Historically, there is thus nothing but folly and ignorance in all the current prattle about a restoration of the ancient American tradition. The ancient American tradition, in so far as it was vital and productive and civilized, was obviously a tradition of individualism and revolt, not of herd-morality and conformity. If one argues otherwise, one must inevitably argue that the great men of the Golden Age were not Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe and Whitman, but Cooper, Irving, Longfellow and Whittier. This nonsense, no doubt, is actually argued in the prairie seminaries; it even has its prophets, perhaps, in backwaters of the East; certainly one finds little in controversion of it in the prevailing text-books. But it remains nonsense all the same. The fact that it has been accepted for years explains the three great disgraces of American letters: the long neglect of Whitman, Melville and Mark Twain. And the fact that it is now challenged actively--that practically all young Americans of any appreciable intelligence now rebel against it--that the most significant sign of the times, in many ways, is the open revolt of the new generation against the teaching of their elders--this fact explains the new vigor that has got into American literature, and its consequent running amok. That running amok, to be sure, is leading to excesses--but so did the running amok of Whitman lead to excesses; so did the timorous running amok of Mark Twain. In order to get the rest of “Leaves of Grass” we must somehow manage to survive “A Woman Waits for Me”; in order to get “Huckleberry Finn” we must swallow the buffooneries of “The Innocents Abroad.” In brief, we must be willing to pay a price for freedom, for no price that is ever asked for it is half the cost of doing without it. 3