Page:The Modern Writer.pdf/15

 only snatch at fragments. California is not Maine. North Dakota is not Louisiana. Ohio is not North Carolina. We are as yet strangers to each other. We are all of us just a little afraid of each other. Time only can weld us together, make us one people, make us understand each other. And in understanding alone is the real love of comrades, that is the beginning of a real love of our country.

Now I am an American writer and I have been by critics in general classed among that rather vague group known as the Moderns. I have set myself here to speak to you on the subject of modern American writing. The whole business of expressing definite opinions is new to me. I am in my nature a teller of tales, not a preacher, and I have been told that in trying to address any considerable number of people on a large subject it is a mistake to try to cover too much ground, that the writer should