Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/234

 just now—at least, from the point of view of a satirical intellectual; and Mr. Lewis himself, leaving the mowing machine to rust in Gopher Prairie, had promptly "twitched his mantle blue," and moved upon Zenith, the booming stronghold of the Rotarians.

Then came Edith Summers KellyKelley [sic] with Weeds, and I discovered under the midnight lamp that we hadn't done with the provinces yet, and that the satirical Intellectuals were attempting to dispose of our yokelry and our Rotarians in altogether too summary a fashion. This is another "social study," that is, a picture of an American community from a critical point of view, somewhere outside it. But it is no mere aftermath of Main Street. It is a fresh harvest in a new field. The scene is rural Kentucky. The characters are small tobacco growers. The manners are not those of materialized "puritans"—New Englanders pushing grimly westward. No; from the first page you feel yourself in the presence of another spirit. A softer and warmer air caresses the cheek. You are touched by a breath of the South. You find yourself in a community of a slower tempo. You are subtly invaded and surrounded by impressions of a certain lovable slackness and leisure and lazy kindliness and hospitality and easygoing humor. Of modern literature, romantic hungers, and scientific curiosity these good people are as innocent as our first parents in Eden. They are not within hailing distance of the rural civilization denoted by the possession of Ford cars