not interpret Jefferson Brick and Lafayette Kettle and the other
expansive patriots whom he met on his travels. Their virtues were as a
sealed book to him. Their boastful familiarity was simply odious.

To understand Lowell's exhilaration one must enter into the spirit of
American history. It has been the history of what has been done by
strong men who owed nothing to the refinements of civilization. The
interesting events have taken place not at the centre, but on the
circumference of the country. The centrifugal force has always been the
strongest. There has been no capital to which ambitious youths went up
to seek their fortune. In each generation they have gone to the frontier
where opportunities awaited them. There they encountered, on the rough
edges of society, rough-and-ready men in whom they recognized their
natural superiors. These men, rude of speech and of manner, were
resourceful, bold, far-seeing. They were conscious of their power. They
were laying the foundations of cities and of states and they knew it.
They were as boastful as Homeric heroes, and for the same reason. There
was in them a rude virility that found expression in word as well as in
deed.

Davy Crockett, coon-hunter, Indian fighter, and Congressman, was a great
man in his day. It does not detract from his worth that he was well
aware of the fact. There was no false modesty about this backwoods
Charlemagne. He wrote of himself, "If General Jackson, Black Hawk, and
me were to travel through the United States we would bring out, no
matter what kind of weather, more people to see us than any other three
people now living among the fifteen millions now inhabiting the United
States. And what would it be for? As I am one of the persons mentioned I
would not press the question further. What I am driving at is this. When
a man rises from a low degree to a place he ain't used to, such a man