Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/277

 He is a young man—it is all the same if he is old—who makes his own way in the world in full reliance on his own power, stops at nothing, turns his back on nothing, finds nothing impossible, goes through everything, and comes out of everything—always the same. If he falls, he immediately gets up again, and says “no matter!” If he is unsuccessful, he says “try again!” “go a-head;”—and he begins again, or undertakes something else, and never stops till it succeeds. Nay he does not stop then. His work and will is to be always working, building, beginning afresh, or beginning something new; always developing, extending himself or his country; and some body has said, with truth, that all the enjoyments of heaven would not be able to keep an American in one place, if he was sure of finding another still further west, for then he must be off there to cultivate and to build. It is the Viking spirit again; not the old Pagan, however, but the Christian, which does not conquer to destroy, but to ennoble. And he does not do it with difficulty and with sighs, but cheerfully and with good courage. He can sing “Yankee Doodle” even in his mishaps; for if a thing will not go this way, then it will go that. He is at home on the earth, and he can turn everything to his own account. He has, before he reaches middle life, been a schoolmaster, farmer, lawyer, soldier, author, states man; has tried every kind of profession, and been at home in them all; and besides all this, he has travelled over half, or over the whole of the world. Wherever he comes on the face of the earth, or in whatever circumstances, he is sustained by a two-fold consciousness which makes him strong and tranquil; that is to say, that he is a man who can rely upon himself; and that he is the citizen of a great nation designed to be the greatest on the face of the earth. He thus feels himself to be the lord of the earth, and bows himself before none save to the Lord of lords. To Him however he looks upward,