In the course of twelve years the Shuttle had woven steadily¹ and—its movements lubricated by time and custom—with increasing rapidity. Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro, with threads of literature and art, threads of life drawn² from one shore to the other and back again, until they were bound in the fabric³ of its weaving. Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence⁴ of taste and thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment⁵, but the web in Fate's hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintly warmed despite itself, taste and thought drawn into nearer contact, reflecting upon their divergences⁶, grew into tolerance⁷ and the knowledge that the diverging⁸, seen more clearly, was not so broad; argument coming within speaking distance reasoned itself to logical and practical conclusions. Problems which had stirred anger began to find solutions. Books, in the first place, did perhaps more than all else. Cheap, pirated editions of English works, much quarrelled over by authors and publishers, being scattered¹⁰ over the land, brought before American eyes soft, home-like pictures of places which were, after all was said and done, the homes of those who read of them, at least in the sense of having been the birthplaces of fathers or grandfathers. Some subtle, far-reaching power of nature caused a stirring of the blood, a vague, unexpressed yearning¹¹ and lingering over pages which depicted

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