Obviously, we in America have not finished welding our mode. The pioneer spirit has dissipated; Whitman's inclusiveness has become too easy, and his intoning of liberty clangs with rhetoric. We have moved from boyhood into adolescence; we are frightened. Ours is anything but a "gesture of strength." Except in using the inorganic world, we are conspicuous for timidity.

There is a myth that we have suddenly become unafraid. We are supposed to be fearlessly creating. It is true we are incredibly aware of life. We are writing books that quiver with the pain of this awareness. But the essence of these books is still negative: our sensitiveness shrinks, we are too vulnerable. And we remain a gesture of helpless pain, or we protect ourselves in intellectualism.

Particularly in poetry, where creation is forced to be most intense, the wrecks of our vulnerability are conspicuous. T. S. Eliot, with keenest sensibilities and subtle mind, achingly sterile; E. A. Robinson, speculative, ir

America has tried to swallow all cultures, as millionaires buy old Masters. Suppose we find out what we can digest. The way to our own life lies undoubtedly through this pain of awareness, which at present is all we have. And even this is as yet possessed only by a conscious minority. Beneath lie solid layers of a population which is unaware: still absorbed in the comfort of its body or the excitement of social competition. We are sounding this awareness, rejecting, affirming, kneading it. The process is taking place within us and will be geographically local to us. Now that the pioneer spirit is gone, America has only itself.

Critics and poets and novelists cannot, of course, create the specialized mode of feeling for a people. It germinates slowly in the race, through the intershock of temperaments and ideas. But the conscious minority of artists and critics can quicken it and release its forces, by helping disengage it from confusion. It is important for them to sense it; and it is probably also important for them to blunder and make silly remarks about it, rather than believe they can cable to London or Paris or Vienna for it ready-made.

NE fine evening, a certain govern

ONE

ment clerk by the name of Ivan Dmitrich Wormling was sitting in the second row orchestra of a popular musical comedy. At the height of bliss, through opera glasses he gazed at the stage, smacking his lips-when suddenly....Suddenly his face puckered, his eyes rolled, his breath stopped.... spasmodically he lowered the opera glasses, bent over, and-Pchoo!....

Now, sneezing hardly belongs in the category of the seven deadly sins. Peasants sneeze....so do chiefs of police....and even privy councillors ....Wormling, not at all put out personally, used his handkerchief; then, like the well-mannered person he was, he looked about him to see: perhaps his sneezing had annoyed someone....And he found cause for embarassment. For an old fellow in front of him was carefully wiping his baldspot and neck with his glove, the while he muttered to himself. And in this person Wormling recognized General Brizchalov, the head of the joint railway systems.

"That's my fault," thought Wormling, watching the moving hand of the General. "Of course, he's not my boss ....But I ought to apologize."

Wormling them coughed, bent forward toward the General's ear and whispered:

"Oh, forget it!" said the General. "I've overlooked it long since." His lower lip moved impatiently.

"Yes, he says he forgot it, but his eyes are damned malicious," thought Wormling, darting suspicious glances at the General. "Doesn't even want to talk about it, eh!....Someone ought to explain to him that sneezing is a most natural process. He might think I meant to spit at him.... He doesn't think of it now-but later it will occur to him!"

On coming home, Wormling told his wife of the incident. She took it, it seemed to him, too lightly. At first slightly alarmed, she subsided on learning that the General was not her husband's boss.

"However," she added thoughtfully, “It would do no harm to go and apologize.... Or he might think you have no manners....”

"That's just it! I did apologize— but he took it sort of funny....Didn't say a single reproving word....Well: after all there had been no time to do the thing right," he murmured to himself consolingly. In order to do this, he decided to stay away from his work the next day.

The following day Wormling put on his best suit, took a shave and haircut, and went to the office of Brizchalov. In the General's reception room he saw many people awaiting an audience. Presently the door of the General's office opened and that dignitary appeared on the threshold. While he surveyed the waiting room, Wormling quickly stepped up to him.

"Last night, in the Arcadia Theatre, if your Highness deigns to remember," he began, "Unwittingly I sneezed onto Your Majesty's head.... Forgive me, your High-"

"What the devil," the General began; then, recalling the incident, "For God's sake, what nonsense is this!" Turning away from Wormling he addressed himself to another caller: "What can I do for you?"

Wormling paled. "He doesn't want to discuss it," he thought, with sinking heart. "He must hold it against me....

But no! It can't be left this way-I must make it clear to him-"

Therefore, when the General turned again toward his office, Wormling took a step after him and rapidly mumbled:

"Your Highness! If I make so bold as to intrude on Your Highness, it is

only out of a feeling of regret—even, I might say, of profound regret....It was wholly unpremeditated on my part, I assure you—”

The General, with extreme ennui, waved him away.

"You are pleased to make a joke of the incident, my dear sir," he said, disappearing into his office. The door shut solidly behind him.

"A joke indeed!" thought Wormling, with rising indignation. "Is that his idea of a joke. To think that a man of that rank shouldn't be able to understand.... To the devil with him, then! What a specimen! I'll write to him about it, but I shall not again bother to speak to him, by God!”

This was what Wormling told himself on the way home from the General's office.

But, much as he tried, he seemed unable to compose a satisfactory letter. He was thus obliged once more to take his way to the General's office.

Then, when the General glanced at him questioningly, without recognition, he said in a pleading voice:

"I was here yesterday, Your Highness-to apologize for wetting the back of your head by sneezing-and not to make a joke of it as it was your pleasure to interpret it...."

"To joke about such a thing!" he pur