ABSTRACT
Leaving the Atlantic seaboard for the moment, the authors find Lafcadio Hearn writing in the New Orleans Times-Democrat about, among other things, the popularity of Russian literature abroad, especially in France. It is impossible to estimate the number of culture-seeking Americans who must have acquired in the first years of the twentieth century at least a few fairly accurate notions of Russian literature under the guidance of Isabel Hapgood. Russia, to Americans, was a country where exciting things happened, more and more exciting as the nineteenth century drew to a close and the twentieth dawned. It is true that the difficulties—economic, social, political—attendant on the rapid industrial expansion of the United States were beginning to bring unrest and questioning. To conclude a survey of American attitudes, fears and generalization, let Thomas Sergeant Perry have the last shot at prophecy.
