nd
old-fashioned reticences which soften the drama of their lives. With the
newer stocks an ancient process begins again. Their affairs are
conducted on the plane of desperate subsistence. Struggling to survive
at all, they cry out in the language of hunger and death; almost naked
in the struggle, they speak nakedly about livelihood and birth and
death. Sooner or later the immigrants must be perceived to have added
precious elements of passion and candor to American fiction.

2. THE REVOLT FROM THE VILLAGE

_Edgar Lee Masters_

The newest style in American fiction dates from the appearance, in 1915,
of _Spoon River Anthology_, though it required five years for the
influence of that book to pass thoroughly over from poetry to prose. For
nearly half a century native literature had been faithful to the cult of
the village, celebrating its delicate merits with sentimental affection
and with unwearied interest digging into odd corners of the country for
persons and incidents illustrative of the essential goodness and heroism
which, so the doctrine ran, lie beneath unexciting surfaces. Certain
critical dispositions, aware of agrarian discontent or given to a
preference for cities, might now and then lay disrespectful hands upon
the life of the farm; but even these generally hesitated to touch the
village, sacred since Goldsmith in spite of Crabbe, sacred since
Washington Irving in spite of E.W. Howe.

The village seemed too cosy a microcosm to be disturbed. There it lay in
the mind's eye, neat, compact, organized, traditional: the white church
with tapering spire, the sober schoolhouse, the smithy of the ringing
anvil, the corner grocery, the cluster of friendly houses; the venerable
parson, the wise physician, the canny squire, the grasping landlord
softened or outwitted in the end; the village belle, gossip, atheist,
idiot; jovial fathers, gentle mothers, merry children; cool parlors,
shining kitchens, spacious barns, lavish gardens, fragrant summer dawns,
and comfortable winter evenings. These were elements not to be discarded
lightly, even by those who perceived that time was discarding many of
them as the industrial revolution went on planting ugly factories
alongside the prettiest brooks, bringing in droves of aliens who used
unfamiliar tongues and customs, and fouling the atmosphere with smoke
and gasoline. Mr. Howe in _The Story of a Country Town_ had long ago
made it cynically clear--to the few who read him--th