Introducing the American Spirit Part 8

I asked him his name and he gave it to me with a French p.r.o.nunciation.

I thought he was Bohemian, and recognized the name as such, in spite of its French disguise. I told him so, and p.r.o.nounced it for him in the hard, Slavic way, all gutturals and consonants. I also told him its meaning: "A very common hoe such as the peasants use, and it means that your ancestors in Bohemia earned their living honestly, which I am sorry to say cannot always be said about 'people who are somebody' in our communities."

The Herr Director thought I was very hard upon the poor fellow, and later I had a good talk with him. I tried to show him that his Bohemian, peasant origin ought to be a source of pride to him. That the very fact that he and his people had come out of the steerage, and by virtue of our democratic inst.i.tutions could rise to the point where they could send him to college, should make him a guardian of the American Spirit and not its foe. I do not know that he profited by what I said; for I often find myself talking to the wind and the tide, and they are both against me.

I have only pity for the gilded youth who go to an American college with its vast opportunities of human contact, yet fail to see any one outside their own social boundaries. After all, the chief glory of our educational inst.i.tutions is that their best things are still democratic.

No man is kept from the Holy of Holies, from sound learning, from the contact with scholarly minds, from good books, and enough of rich fellowship to make going to college worth while.

We heard one delightful story which is so typically American and so reveals the American Spirit at its best, that the Herr Director embodied it in his book. The president of a Quaker college told us that just as he found there was some danger that the men who had to work their way through, were losing caste, one of the upper cla.s.smen opened a boot and shoe mending and cleaning shop. As he was a man of means, whose standing in his group was unquestioned, his action took from common labor its ever renewing curse.

In many of the colleges we met groups of men so full of this spirit, so concerned with fostering it, that all the sn.o.bberies of which we had heard seemed even smaller than they were in their own right. We met those who gave their leisure hours to that most difficult and worthy task of Americanizing the immigrants who, in many instances, almost encroached upon the campus. The students visited them in the box-cars where they lived, or in the hovels where they reared children; they taught them English and the elements of good citizenship, and every one of them had some particular Antonio to whom he was devoted, and whom he was trying to lift to his level.

Although the general testimony was that the students had gained more from the contact than the immigrants had, I know how immeasurably much it means to these strangers to have leaning up against their own lonely souls men of culture, and sweet, clean breath, and brotherly heart.

It is this idealism in our college youth which is so precious an a.s.set that to lose it would mean bankruptcy to our educational inst.i.tutions.

Although the Herr Director did not tell me, I knew that this excursion into the universities of the East had been a success; for thus far he seemed to have enjoyed everything; at least he did not complain about anything. He seemed in an especially happy mood when we were talking it over in the home of one of the presidents, whose guests we had become.

"Yes, I like your colleges very much, and if I should want my boy to have four years of more or less organized happiness, I would send him to an American college. He would have a good time, I think his morals would be safe," and he added with a smile, "his intellect would be safe also."

VIII

_The Russian Soul and the American Spirit_

New York is geographically misplaced for such a purpose as mine. It ought to lie somewhere west of Niagara Falls, so that one might be able to take strangers to that wonderful cataract without their having previously exhausted all the emotions which they are capable of expressing.

The day journey between New York and Buffalo is never commonplace, especially when it furnishes such euphonious names as Susquehanna, Wilkes Barre, Mauch Chunk, etc. From the hilltops we had glimpses of great valleys below, valleys which are mined and furrowed and channelled by a great industrial host whose crowded dwellings resemble the hives of bees and are as monotonously alike.

I could make these glimpses interesting enough, for I could tell by the shape of the church steeples and by the style of cross which crowned them, what faiths were there contending with each other. With equal certainty, and by the same signs, I knew the nationality of the people who worked there, and had faith enough to build steeples in the shadow of mine shafts and coal breakers. It was an atmosphere tense from the labor of seven unbroken days, and heavy from noxious gases in which trees languish and die, fish perish in the murky rivers, birds fear to nest, and man alone, immigrant man, lives and works and worships.

The Herr Director, like all Germans, has a natural contempt for the Slavs, and when I proposed that before we visited Niagara Falls we should see some of the Slavic settlements, he demurred; but when the Frau Directorin added her plea to mine, he reluctantly yielded. I was able to promise them an interesting meeting with an idealistic, young Russian priest, who had voluntarily taken a mission among these miners.

