For an unhappy year or two he tried to act like his father, believe as his mother, and be like his neighbors. In addition, in order to satisfy a somewhat uneasy conscience, he prepared to enter politics on a platform of straight Americanism and the full dinner-pail. Then in one eventful week his workmen struck for an eight-hour day and shop committees, his mother announced her intention of bequeathing her share of the estate to the Anti-tobacco League, his best girl refused to marry him unless he should become an Episcopalian, and he was invited by the local boss to subscribe to a “slush” fund or give up politics. Samuel went to the Maine woods to catch trout and think over the situation. What he did finally is not told in the story. What he decided is, however, of some significance. For, brooding over a dark pool in the spruces, he concluded that each generation must search out the foundations for its own morality, and determine for itself the worth and power of the ideals it proclaims. And so perhaps will America. CHAPTER V RELIGION IN AMERICA The rarest experience in America is a discussion of morals. You can hear morals preached about, but that is not a discussion. You can read about morals in arguments disguised as essays, but these seldom cause discussion. Fully a third of successful American plays and stories turn upon a moral axiom, but one that we accept without argument, like rain in April and the August drouth. One hears very little real discussion of moral questions here because “old Americans,” at least, agree in their moral standards as remarkably as did the Victorians. In this respect we are, indeed, still Victorians, though in others already a century beyond them. Some of us may (or did) get drunk, but we do not believe in hard drinking; not even the saloon-keepers believed in hard drinking. Some of us make license of our liberty in sex relations; but the public disapproval of promiscuity is, to fall into the current phrase, nation wide. Some of us steal in a large and generous fashion, taking from him who hath not business ability for the benefit of him who hath shrewdness and its fruits. But if these actions can be described in terms of theft or misappropriation, every one will agree that they are wicked, even stock-holders and profiteers. You cannot get up a decent argument on moral questions in America, because, as with small boys in war-time, no one will take the unpopular side. The ethics of America are as definite as a code.