There is, perhaps, one other point about American talk that may be noted. There seems to be rather a widespread fear that to indulge in intelligent conversation is to make one’s self suspect in a nation of go-getters and he-men. The dominance of business interests and the business type undoubtedly has much to do with this; but tracing it back,[Pg 235] I think we meet the influences of both the frontier and of the American woman again. He-men, of course, are at a premium on the frontier. Moreover, the experience to be derived in a frontier life, if intensive, is extremely narrow. Like a small farm, it may be a good place to start from but it is intellectually killing to remain on it. Not only does the frontier stunt the intellectual life but it makes it suspect. A frontier is essentially democratic, and in all democracies, it is damning to be highbrow. In this respect the influence of the frontier has been deeply felt in American life since the days of Andrew Jackson. But if for this reason good conversation is more or less taboo, so it is for another. By failing to civilize her man and make him a part of any real social life, woman has, as we have said, feminized American culture and conversation to such an extent as to make anything beyond shop-talk appear as effeminate. For this double reason a certain atmosphere has been created in America that is inimical to good talk. There are, of course, many men who can talk well under the right conditions, but the social atmosphere in America all too often does not provide them. Thus Henry Adams, when teaching at Harvard, in spite, as he said, of the “presence of some of the liveliest and most agreeable of men who would have made the joy of London or Paris,” found that Cambridge offered only “a social desert that would have starved a polar bear.” Even Russell Lowell, William James, the Agassiz’s, John Fiske and Francis Child could not make it blossom.