Coming to this country a product of Germanic civilization, knowing intimately the Slavic, Semitic, and Latin spirit, the writer was compelled to compare and to choose. Yet he would never have dared write upon this subject; not only because it was a difficult task, but because he had been so completely weaned from the Old World spirit that he had lost the proper perspective. Moreover, of formal books upon this subject there was no dearth. During the last ten years, however, he has had the advantage of being the _cicerone_ of distinguished Europeans who came to study various phases of our institutional life, and they brought the opportunity of fresh comparisons and also of new view-points in this realm of the national spirit. These unconventional studies, most of which received their inspiration through the visit of the Herr Director and his charming wife, are here offered as an Introduction to the American Spirit, not only to the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, but to those Americans who do not realize that a nation, as well as man, "cannot live by bread alone;" that its most precious asset, its greatest element of strength, is its Spirit, and that the elements out of which the Spirit is made, are so rare, so delicate, that when once wasted they cannot readily be replaced. As the sin against the Holy Spirit is the one sin for which the Gospel holds out no forgiveness for the individual, so there seems to be no hope for the nation which transgresses against this most vital element of its higher life. Inasmuch also as the Spirit is something which guides and cannot be guided, these informal introductions appear in no geographic or historic sequence, but are necessarily left to the leading of the spirit, of which "no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth." E. A. S. _Grinnell, Iowa_. CONTENTS I. THE HERR DIRECTOR MEETS THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 15 II. OUR NATIONAL CREED 35 III. THE SPIRIT OUT-OF-DOORS 58 IV. THE SPIRIT AT LAKE MOHONK 74 V. LOBSTER AND MINCE PIE 92 VI. THE HERR DIRECTOR AND THE "MISSOURY" SPIRIT 112 VII. THE HERR DIRECTOR AND THE COLLEGE SPIRIT 129 VIII. THE RUSSIAN SOUL AND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 147 IX. CHICAGO 166 X. WHERE THE SPIRIT IS YOUNG 184 XI. THE AMERICAN SPIRIT AMONG THE MORMONS 199 XII. THE CALIFORNIA CONFESSION OF FAITH 216 XIII. THE GRINNELL SPIRIT 237 XIV. THE COMMENCEMENT AND THE END 249 XV. THE CHALLENGE OF THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 262 I