NATURE By EMMA WITHERS ['Wildwood Chimes,' 1891.] I sought within men's hollow creeds A healing for the sorest needs That vexed my life. They mocked my quest; Burned on. I sought the sylvan meads, I saw young birds from out the nest I follow Nature where she leads, And safe from life's tormenting greeds, EVENING By CARTER W. WORMLEY ['Poems,' 1904.] I stood at sunset by the solemn sea The dusk of twilight dimmed the weary world, In golden youth my soul began a quest Of happiness, distinction, of renown; I lingered yet, though shadows darker fell; When darkness brought its guerdon, and I rest. PROSE SELECTIONS THESE selections are intended to represent the prose side of Southern literature somewhat as the two preceding sections have represented the poetical side. No selection has been admitted if the author has been represented in the preceding volumes. Of the several types of prose literature, only the essay, the oration, the short story, and the character sketch could find place here. THE GROWING SOUTH By EDWIN A. ALDERMAN [An address delivered before the Civic Forum in Carnegie Hall, New York City, March 22, 1908. Reprinted from 'Civic Forum Addresses,' season of 1907-1908, No. 7.] THE most interesting and impressive social movement to be observed in the world to-day, unless it be Russia trying to comprehend democracy, is the spectacle of the American Republic trying to adjust its new self to its old self in such fashion that it shall lose neither the individualism which guarantees freedom, nor the co-operative genius which insures power and progress. To me, at least, the most impressive phase of that struggle is the self-reliant effort of the Southern States of this Union to transform their economic and social life, to master the weapons of an industrial civilization, and to breathe easily the spirit of twentieth century Americanism, without sacrificing their deepest political and social instincts. I am here this evening to tell you something of this transformation. A Southern man is usually regarded as a sort of ambassador from one court of public opinion to another. My spirit somehow resents this, though I recognize the sectional distinctiveness of the South, and the plain historical and sociological reasons for this distinctiveness. American sectionalism, properly considered, is the story of imperial sections of one vast continent, reaching up after self-consciousness and social and industrial unity, and then reacting upon each other to achieve finally, let us hope, a national unity and a national spirit. The national America of the future will be a country in which the great historic sections, while conscious of their sectionalism and proud of it, will nevertheless understand each other and sympathize with each other. It is quite idle to deny that there is at present in the South a new sort of sectional consciousness asserting itself, side by side with a growing nationalism. Perhaps my resentment arises from a feeling that the permanent and triumphant Amer ica of the future must be a like-minded or national America, and that the coming of this national America is delayed by separate-mindedness in the North and in the West, just as much as in the South, and without as good reasons for it. My particular theme is the building spirit now at work in the States of the South. To understand the present South, one must have for a background five other Souths, forming a very dramatic and moving story in American life. There is first to be considered the Nationalistic and Imperial South. Up to 1830, it is not always clear to students of American history that the seat of active nationalism and imperialism was in the South. It was the era of the Virginia country gentleman and his kind throughout the South. It is difficult to see how there ever could have been any union without the continental thinking and thrilling nationalism of this group of men. One needs only to add Hamilton to such a group as Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison and Monroe, and the Union can almost be accredited to their combined genius. From 1830 to 1860 there existed what might be called the Self-Centered and Defensive South. Unable through the influences arising from the presence of the African in her life, to engage in sincere debate with herself, and exposed to the hostile and often-times cruel criticisms of the world, this attitude of buoyant nationalism and growth soon changed into one of introspection and defence. This is the South that has fixed itself in the imagination of men. This is the South that, under a generation of harsh criticism, developed abnormal popular sensitiveness, so that it is still very hard for a man who loves the South and knows its virtues and tragedies, to criticise it bluntly, or for the people themselves, who have endured that criticism and suffered under these tragedies, to receive such criticism impersonally and patiently. The great corrective forces of bold thinking and plain speaking are not yet at play as they should be in our public life, though material strength and unity of aims with the rest of the country are daily lessening this one stunting inheritance of years of isolation. This defensive South was a land of few cities or centres of population, clinging sternly to a few central ideas. It was a land wherein a tumultuous love of liberty and of chartered rights existed, side by side with human slavery; wherein aristocracy |