Page:The Modern Writer.pdf/23

 hunting new gods. Men and women are seeking expression for their lives in new and bolder ways and everywhere among writers the Modern is but the man who is trying to give expression to the newer impulses of our lives in books, in song, in painting and in all the others of the seven arts.

You must understand of course that as a nation we have put something across. Coming to America as we did, in reality scattered herds of peoples from dozens of European countries, often not speaking the same language, not having back of us the same traditions, spreading ourselves out rapidly over a vast country, cutting down forests, building railroads and bridges over rivers, mountains and deserts, learning to know each other a little in the process, building cities and towns, making the mines produce, making the land produce, we had for a long time need of all our energies for purely