West Shore to 1153 feet, the East Shore shaft to 1185 feet, and the boring of the tunnel toward the center of the river has made good progress, the easterly section having advanced at the present writing about 260 feet, and the westerly section 170 feet from their respective shafts. Both the shafts and the tunnel will be lined with a high grade of Portland cement concrete which will give them a finished internal diameter of 14 feet. The aqueduct reaches the Hudson River at an elevation of 400 feet above mean water level. Hence the total head of water is about 1500 feet, and the total pressure on each square foot of the tunnel is 46 tons, which is balanced with a wide margin of safety by the weight of the superincumbent mass of rock, silt, and water.1 X. In the following account of an emotional and mental process what root principle do you find? Does the author show traces of influence from the intended readers, the American public? Does the author take too much for granted in the reader, or not enough? Does she show tact in approaching the reader? Write the account in an impersonal, abstract way, as if you were reporting “a case” for a statistician, and then give your estimate of the two. What light does your estimate throw upon the advice to make the actors in a process specific? How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child's story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George and Martha Washington, till I could see them with my eyes shut. 1 "The Catskill Water Supply Tunnel," in the Scientific American, vol. 104. By courtesy of The Scientific American Publishing Company. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the Great. As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk—all my world, in fact strove together, by example and precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my Uncle Solomon, and Cousin Rachel, were those who preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright good if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled about and picked up such things, like one's uncles and cousins. But a human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant, all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George Washington; for I was not brave-I was afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed and I could never be the First President of the United States. So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as it may seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable people by the old standards, -I had never been ashamed of my family, but this George Washington, who died long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were Fellow Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow Citizens in the patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew from my father how he was a Citizen, through the process of naturalization, and how I also was a citizen, by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow Citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me; and at the same time it sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as befitted a Fellow Citizen. Before books came into my life, I was given to star-gazing and day-dreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the common after school instead of hurrying 'home to read. I hung on fence rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes. What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by my country. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other all this it was that made my country. It was not a thing that I understood; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say "my country" and feel it, as one felt "God" or "myself." My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself could not mean more than I when they said "my country," after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and I was a Citizen. And when we stood up to sing "America," I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my newfound country. "I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills." Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square-all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington's Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing "The Star-Spangled Banner.” If the doors happened to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled "O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with Write an account of any of the following processes as processes. 2. The first realization of death. 3. Becoming loyal to a school. 4. Discovering pride of ancestry. 5. Finding that classical music is interesting. 6. A despised person becomes, on acquaintance, delightful. 8. Learning that not everything was discovered by an American. 10. Becoming reconciled to a great loss of money or friends. 11. Deciding upon a new wall-paper. 12. Fitting into the town circles after a year away at college. 13. Discovering that some beliefs of childhood must be abandoned. 14. Perceiving that you really agree with some one with whom you have been violently squabbling. 15. The literary person finds attractiveness in engineering and agriculture and vice versa. 16. Working out a practical personal philosophy of life. 17. Finding a serious motive in life. 18. Determining upon a tactful approach to a "touchy" person. 19. Acquiring the college point of view in place of the high-school attitude. 20. Discovering one's provincialism. 21. Discovering one's racial or national loyalty. 22. Finding out that the world does not depend on any individual, but goes ahead, whether he lives or dies. 1 Mary Antin: The Promised Land. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. CHAPTER VI CRITICISM Few of us pass a day without answering such questions as, "What do you think of the Hudson car?" or, "How did Kreisler's playing strike you?" or, "What is your opinion of the work of Thackeray or Alice Brown or Booth Tarkington?" or, "Do you like the X disc harrow?" When we are among intimate friends we give our opinions, based on our personal reaction to the subject of inquiry or on our impartial estimate of it as an automobile, a musical performance, a collection of books, or an agricultural machine. Many of us give a large space in our conversation to such estimates on all conceivable subjects. And, for purposes of insignificant conversation, there is no reason why we should not. Accused of making "Criticism" in the formal sense, however, many of us should recoil with terrified denial. But that is exactly what we are doing, whether we praise or blame, accept or reject, so long as we base our opinion on sincere personal or sound principles, we criticize. For criticism is the attempt to estimate the worth of something-object or ideaeither abstractly on a basis of principles and relations, or personally on the basis of our reactions to the subject of criticism. That is, we may, for example, criticize the roads of New York State on the basis of what a road is for and how well these roads serve their purpose, or we may take as basis the inspiration, the keen ecstasy that we feel as we skim over the smooth boulevard. So long as our notions of good roads are sound, so long as we react sensibly, with balance, to the smooth rounding way, we make good criticism, we judge the worth of the subject of criticism and find it either good or bad. It is to be noted that this criticism is something more than |