I should like to see a book tracing the history and development of an imaginary Anglo-Saxon American line of ancestry, taking it from the forests of Northern Germany across to Britain, through the Norman conquest and down the stream of subsequent English history across seas to America—­through savage wars and Revolution, perhaps across the Alleghenies, to settle finally in the great West.  I would try to make the reader realize that here was no fairy tale—­no tale of countries and races with which we have naught to do, but the story of our own fathers, whose features and whose characteristics, physical and mental, have been transmitted by heredity to us, their sons and daughters of the year 1913.

It is unfortunate perhaps, for our perceptions of racial continuity, that we are rovers by disposition.  Who runs across the sea, says the Latin poet, changes his sky but not his mind.  True enough, but it is difficult for some of us to realize it.  It is hard for some of us to realize that our emigrant ancestors were the same men and women when they set foot on these shores as when they left the other side some weeks before.  Our trans-Atlantic cousins labor under the same difficulties, for they assure us continually that we are a “new” country.  We have, they say, the faults and the advantages of “youth.”  It would be interesting to know at just what point in the passage the education and the habits and the prejudices of the incoming Englishman dropped off.  Change of environment works wonders with habits and even with character; we must of course recognize that; but it certainly does not make of the mind a tabula rasa, on which the fresh surroundings may absolutely work their will.

I must say that our migrations within the limits of our own continent have not been productive of so much forgetfulness.  I have been struck, for instance, since I came to St. Louis, with what I may call the source-consciousness of our western population.  Everyone, whether he is particularly interested in genealogy or not, knows that his people came from Vermont or Virginia or Pennsylvania.  He may not be able to trace his ancestry, or even to name his great-grandfather; but with the source of that ancestry he is always acquainted.  I believe this to be the case throughout the Middle West.  From this point of view the population is not so well mixed as it is in the East.  No one in Massachusetts or Connecticut can point out to you, offhand, the families that came from particular counties in England.  And yet in England, a migration from one county to another is always recognized and remembered.  A cousin of mine, visiting on an English estate, was casually informed by his host, “Our family are newcomers in this county.  We moved in only about 300 years ago.”  From this point of view we are all newcomers in America.  It is to be hoped that as the years go on, the elements of our western population will not so thoroughly lose sight of their