The Yankee was not more boastful than other types of Americans, though his talent for exaggerative description was marked. Yet he had a pronounced national obsession and was uncompromising in his patriotism: “This land o’ourn, I tell ye’s got to be a better country than man ever see,” was put into a Yankee’s mouth by one of their own spokesmen and represents the Yankee type of mild jingoism. It is full cousin to that other sentiment which also this writer assigns to him: Resolved, that other nations all, if set longside of us, For vartoo, larnin, chiverlry, aint noways wuth a cuss.[37] These are but cruder expressions of ideas dating from the Revolutionary War, and of which Timothy Dwight, who was not a poet by predestination, gave us in verse a noble example: Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world, and child of the skies! Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold, While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. Thy reign is the last, and the noblest of time, Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime; Let the crimes of the east ne’er encrimson thy name, Be freedom, and science, and virtue, thy fame. It need not be supposed that all Yankees who came to Wisconsin or other western states were familiar with these glowing lines. But it is almost certain that, in the common schools of Yankeedom, most of them had thrilled to the matchless cadences of Webster’s reply to Hayne. What more was needed, by way of literary support, to a pride of country which, if a trifle ungenerous to others, was based on facts all had experienced. THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN JOSEPH SCHAFER IV. SOME SOCIAL TRAITS OF TEUTONS The year 1832, celebrated in Wisconsin history as the time when the lead miners and other pioneers destroyed the power of the Rock River Indians, was remembered by later-coming German immigrants for a very different reason. It was toward the end of March in that year, the place Trier (Treves), the ancient capital of the western “Cæsars,” a city which is still rich in the massive ruins of its Roman foretime. As the story goes, the boys of one form in the old _Gymnasium_ were being entertained at the house of a professor, where, boy-like, they were playing indoor games accompanied with much laughter and general hilarity. Suddenly one of their younger classmates rushed breathless into the room, exclaiming: “Goethe is dead!”[38] During the balance of the evening, the less serious of the youngsters having returned to their interrupted play, this boy engaged with his instructors in eager discussion of Goethe’s life and writings.