e-line for the Mississippi.
Nothing could be more typical of the first three hundred years of
American history.

The traits of the pioneer have thus been the characteristic traits of
the American in action. The memories of successive generations have
tended to stress these qualities to the neglect of others. Everyone
who has enjoyed the free life of the woods will confess that his own
judgment upon his casual summer associates turns, quite naturally and
almost exclusively, upon their characteristics as woodsmen. Out of the
woods, these gentlemen may be more or less admirable divines, pedants,
men of affairs; but the verdict of their companions in the forest is
based chiefly upon the single question of their adaptability to the
environment of the camp. Are they quick of eye and foot, skillful with
rod and gun, cheerful on rainy days, ready to do a little more than
their share of drudgery? If so, memory holds them.

Some such unconscious selection as this has been at work in the
classification of our representative men. The building of the nation and
the literary expression of its purpose and ideals are tasks which have
called forth the strength of a great variety of individuals. Some of
these men have proved to be peculiarly fitted for a specific service,
irrespective of the question of their general intellectual powers, or
their rank as judged by the standard of European performance in the same
field. Thus the battle of New Orleans, in European eyes a mere bit of
frontier fighting, made Andrew Jackson a "hero" as indubitably as if he
had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. It gave him the Presidency.

The analogy holds in literature. Certain expressions of American
sentiment or conviction have served to summarize or to clarify the
spirit of the nation. The authors of these productions have frequently
won the recognition and affection of their contemporaries by means of
prose and verse quite unsuited to sustain the test of severe critical
standards. Neither Longfellow's "Excelsior" nor Poe's "Bells" nor
Whittier's "Maud Muller" is among the best poems of the three writers
in question, yet there was something in each of these productions which
caught the fancy of a whole American generation. It expressed one phase
of the national mind in a given historical period.

The historian of literature is bound to take account of this question of
literary vogue, as it is highly significant of the temper of successive
generations in