Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/259

 the good, though in those days I often wished that the bequest had gone to some other of the heirs. Perhaps in thus speaking of the good we had from them, I am merely yielding to the fear of saying openly what I have often thought, namely, that the good we had from the Puritans has been immensely overestimated and exaggerated, and is not one whit better or greater in quantity or influence than that we had from the Cavaliers, or for that matter from the latest emigrant on Ellis Island. They themselves appreciated their own goodness, and we have always taken their words for granted. I have often thought that some day, when I had the elegant leisure necessary to such a task, I should like to write "A History of Puritanism," or, since I should have to place the beginnings of the monumental work in Rome as far back at least as the reign of the first Emperor, perhaps I should be less ambitious and content myself with writing "A History of Puritanism in the United States of America." I should have to begin the larger work at that interesting period of the history of Rome when the weary Augustus was being elected and reëlected president against his will and trying to gratify the spirit of Puritanism that was even in such people as those Romans, by enacting all sorts of sumptuary laws and foolish prohibitions, and trying out to miserable failures every single one of the proposals that have since that time been made over and over again in the hope of regenerating mankind. The story of how the Emperor's own daughter was almost the first to disobey his regulations is dramatic enough to conclude rather than