s vague; To-day may be
uncertain; To-morrow is alluring; and the Day after to-morrow is
altogether glorious. George Herbert pictured religion as standing on
tiptoe waiting to pass to the American strand. Not only religion but
every other good thing has assumed that attitude of expectant curiosity.

Even Cotton Mather could not avoid a tone of pious boastfulness when he
narrated the doings of New England. Everything was remarkable. New
England had the most remarkable providences, the most remarkable painful
preachers, the most remarkable heresies, the most remarkable witches.
Even the local devils were in his judgment more enterprising than those
of the old country. They had to be in order to be a match for the New
England saints.

The staid Judge Sewall, after a study of the prophecies, was of the
opinion that America was the only country in which they could be
adequately fulfilled. Here was a field large enough for those future
battles between good and evil which enthralled the Puritan imagination.
To be sure, it would be said, there isn't much just now to attract the
historian whose mind dwells exclusively on the past. But to one who dips
into the future it is thrilling. Here is the battlefield of Armageddon.
Some day we shall see "the spirits of devils working miracles, which go
forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather
them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Just _when_ that
might take place might be uncertain but _where_ it would take place was
to them more obvious.

In the days of small things the settlers in the wilderness had large
thoughts. They felt themselves to be historical characters, as indeed
they were. They were impressed by the magnitude of the country and by
the importance of their relation to it. Their language took on a cosmic
breadth.

Ethan Allen could not have assumed a more masterful tone if he had had
an Empire at his back instead of undisciplined bands of Green Mountain
Boys. Writing to the Continental Congress, he declares that unless the
demands of Vermont are complied with "we will retire into the fastnesses
of our Green Mountains and will wage eternal warfare against Hell, the
Devil, and Human Nature in general." And Ethan Allen meant it.

The love of the superlative is deeply seated in the American mind. It is
based on no very careful survey of the existing world. It is a
conclusion to which it is easy to jump. I remember one week, traveling