“Suppose you take the great passions:  what new one has been added, what old one has been lost?  Take all the passions you find in Greek literature, in the Roman.  Have you not seen them reappear in American life in your own generation?  I believe I have met them in my office.  You may think I have not seen Paris and Helen, but I have.  And I have seen Orestes and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and Oedipus.  Do you suppose I have not met Tarquin and Virginia and Lucretia and Shylock—­to come down to nearer times—­and seen Lear and studied Macbeth in the flesh?  I knew Juliet once, and behind locked doors I have talked with Romeo.  They are all here in any American commonwealth at the close of our century:  the great tragedies are numbered—­the oldest are the newest.  So that sometimes I fix my eyes only on the old.  I see merely the planet with its middle green belt of pasture and its poles of snow and ice; and wandering over that green belt for a little while man the pasturing animal—­with the mystery of his ever being there and the mystery of his dust—­with nothing ever added to him, nothing ever lost out of him—­his only power being but the power to vary the uses of his powers.

“Then there is the other side, the side of the new.  I like to think of the marvels that the pasturing animal has accomplished in our own country.  He has had new thoughts, he has done things never seen elsewhere or before.  But after all the question remains, what is our characteristic mettle?  What is the mettle of the American?  He has had new ideas; but has he developed a new virtue or carried any old virtue forward to characteristic development?  Has he added to the civilizations of Europe the spectacle of a single virtue transcendently exercised?  We are not braver than other brave people, we are not more polite, we are not more honest or more truthful or more sincere or kind.  I wish to God that some virtue, say the virtue of truthfulness, could be known throughout the world as the unfailing mark of the American—­the mettle of his pasture.  Not to lie in business, not to lie in love, not to lie in religion—­to be honest with one’s fellow-men, with women, with God—­suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue constituted the characteristic of the American!  That would be fame for ages.

“I believe that we shall sometime become celebrated for preeminence in some virtue.  Why, I have known young fellows in my office that I have believed unmatched for some fine trait or noble quality.  You have met them in your classes.”

He broke off abruptly and remained silent for a while.

“Have you seen Rowan lately?” he asked, with frank uneasiness:  and receiving the reply which he dreaded, he soon afterward arose and passed brokenly down the street.