place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most convenient,
safest and most economical; but he must not mistake thin air for structural
steel.

Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave with you by the
description of one of our western railroads. Your train sweeps across the
desert like some bold knight in a joust, and when about to drive recklessly
into a sheer cliff it turns a graceful curve and follows up the wild
meanderings of a stream until it reaches a ridge along which it finds its
flinty way for many miles. At length you come face to face with a great
gulf, a canyon--yawning, resounding and purple in its depths. Before you
lies a path, zigzagging down the canyon's side to the very bottom, and away
beyond another slighter trail climbs up upon the opposite side. Which is
our way? Shall we follow the old trail? The answer comes as the train
shoots out across a bridge and into a tunnel on the opposite side, coming
out again upon the highlands and looking into the Valley of Heart's Desire
where the wistful Rasselas might have lived.

When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at the daring of
its builders. Great men they were who boldly built that road--great in
imagination, greater in their deeds--for they were men so great that they
did not build upon a line that was without tradition. The route they
followed was made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The
bear and the deer followed it generation after generation, and after them
came the trapper, and then the pioneer. It was already a trail when the
railroad engineer came with transit and chain seeking a path for the great
black stallion of steel.

Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track was laid. But there was
no thought of following the old trail downward into the canyon. Then the
spirit of the new age broke through tradition, the canyon was leaped and
the mountain's heart pierced, that man might have a swifter and safer way
to the Valley of Heart's Desire.

AMERICA'S HERITAGE[3]

FRANKLIN K. LANE

[Footnote 3: Address at the Americanization Banquet, Washington, D. C., May
14, 1919. Reprinted by permission from _Proceedings of the Americanization
Conference_, Government Printing Office, 1919.]

You have been in conference for the past three days, and I have greatly
regretted that I could not be with you. You have been gathered together as
crusaders in a great cause. You are the missionaries in a new