merely sells more goods—though it certainly does that, too. But over and above that, it promotes friendliness, good fellowship, brotherhood, and thus makes for the millennial day when all the world shall be one happy Christian fellowship.
★
And now the second peculiarly modern and American ideal—practicalness.
Europe has always had its art, its beauty, but where we have gone beyond the Old Country is that while we want things beautiful—take like an elegant new gas stove—they must primarily be of use. Let me prove my point by going right into the world of professional art and sculpture.
When a European city wants to adorn itself, it puts up, if I may judge from a rather wide reading, and a study of the pictures in the National Geographic Magazine—it puts up in its parks a lot of heathen goddesses—which are rather suggestive, to say the least—along with fountains and such things. But we— Well, we want to decorate
