South he is somewhat despondent; but in New York City he sees cheering indications that multitudes have quite divested themselves of the fear of hell fire. "Compared to the revels that go on in New York every night," he declares, "the carnalities of the West End of Berlin are trivial and childish, and those of Paris and the Côte d'Azur take on the harmless aspect of a Sunday school picnic." New York contains the hope of a higher culture; it is now an "auction room and a bawdy house." We have now got all the freedom we need. There is no longer any earthly reason why American writers, at last relieved of the moralistic incubus, shouldn't settle down and produce a great literature!
Whether Mr. Mencken takes credit for having produced all these improvements—all this ripened spirit of contumacy and corruption—single-handed, I don't quite make out. It is clear, however, that he reviews with satisfaction his performance in a series of leading reles; some of which he has quite recently assumed. He sees himself, of course, as the principal "truth-seeker" of this generation. He now offers himself as the defender of the American tradition in letters, the tradition which includes Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman and Mark Twain—the defender of this tradition as against Mr. Matthews, Mr. Brownell and others of us who wish "to pass over all these men to embrace . . . N. P. Willis, J. G. Holland, Charles Dudley Warner, Mrs. Sigourney and the Sweet Singer of Michigan." He sees himself as the blond Nordic assailant of the blond Nordics. He views himself as the one undaunted voice of the civilized minority. He is the emancipator of the young from Mr. Comstock. He is the knight in shining armor going out against
