ANNA MORRISON REED.



JANUARY 26.


Here was our first (and still largest) national romance, the first
wild-flower of mystery, the first fierce passion of an uncommonly
hard-fisted youth. To this day it persists the only glamour between
the covers of our geography. For more than fifty years its only name
has been a witchcraft, and its spell is stronger now than ever, as
shall be coolly demonstrated. This has meant something in the
psychology of so unfanciful a race. The flowering of imagination is no
trivial incident, whether in one farm boy's life or in a people's. It
may be outgrown, and so much as forgotten; but it shall never again be
as if it had never been. Without just that flower we should not have
just this fruit.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS,
in _Out West, June_, 1892.



JANUARY 27.


As time goes on its endless course, environment is sure to crystallize
the American nation. Its varying elements will become unified and the