movements lubricated by time and custom--with increasing rapidity.
Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro, with threads of
literature and art, threads of life drawn from one shore to the other
and back again, until they were bound in the fabric of its weaving.
Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence of taste
and thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment, but the web in
Fate's hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintly
warmed despite itself, taste and thought drawn into nearer contact,
reflecting upon their divergences, grew into tolerance and the knowledge
that the diverging, seen more clearly, was not so broad; argument
coming within speaking distance reasoned itself to logical and practical
conclusions. Problems which had stirred anger began to find solutions.
Books, in the first place, did perhaps more than all else. Cheap,
pirated editions of English works, much quarrelled over by authors and
publishers, being scattered over the land, brought before American eyes
soft, home-like pictures of places which were, after all was said and
done, the homes of those who read of them, at least in the sense of
having been the birthplaces of fathers or grandfathers. Some subtle,
far-reaching power of nature caused a stirring of the blood, a vague,
unexpressed yearning and lingering over pages which depicted sweet,
green lanes, broad acres rich with centuries of nourishment and care;
grey church towers, red roofs, and village children playing before
cottage doors. None of these things were new to those who pondered over
them, kinsmen had dwelt on memories of them in their fireside talk,
and their children had seen them in fancy and in dreams. Old grievances
having had time to fade away and take on less poignant colour, the
stirring of the blood stirred also imaginations, and wakened something
akin to homesickness, though no man called the feeling by its name. And
this, perhaps, was the strongest cord the Shuttle wove and was the true
meaning of its power. Being drawn by it, Americans in increasing numbers