He was earnestly striving to guard their souls, and also that which seems quite as precious to their church, their Russian nationality.

The Greek Orthodox Church is the most nationalistic church in existence, and where-ever those bulbous towers with their slanting crosspieces dominate the sky, it is equivalent to the raising of the national flag.

The Slavic soul is thoroughly Christian in its quality of patient endurance, in which it has had long and hard tutelage. At the same time it is tenacious and unyielding of its particular dogma, having been taught from its earliest consciousness that its salvation lies in strict adherence to the national faith.

The city where we tarried is one of the best in which to study the Slavic Soul, and its relation to the American Spirit, being large enough to express that Spirit in its varied manifestations; yet not so large that the articles it manufactures hide or crush the articles of its faith.

I knew my guests would like the place, for while it is a busy town in the very heart of Pennsylvania's industrial region, it has retained a sort of homelike atmosphere. Situated midway between the large cities and the small towns which we had thus far visited, it has all the usual bustle, and is full of vigorous rivalry with other like cities in the same valley. Whatever one city does, whether building ambitious sky-sc.r.a.pers or a commodious Y. M. C. A., promoting a revival, or bringing in new industries, this little city endeavors to duplicate upon a still larger scale.

My guide for the day was the town's chief "hustler," the secretary of the Y. M. C. A., who is an embodiment of the American Spirit, being both body and spirit. He made a splendid foil to the Russian priest who is all soul, Russian soul and as little at home in the United States as the Czar's double eagle would be, floating from the city's court-house which stood in typical court-house fashion in the center of the town square.

The Y. M. C. A. secretary met us at the station, needless to say, in an automobile, as there is nothing the average American would rather do than "show off" his town. He gave his time unstintingly for that purpose, beginning the process by taking us through his inst.i.tution which is American enough to have challenged the Herr Director's attention. In great good humor he, with the rest of us, followed the secretary from the bowling alley to the roof garden, looked into the dormitories and cla.s.s rooms, and protested only when our zealous guide gave us long statistics as to how many people took baths, how many men were converted, and how much of the mortgage had been paid off during his inc.u.mbency.

I had to explain to the Herr Director the meaning of mortgage and its relation to our religious inst.i.tutions; for the two seemed related in some mysterious way.

He was duly impressed; for this practical side of religion, this combination of saving souls and giving baths was new to him. Newer and more interesting still was the clerical machinery with its card indices, its numerous secretaries, stenographers, and its clock-like regularity and efficiency.

The secretary is undoubtedly a religious man; but he is a business man first, and his soul has had no small struggle in an atmosphere which demands that he attract new members, raise a generous budget, pay off a mortgage and at odd moments look after his own business; for besides being secretary of this great inst.i.tution, he dabbles in Western lands, has an interest in a canning factory, and helps "boom" the town.

I could a.s.sure the Herr Director that, nevertheless, his soul survives; for the average American is remarkably adaptable, and while this secretary may permit his religion to suffer before his business, I know he does not "lose his own soul"; although in that respect as in everything else he does run frightful risks.

When we left the palatial lobby of the Y. M. C. A., having had bestowed upon us its annual report, souvenir postal cards, and incidentally a prospectus of the Western Land Co., the secretary insisted upon accompanying us. As he put his automobile at our disposal, and the Slavic settlements were out of reach by the ordinary means of locomotion, we reluctantly accepted his kind offer, the Herr Director having previously confided to me that he did not like the secretary's "hustle," and that his "efficiency" made him nervous.

There were two things which the Frau Directorin found everywhere and in which her soul delighted: marked and courteous attention to the ladies--and automobiles. We took just one street car ride in New York City, having been fairly showered by offers of automobile rides, one form of hospitality of which we have grown quite prodigal.

It was well that we had both the secretary and the automobile; for although I thought I knew where the Russian parish was located I did not reckon with the fact that it was three years since I had last visited it. During that interval the town had so altered that the landscape was quite unrecognizable.

It is the peculiarity of this and neighboring towns that they change their topography over night. What was a hill becomes a hollow, and the reverse process also takes place though more slowly, because of the huge culm piles which acc.u.mulate.

The mining of coal being carried on under the town has been so thorough in later years that intervening coal props have been removed, and houses and churches which formerly were above the level are now below it.

