man institutions in this daily altering world.
"We are but strangers in an inn, but passengers in a ship," said
Roger Williams. This sense of the transiency of human effort, the perishable
nature of human institutions, was quick in the consciousness of the gentleman
adventurers and sober Puritan citizens who emigrated from England to the New
World. It had been a familiar note in the poetry of that Elizabethan period
which had followed with such breathless interest the exploration of America.
It was a conception which could be shared alike by a saint like John Cotton
or a soldier of fortune like John Smith. Men are tent-dwellers. Today they settle
here, and tomorrow they have struck camp and are gone. We are strangers and
sojourners, as all our fathers were.
This instinct of the camper has stamped itself upon American life and thought.
Venturesomeness, physical and moral daring, resourcefulness in emergencies,
indifference to negligible details, wastefulness of materials, boundless hope
and confidence in
