ge over farthing candles," to use
Charles Reade's phrase.

If my habit of constant reading had not taught me the value of calmness
and patience, I should like to say, with violent emphasis, that a reason
for thanking God is that Americans have produced a literature--the
continuation of an older literature with variations, it is true,--that
has added to the glory of civilization. To prove this, I need mention
only one book, "The Scarlet Letter," and I am glad to end my book by
writing the name of Hawthorne. Literary comparisons with England, or
with France, Italy, Spain, or any of the other continental nations, are
no longer to our disadvantage. It is the fashion of the American who
writes of American books to put--in his own mind, at least--a title to
his discourse that reminds me of Miss Blanche Amory's "Mes Larmes." It
is an outworn tradition. American literature is robust enough for
smiles.

It can smile and laugh. It can be serious and not self-conscious. It is
rapidly taking to itself all the best traditions of the older literature
and assimilating them. Christopher Morley and Heywood Broun and Don
Marquis and Mencken write--at their best--as lightly and as trippingly
as any past master of the _feuilleton_. There is nobody writing in the
daily press in Paris to-day who does the _feuilleton_ as well as they do
it. If you ask me whether I, as a constant reader, pay much attention to
what they say, I shall answer, No. But their method is the thing. Will
they live? Of course not. Is ['E]mile de Girardin alive? Or all the clever
ones that James Huneker found buried and could not revive? One still
reads the "Portraits de Femmes," of Sainte-Beuve; but Sainte-Beuve was
something more than a "columnist." And these folk will be, too, in time!
At any rate, they are good enough for the present.

Who, writing in French or in any language, _outre-mer_, does better, or
as well, as Holliday? And where is the peer of Charles S. Brooks in
"Hints to Pilgrims"? "Luca Sarto," the best novel of old Italian life by
an American--since Mrs. Wharton's "Valley of Decision"--proved him to be
a fine artist. He perhaps knew his period better psychologically than
Mrs. Wharton, but here there's room for argument. Mrs. Wharton, although
she is an admirable artist, grows indifferent and insular at long
intervals.

"Luca Sarto" dropped like the gentle rain from heaven; and then came
"Hints to Pilgrims." This I wanted to write about in the _Yale