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Show The Magic of a Vision Born of ah Age-Ola; Desire To Have and to Hold y By VICTOR MURDOCK, Letter In Harper's Magazine. What is land hunger? Pecuniary interest? Oh,! no, A struggle for existence? The cities seemed to' offer the popular specific for that, not the frontier.! No. Land hunger is compounded of the hopes! of the centuries, of villein and crofter clinging to' the manorial landshare of Sir Edwin Sandys with th brain, of the trudging, tree-blazing George Washing- , brain, of the trudging-tree-blazing George Washington, Washing-ton, of veterans of 1776 with warrants, of Mexican survivors with scrip, of Yazoo opportunities, Connecticut Con-necticut reserve offerings, of pre-emption, squatter sovereignty, homesteadinsr, of a vast arm? of the' vigorous vanguard of the race, moved mightily forward not by necessity or by hope of wealth, but by the vision that is born of traditional desire1 and commands men not to the measure of dollars and cents, but to the throbbing drumbeat of a mighty instinct of dominion. It will not respond to the direction of sentiment, nor can adventure! lure or necessity drive it. . , I know the poets paint for the pioneer a picture with warmth of ran, the scent of flowers, the caress of gentle winds, the fragrance of new-j mown hay, the stimulation of rain upon a dusty field, the song of birdsJ the satisfaction of achievement, the comforts of earned repose, but i) doubt the efficacy of the advertisement. j I know that the economists balance birth rate against available land! areas and graph population pressures to prove that necessity is ixti command. ' j . But it is not so. The pioneer is moved by something more than: economic necessity, greater than adventure, deeper than poetry, that ia to say, be is possessed by the magic of a vision born of an age-old1 desire to have and to hold. The echo of it trembled in Touchstone's nimble brain,, as he surveyed sur-veyed and presented Audrey: "An ill-favored thing, sir. But mine own 1" ! |