The epigrammatic mind is the card index mind. Now the remarkable thing about the card index is its casualty list. People who card index things are people who proceed to forget those things. The same metal rod that transfixes the perforated cards pierces the indexers’ brains. A mechanical device has been called into play. Brains are unnecessary any more. The day of pigeonholes was slightly better; for the pigeonholes were not unlike the human brain in which things are tucked away together, because they really have some association with each other. But the card index alphabetizes ruthlessly. Fancy an alphabetical brain! Epigrams are like that. A man cannot take the trouble to think; he falls back on an epigram. He cannot take the trouble to remember and so he card indexes. The upshot is that he can find nothing in the card index and of course has no recollection to fall back on. Or he recalls the epigram without having the slightest idea what it was meant to signify. But this is not to be about card indexes nor even about epigrams. It is to be a barbaric yawp, by which it is to be supposed was once meant the happy consciousness and the proud wonder that struck into the heart of an American poet. Whitman was not so much a poet as the chanteyman of Longfellow’s Ship of State. There was an hour when the chanteyman had an inspiration, when he saw as by an apocalyptic light all the people of these United States linked and joined in a common effort. Every man, woman and child of the millions tailed on the rope; every one of them put his weight and muscle to the task. It was a tremendous hour. It was the hour of a common effort. It was the hour for which, Walt felt, men had risked their lives a century earlier. It was a revealed hour; it had not yet arrived; but it was sure to come. And in the glow of that revelation the singer lifted up his voice and sang.... God grant he may be hearing the mighty chorus! 2 America is not a land, but a people. And a people may have no land and still they will remain a people. There has, for years, been no country of Poland; but there are Poles. There has been a country of Russia for centuries, but there is to-day no Russian people. What makes a people? Not a land certainly. Not political forms nor political sovereignty. Not even political independence. Nor, for that matter, voices that pretend or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation. Poland has had such voices and Russia has had her artists, musicians, novelists, poets. The thing that makes a people is a thing over which statesmen have no control. Geography throws no light on the subject. Nor does that study of the races of man which is called anthropology. It is not a psychological secret (psychology covers a multitude of guesses). Philosophy may evolve beautiful systems of thought, but systems of thought have nothing to do with the particular puzzle before us.