chilly heart.
1885.]
169