r the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from a
little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for
a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the
air was clean, and there was time to live.

But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
American hearts--Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.

In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound
longing for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became
an accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became
a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax
them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get
them! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of
people; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag!
Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is
patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is
Money! We want Bigness!

They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people
and yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than
they could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came,
the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish,
Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes,
Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians,
Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and
every hybrid that these could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos
nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might furnish failed
to swim and bubble in this crucible?

With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under
the tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzic