““This is the lone-American type I admire, the kind I believe in, can get along with, and whom I vote for even though he’s never nominated for office. The democratic man our poets sang of but who, alas, is being rapidly exterminated, along with the buffalo, the moose and the elk, the great bear, the eagle, the condor, the mountain lion. The sort of American that never starts a war, never raises a feud, never draws the color line, never tries to lord it over his fellow-man, never yearns for higher education, never holds a grudge against his neighbor, never treats an artist shabbily and never turns a beggar away. Often untutored and unlettered, he sometimes has more of the poet and the musician in him, philosopher too, than those who are acclaimed as such. His whole way of life is aesthetic. What marks him as different, sometimes ridiculous, is his serenity and originality. That he aspires to be none other than himself, is this not the essence of wisdom?””
