.. The field of American life is
as bare of the Church as a billiard-table of a centre-piece; a
truth that the myriad little structures 'attended' on Sundays
and on the 'off' evenings of their 'sociables' proclaim as
with the audible sound of the roaring of a million mice....
"And however one indicates one's impression of the
clearance, the clearance itself, in its completeness, with the
innumerable odd connected circumstances that bring it
home, represents, in the history of manners and morals, a
deviation in the mere measurement of which hereafter may
well reside a certain critical thrill. I say hereafter because
it is a question of one of those many measurements that
would as yet, in the United States, be premature. Of all
the solemn conclusions one feels as 'barred,' the list is quite
headed in the States, I think, by this particular abeyance
of judgment. When an ancient treasure of precious vessels,
overscored with glowing gems and wrought artistically into
wondrous shapes, has, by a prodigious process, been converted
through a vast community into the small change,
the simple circulating medium of dollars and 'nickels,' we
can only say that the consequent permeation will be of
values of a new order.
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