Two paintings, Record and History, were done by Mackaye. The building is crowned by a dome and in the large spandrels over its four arches are paintings by E. E. Simmons; The American Genius guarded by Wisdom following Hope; Wisdom banishing Savagery; Wisdom breaking the Ground; Wisdom as Minnesota distributing her products. Between the twelve windows of the dome are panels in deep blue, done by Garnsey.

Throughout the decorations are appropriate to Minnesota alone, and more and more is the thesis being accepted that subjects for decorations of public buildings in a great commonwealth should be found in local history and industrial conditions, without having to import to a new continent themes which have been repeatedly and more appropriately illustrated in foreign lands.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

Two GOLDEN DAYS.

THERE are two days of the week upon which and about which I never worry. Two care-free days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is yesterday. Yesterday, with all its cares and frets, with all its pains and aches, all its faults, its mistakes and blunders, has passed forever beyond the reach of my recall. I cannot undo an act that I wrought; I cannot unsay a word that I said on yesterday. All that it holds in my life, of wrongs, regret, and sorrow, is in the hands of the Mighty Love that can bring honey out of the rock, and sweet waters out of the bitterest desert-the love that can make the wrong things right, that can turn weeping into laughter, that can give beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, joy of the morning for woe of the night.

Save for the beautiful memories, sweet and tender, that linger like the perfume of roses in the heart of the day that is gone, I have nothing to do with yesterday. It was mine; it is God's.

And the other day I do not worry about is to-morrow. To-morrow, with all its possible adventures, its burdens, its perils, its large promise and poor performance, its failures and mistakes, is as far beyond the reach of my mastery as its dead sister, yesterday. It is a day of God's. Its sun will rise in roseate splendor, or behind a mask of weeping clouds. But it will rise. Until then-the same love and patience that hold yesterday and hold to-morrow, shining with tender promise into the heart of to-day-I have no possession in that unborn day of grace. All else is in the safe-keeping of the Infinite Love that holds for me the treasure of yesterday. The love that is higher than the stars, wider than the skies, deeper than the seas. To-morrow-it is God's day. It will be mine.

-Burdette.

PREFATORY CHAPTER.

MERICAN literature may be regarded from two quite different points of view, either as a contributory stream to the great river of English literature, or as an independent organism, derived indeed from the old world, but mainly interesting because of its revelation of American life. Our estimate of American literature and the tests by which we arrive at such an estimate necessarily differ according to the point of view which we adopt. If we regard it from the first standpoint, we must apply neither the historical nor the personal test, but must compare American literature, man for man and book for book, with the authors and works of the corresponding period of English literature, Cooper with Scott, Longfellow and Poe with Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne, the Scarlet Letter with Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, and Adam Bede. Such a comparison, we must frankly admit, American literature cannot sustain. Interesting and delightful as have been our contributions to the whole body of English literature, they have been, with a few exceptions, hardly of the first order of merit. A standard collection of the masterpieces of literature produced in English since the beginning of the seventeenth century would include comparatively few American works. We should outrank the other English settlements and conquests, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, but should still fall far behind the mother country. Yet, after all, this is only what is to be expected, and no American except one whose patriotism blinds his judgment would dream of making such a comparison.

There is, however, another test which we may apply to American literature and another reason for our interest and delight in it. American literature springs naturally from that of Great Britain, but almost from the beginning it has sought its themes in American life, and with the development of civilization on this continent our literature has developed in variety,

in originality of subject and form, in ability to represent American life. We have a right, a duty even, to interest ourselves in American literature, simply because it is American-because it reflects for us the varied phases of our national existence.

This is especially true of the first period of our literature, the Colonial. The memoirs, histories, poems, and sermons of this time have for us Americans an interest which they can have for no others. The great revival in recent years of interest in American origins has called the attention of hundreds to these well-nigh forgotten works of our ancestors. Such a book as Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, for example, has for us something of the interest which Bede's Ecclesiastical History has for the student of old English times. "It does," to quote Professor Trent's words, "for the early New England saints what Hakluyt and Purchas did for the Elizabethan seamen," and it has, for the average reader at least, the immense advantage of being written in quaint seventeenth century English, not in medieval Latin. Longfellow's poem, The Phantom Ship, is but one example of the many legends which it has furnished to later writers.

In the writings of Benjamin Franklin, scientist, statesman, philosopher, and man of letters, we find for the first time in American literature work which has an absolute value and makes its appeal to other than American readers. Franklin was the first great representative of the American spirit, industrious, practical, liberty-loving, humanitarian, and humorous. He was also a citizen of the world of the approved eighteenth century type. His works still live because they embody and reveal the man himself and the spirit of his age. His Autobiography is one of the masterpieces of this branch of literature and has been well styled a "cosmopolitan classic."

The stormy days of the Revolution and the hardly less troubled period that followed were not favorable to the production of pure literature. The genius of the new born nation turned toward war, diplomacy, and constitution-making rather than to humane letters. Yet it is precisely in this period that the first gleams of pure literature appear. A handful of lyrics by Freneau, a group of novels by Brockden Brown, give us the first evidence that the genius of literature, imaginative, poetic and creative, had flitted across the Atlantic to find an abiding

place in the New World. There is nothing strikingly original in the work of either of these writers; in sentiment and form Freneau's poetry corresponds closely to the general run of mid-eighteenth century verse in England, and Brown's novels are strongly reminiscent of Mrs. Radcliffe and William Godwin. But the very titles of Freneau's best lyrics, The Wild Honeysuckle, The Indian Burying-Ground, The Elegy on Those Who Fell at Eutaw, show that he did not seek abroad for inspiration, and the most vivid passages in Brown's rather artificial romances are those that depict with startling realism the ravages of yellow fever in his native town and the horrors of an Indian raid along the Pennsylvania borders.

A great development of literary form, a still greater advance in range of action and positive achievement is seen in the work of three writers born toward the close of the eighteenth century. Washington Irving is the first American man of letters who was purely a man of letters, who owed his reputation solely to his writings. And his reputation, even in his own. day, was world-wide, "the first ambassador," Thackeray calls him, "whom the New World of letters sent to the Old." An admirable literary artist, it might be said of him, as of his predecessor and model, Goldsmith, that he touched nothing which he did not adorn. His range, to be sure, was far less wide than Goldsmith's; he was neither a poet nor a dramatist, but he was a delightful essayist, a sunny humorist, and a picturesque historian. His supreme achievement, however, was the discovery, one might almost say the creation, of a new form of literature, the only form, perhaps, in which the work of American authors may fairly challenge comparison with the rest of the world-the short story. And Irving's most famous stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, are genuinely American in subject, atmosphere, and temper.

Cooper presents in many ways a striking contrast to Irving. He lacks Irving's humor, his love of old romance, his charm of style. He was no literary artist, rather a country gentleman who almost by accident stumbled into literature. But he had a rich fund of experiences on sea and shore such as the quiet city-bred Irving quite lacked, and he had a still more important gift, the faculty of creation on a large scale. He was a born story-teller. In spite of his detestable prose style his great