The Melting Pot

Vera [Agitated, coming nearer]:  

Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.

David:  

The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when I know what a terrible failure I have made!

Vera:  

Failure! Because the critics are all divided? That is the surest proof of success. You have produced something real and new.

David:  

I am not thinking of Pappelmeister’s connoisseurs.—I am the only connoisseur, the only one who knows. And every bar of my music cried “Failure! Failure!” It shrieked from the violins, blared from the trombones, thundered from the drums. It was written on all the faces—

Vera [Vehemently, coming still nearer]:  

Oh, no! no! I watched the faces—those faces of toil and sorrow, those faces from many lands. They were fired by your vision of their coming brotherhood, lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And I could see that you were right in speaking to the people. In some strange, beautiful way the inner meaning of your music stole into all those simple souls—

David [Springing up]:  

And my soul? What of my soul? False to its own music, its own mission, its own dream. That is what I mean by failure, Vera. I preached of God’s Crucible, this great new continent that could melt up all race-differences and vendettas, that could purge and re-create, and God tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, “Cast it all into my Crucible.” And I said, “Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood.” And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over the old blood-stains—I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the God of our children. Oh—how my music mocked me! And you—so fearless, so high above fate—how you must despise me! [ . . . ]

David [Prophetically exalted by the spectacle]:  

It is the fires of God round His Crucible.

[He drops her hand and points downward.]

There she lies, the great Melting-Pot—listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth

[He points east.]

—the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,—black and yellow—

Vera [Softly, nestling to him]:  

Jew and Gentile—

David:  

Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!

[He raises his hands in benediction over the shining city.]

Peace, peace, to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill this giant continent—the God of our children give you Peace.