"The West," says James Bryce, "is the most American part of America, that is to say the part where those features which distinguish America from Europe come out in the strongest relief." We have already noted in our study of American romance how the call of the West represented for a while the escape from reality. The individual, following that retreating horizon which we name the West, found an escape from convention and from social law. Beyond the Mississippi or beyond the Rockies meant to him that "somewheres east of Suez" where the Ten Commandments are no longer to be found, where the individual has free rein. But by and by comes the inevitable reaction, the return to reality. The pioneer sobers down; he finds that "the Ten Commandments will not budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he organizes a vigilance committee; he impanels a jury, even though the old Spanish law does not recognize a jury. The new land settles to its rest. The output of the gold mines shrinks into insignificance when compared with the cash value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old picturesque individualism yields to a new social order, to the conception of the rights of the state. The story of the West is thus an epitome of the individual human life as well as the history of the United States. We have been living through a period where the mind of the West has seemed to be the typical national mind. We have been indifferent to traditions. We have overlooked the defective training of the individual, provided he "made good." We have often, as in the free silver craze, turned our back upon universal experience. We have been recklessly deaf to the teachings of history; we have spoken of the laws of literature and art as if they were mere conventions designed to oppress the free activity of the artist. Typical utterances of our writers are Jack London's "I want to get away from the musty grip of the past," and Frank Norris's "I do not want to write literature, I want to write life."