d we
will have to have it before we can begin being it.

First the Specifications, then the House.

From the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given
in this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that
we are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by its
own books.

We let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let a
poor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books
for us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let a
sublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pulling
himself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he was
born in--express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism in
human nature.

America is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding
gloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our real
questions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go to
sleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--Where are
we going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for?

* * * * *

A---- C----, the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----, bought
some machines to help him last year before I went away and added two or
three slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved and
has two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling,
and the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window in
it) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and show
C---- in his shirt sleeves,--your old shoes hopefully, he slips over
from his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at
the psychological moment a new pair of shoes.

He is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, looking
out of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if he
could suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out of
the fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard at
them.

I watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on,
with that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I saw
his future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full of
bright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at
the back, and two great show windows in front. A---- C---- looks like an
edged tool.

Millions of Americans are li