which, on such conditions, cannot last!--No: America too will
have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this; to
crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us
have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons and
mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods.
America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though
nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual
Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were
ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight
Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own
victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.
Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very successful
manner; hitherto, in spite of her "roast-goose with apple-sauce,"
she is not much. "Roast-goose with apple-sauce for the poorest
workingman:" well, surely that is something, thanks to your
respect for the street-constable, and to your continents of
fertile waste land;--but that, even if it could continue, is by
no means enough; that is not even an instalment towards what will
be required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American
cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and
resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable; but I can by no
means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what
great thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, or
loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None: the American
cousins have yet done none of these things. "What they have
done?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject: "They have
doubled their population every twenty years. They have
begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example, Eighteen
Millions of the greatest _bores_ ever seen in this world
before,--that hitherto is their feat in History!"--And so we