Everybody,
therefore, is literally "putting in his best licks" in America. In
other countries there is in comparison a general atmosphere of "what's
the use?"--a comparative slumberousness of activity and effort.
Then, again, the American people are made up of the world's boldest
spirits and the descendants of such. The Puritans, who gave force,
direction, and elevation to our national thought and purpose, were the
stoutest hearts, the most productive minds of their time. Their
characteristics have not disappeared from their children.
The same is true, generally, but of course in an infinitely lesser
degree, of most of our immigrants. Usually it is the nervy and
imaginative men who go to a new country. Our own pioneers were endowed
with daring and vision. They had the courage and initiative to leave
the scarcely warmed beds of their new-made homes and push farther on
into the wilderness.
The blue-eyed, light-haired Swede who, among all in his little
Scandinavian village, decides to come to America, the Irishman who
does the like, are, for the most part, the hopeful, venturesome,
self-reliant members of their communities across the sea. The German
who turns his face from the Fatherland, seeking a new home half across
the world, brings us some of the most vigorous blood in the Kaiser's
Empire.
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