ecord_ still presents such specimens of
sentiment--delivered or given leave to be printed, it is true, for
"home consumption" rather than to affect the course of legislation--as
are inexplicable to an Englishman or a Frenchman or an Italian.

Immigrants as we all are, and migratory as we have ever been,--so much
so that one rarely meets an American who was born in the house built by
his grandfather,--we cling with peculiar fondness to the sentiment of
"Home." The best-known American poem, for decades, was Samuel
Woodworth's "Old Oaken Bucket," the favorite popular song was Stephen
Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," the favorite play was Denman
Thompson's "Old Homestead." Without that appealing word "mother" the
American melodrama would be robbed of its fifth act. Without pictures
of "the child" the illustrated magazines would go into bankruptcy. No
country has witnessed such a production of periodicals and books for
boys and girls: France and Germany imitate in vain _The Youth's
Companion_ and _St. Nicholas_, as they did the stories of "Oliver
Optic" and _Little Women_ and _Little Lord Fauntleroy_.

The sentimental attitude towards women and children, which is one of
the most typical aspects of American idealism, is constantly
illustrated in our short stories. Bret Harte, disciple of Dickens as he
was, and Romantic as was his fashion of dressing up his miners and
gamblers, was accurately faithful to the American feeling towards the
"kid" and the "woman." "Tennessee's Partner," "The Luck of Roaring
Camp," "Christmas at Sandy Bar," are obvious examples. Owen Wister's
stories are equally faithful and admirable in this matter. The American
girl still does astonishing things in international novels, as she has
continued to do since the eighteen-sixties, but they are astonishing
mainly to the European eye and against the conventionalized European
background. She does the same things at home, and neither she nor her
mother sees why she should not, so universal among us is the chivalrous
interpretation of actions and situations which amaze the European
observer. The popular American literature which recognizes and
encourages this position of the "young girl" in our social structure is
a literature primarily of sentiment. The note of passion--in the
European sense of that word--jars and shatters it. The imported
"problem-play," written for an adult public in Paris or London,
introduces social facts and intellectual elements almos