ABSTRACT
The impressiveness of the Senator’s Washington voice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mystical undertone,—the chorus in it,—multitudes in smoking cities, men and women, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who are silent when he is silent, in the government of the United States. The modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and in its fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studying what men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what the Greeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first, to be a contemporary of one’s own time; second, to be a contemporary of one’s own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time. The idea of a parlour has been to get out of a multitude.
