ship, running deep and straight beneath the confused surface of
the preoccupied colonial consciousness. In another generation we see
the rude Western democracy asserting itself in the valley of the
Mississippi. This breed of pioneers, like their fathers on the Atlantic
coast line, could turn their hands to anything, because they must. "The
average man," says Mr. Herbert Croly, "without any special bent or
qualifications, was in the pioneer states the useful man. In that
country it was sheer waste to spend much energy upon tasks which
demanded skill, prolonged experience, high technical standards, or
exclusive devotion.... No special equipment was required. The farmer
was obliged to be all kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man was
merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something
of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in
his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a
lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman;
and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a
society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most
rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and
really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary
purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product,
and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied
criticism on the easy methods of his neighbors. He interfered with the
rough good-fellowship which naturally arises among a group of men who
submit good naturedly and uncritically to current standards. It is no
wonder, consequently, that the pioneer Democracy viewed with distrust
and aversion the man with a special vocation and high standards of
achievement."

The truth of this comment is apparent to everybody. It explains the
still lingering popular suspicion of the "academic" type of man. But we
are likely to forget that back of all that easy versatility and
reckless variety of effort there was some sound and patient and
constructive thinking. Lincoln used to describe himself humorously,
slightingly, as a "mast-fed" lawyer, one who had picked up in the woods
the scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true enough description,
but after all, there were very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth
Illinois Circuit or anywhere else who could hold their own, even in a
purely professional struggle, with that long-armed l