Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/112

 in the irony of a single phrase he expressed the whole drama as he said:

"The land of the free and the home of the brave!"

That was fundamental, anyhow, and politics were not going deeply into the question, except as such men as Altgeld did so, and even they were criticized sharply for attempting it. And one might well be disgusted with politics, then and always, and think of something that has the consolation of literature. The traffic of politicians, as Mr. George Moore somewhere says, is with the things of this world, while art is concerned with the dreams, the visions and the aspirations of a world beyond this. Though literature must some day in this land concern itself with that very question of labor, since it is with fundamental life that art must deal, and be true in its dealing.

XVII

Politics in those days—and not alone in those days either—were mean, and while I do not intend to say that this meanness bowed me with despair, it did fill me with disgust, and made the whole business utterly distasteful. Politics were almost wholly personal, there was then no conception of them as related to social life. An awakening was coming, to be sure, and the signs were then apparent, even if but few saw them. They were to most quite dim; but there were here and there in the land dreamers of a sort, who had caught a new vision. The feeling of it, the emotion, was to find expression in Mr. Bryan's great