nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure." More than fifty years have passed since that war rearmed
the binding force of the Constitution and apparently sealed the
perpetuity of the Union. Yet the gigantic economic and social
changes now in progress are serving to show that the United
States has its full share of the anxieties which beset all human
institutions in this daily altering world.

"We are but strangers in an inn, but passengers in a ship," said
Roger Williams. This sense of the transiency of human effort, the
perishable nature of human institutions, was quick in the
consciousness of the gentleman adventurers and sober Puritan
citizens who emigrated from England to the New World. It had been
a familiar note in the poetry of that Elizabethan period which
had followed with such breathless interest the exploration of
America. It was a conception which could be shared alike by a
saint like John Cotton or a soldier of fortune like John Smith.
Men are tent-dwellers. Today they settle here, and tomorrow they
have struck camp and are gone. We are strangers and sojourners,
as all our fathers were.

This instinct of the camper has stamped itself upon American life
and thought. Venturesomeness, physical and moral daring,
resourcefulness in emergencies, indifference to negligible
details, wastefulness of materials, boundless hope and confidence
in the morrow, are characteristics of the American. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that the "good American" has been
he who has most resembled a good camper. He has had robust
health--unless or until he has abused it,--a tolerant
disposition, and an ability to apply his fingers or his brain to