It was a time of hideous
architecture, a time when thought and learning paused. Without music,
without poetry, without beauty in their lives or impulses, a whole people,
full of the native energy and strength of lives lived in a new land, rushed
pell-mell into a new age. A man in Ohio, who had been a dealer in horses,
made a million dollars out of a patent churn he had bought for the price of
a farm horse, took his wife to visit Europe and in Paris bought a painting
for fifty thousand dollars. In another State of the Middle West, a man who
sold patent medicine from door to door through the country began dealing in
oil leases, became fabulously rich, bought himself three daily newspapers,
and before he had reached the age of thirty-five succeeded in having
himself elected Governor of his State. In the glorification of his energy
his unfitness as a statesman was forgotten.
In the days before the coming of industry, before the time of the mad
awakening, the towns of the Middle West were sleepy places devoted to the
practice of the old trades, to agriculture and to merchandising. In the
morning the men of the towns went forth to work in the fields or to the
practice of the trade of carpentry, horse-shoeing, wagon making, harness
repairing, and the making of shoes and clothing. They read books and
believed in a God born in the brains of men who came out of a civilization
much like their own.
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