We finally found the Russian church and its adjoining parsonage in as uninviting an environment as I have ever seen. The three years since I visited them had not only let them down from their eminence, but had developed a stagnant pool on one side, while refuse from the mines had encroached upon the other. All the glory of red and yellow paint had departed, leaving only a drab dinginess, the prevailing tone of the landscape.

The priest received us in his study, which, besides the _Icons_ and a _Samovar_ had no ornaments. The musty air was full of cigarette smoke, and most diminutive stumps of these "_Papirosy_" were lying about, adding to the general untidiness. A parish register lay upon the desk.

It contained the names of more than a thousand souls with the chronicle of their coming into this world and their going out of it, and also that most important item, when they had attended Holy Communion, the one visible sign of their allegiance to the true faith.

The Holy Father had a strange history. The son of a priest, he naturally was destined for the same calling. Caught by the ever moving tide of revolt he had "sown his wild oats," which consisted of disseminating revolutionary literature. He was imprisoned, then like many good Russians repented, and, as a penance, came to Pennsylvania.

In desolation and distance from home his parish was not unlike Siberia.

It was even worse, for it was an exile from like-minded men, and his suffering on that score was acute. I have watched the manifestation of national or racial characteristics in individuals, and I feel certain that the Russian reflects those characteristics most intensely, whether he be peasant, priest or n.o.ble.

Not without reason does he call his country "Mother Russia." He has for her just that kind of affection, and it is as different from the violent love of the Herr Director for his Fatherland as is the matter-of-fact sentiment of the American for his.

The Russian completely reflects his country, and as both her virtues and her faults are feminine, there is in him something gentle and yielding towards external authority, and yet something unconquerable and defiant.

There is a capacity for suffering and sacrifice of which no other people seem to be capable. There is also a confidence in the goodness of humanity, no matter how bad it may seem, which reminds me of the confidence of the woman who is beaten by her drunken husband, yet knows that in his sober moments he is not a bad man.

The predominance of the spiritual quality may or may not be feminine, but it certainly is Russian, and one may indeed speak of the soul of a people in relation to the Slavs in general, and the Russians in particular.

The priest possessed all these characteristics; he was the Russian Soul, and this soul quality became even more apparent in contrast with the complex spirit of the American secretary, in whom Teuton and Celt were blended, and with the Herr Director, whose soul had hardened under the discipline which Germany had given him.

He lost no time in beginning an argument with the priest as to the relations of their respective countries, and when it threatened to become acrimonious, the secretary, hoping to create a diversion, asked the priest why he did not encourage his parishioners to come to the Y.

M. C. A. At that point I threw myself into the breach, and with considerable difficulty directed the conversation into safer channels.

I asked the priest to show us his mission, and he took us into the church, much poorer than any I have ever seen in Russia, and then into the schoolroom, where the children of the miners received their religious instruction and as much of secular education as they craved.

The teacher was a lean youth who looked as if he had suffered moral, spiritual and physical bankruptcy before coming to America. He and the whole equipment seemed hopelessly inadequate and out of place.

The secretary did not know that hundreds of children were growing up in an American community, yet completely isolated from it, and the Herr Director remarked that in Germany this would be regarded as treason to the state. The priest declared that it was his mission in America not only to keep his people and their children loyal to the national church, but to inject into our Westernized materialism this true Slavic faith and its leaven.

He believed that in America we lack soul. We worship science and money and business. The Russian alone lives in intimacy with G.o.d and regards that relation of the supremest importance. "The American," he continued, "believes in developing natural resources, the German develops the mind, the Russian alone develops the soul."

I have always had the greatest reverence for the Russian Soul. I have learned something the Herr Director could not see, on account of the natural, political antagonism between his own country and Russia; something the secretary could not comprehend on account of his provincialism, and the priest would not admit because of his official position, namely: that neither the Russian State nor the Russian Church represents the Russian Soul. Its common people, although nearly crushed by the one and confused by the other, are still Christian souls and as such have a mission to America; but I could not see how that mission would be fulfilled by locking up a few hundred children in a filthy schoolroom and teaching them their national catechism.

The Spiritual Russia, as it is incorporated in its common people and as it is interpreted by Tolstoy and Dostoyewsky, has reached us and taught us the greatest lesson which we self-righteous Americans needed to learn: the impossibility to judge our peers or to be judged by them.