of restraint”?  What eastern mountains are meant here?  How did our nation gain new life when the pioneers looked westward from the eastern ridges?  Why are we spoken of as a “great compounded nation”?  What are our “mighty works of peace”?  The author now shows how the Middle Seaboard States were a type of the later form of the nation, because they had a mixed population.  What does he think about the influence of the Puritan and the Southerner?  Note the questions that he asks regarding the course of American history.  See how he answers them in the pages that follow.  Why does he say that the first frontiersmen were “timid”?  When, according to the author, did the “great determining movement” of our history begin?  Why does he call the picture that he draws a “singular” one?  What is meant by “civilization frayed at the edges”?  How do the primitive conditions of our nation differ from the earliest beginnings of the European nations? (See the long passage beginning “How different.”) What is meant by “Europe frontiered”?  Look carefully on page 261, to see what the author says is “the central and determining fact of our national history.”  What is the “great word” of our history?  Has the author answered the questions he set for himself on page 256?  What is happening to us as a nation now that we have lost our frontier?  What is the relation between the East and the West?  Perhaps you will like to go on and read some more of this essay, from which we have here only a selection.  Do you like what the author has said?  What do you think of the way in which he has said it?

THEME SUBJECTS

Life in the Wilderness
The Log Cabin
La Salle
My Friend from the West
My Friend from the East
Crossing the Mountains
Early Days in our State
An Encounter with the Indians
The Coming of the Railroad
Daniel Boone
A Home on the Prairies
Cutting down the Forest
The Homesteader
A Frontier Town
Life on a Western Ranch
The Old Settler
Some Stories of the Early Days
Moving West
Lewis and Clark
The Pioneer
The Old Settlers’ Picnic
“Home-coming Day” in our Town
An Explorer
My Trip through the West (or the East)
The President

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=La Salle=:—­Look up, in Parkman’s La Salle or elsewhere, the facts of La Salle’s life.  Make very brief mention of his life in France.  Contrast it with his experiences in America.  What were his reasons for becoming an explorer?  Give an account of one of his expeditions:  his plans; his preparations; his companions; his hardships; his struggles to establish a fort; his return to Canada for help; his failure or success.  Perhaps you will want to write of his last expedition, and its unfortunate ending.  Speak of his character as a man and an explorer.  Show briefly the results of his endeavors.