To Piero Boitani
Day by day America drifts farther & farther away from Europe. The great currents of cosmic life drive us—immense, floating, unattached continent that we are—farther away from all that is rooted in or anchored to the past. It would be a wretched and unworthy patriotism, or mere love of paradox, or an unmanly timidity and self-distrust, that would hinder one, who has known the best, from saying distinctly, “This is not the best & will not in our time be the best.”
—Charles Eliot Norton