Louis welcomed new problems as challenges and tests. He had worked out a theory that every problem contains and suggests its own solution. That a postulate which does not contain and suggest its solution is not in any sense a problem, but a misstatement of fact or an incomplete one. He had reached a conviction that this formula is universal in its nature and in application. In this spirit he continued his aggressive research in creative architecture, and, simultaneously—it may seem a far cry—his studies in the reality of man. For he had reached the advanced position that if one wished to solve the problem of man’s nature, he must seek the solution within man himself, that he would surely find the suggestion within man’s powers; but, that to arrive at a clear perception of the problem, he must first remove the accumulated mythical, legendary overlay, and then dissolve the cocoon which man had spun about himself with the thread of his imaginings. This, in considerable measure, he had succeeded in doing.
The work of the firm had taken Louis over a large part of the country, as Adler did not care much for travel. Louis, on the contrary, retained his boyhood delight in it, and took pains to do as much of it as possible by daylight. For there was fascination in the changing scene, in the novel aspects of locality. Thus in time, and on his own account, he had acquired a bird’s-eye view of the broad aspects of his native land, having been in all the States except Delaware, Oklahoma, and the northern parts of New England. And he came to wonder how many people could visualize their country as a whole, in all its superb length and breadth, in its varied topography, its changing flora, its mountain ranges, its hilly sections, its immense prairies and plains, vast rivers and lakes, deserts and rich soils, immense wealth within the soil and above and below it. He visualized its main rhythms as south to north, and north to south; that in crossing the continent at various parallels from east to west, or west to east, one obtained superb cross-sections.
And he dramatized the land and the seasons.
He saw, as a vast moving picture, Spring, coming from the Gulf, moving gently northward, its Vanguard awakening that which sleeps; with its joyous trumpets sounding the call of rejuvenescence, luring forth the multicolored blossoming of tree and shrub, and herb, the filigree of verdure growing into opulence; setting the plow in motion, and the sowing of crops; its vast frontage, sweeping northward, ever northward toward the arctic.
In its wake follows sober Summer, ripening the procreative ecstasy of Spring—soon the waving grain, the laden bough, the hour of maturity of Nature’s lavish gifts to Man.
Then the menopause.
Then the reversal, as Winter begins its vast migration from the polar spaces. It, too, heralds its coming with trumpets, sonorous in major chords, as the woods burst into painted flames as the Vanguard moves on, creeping toward the south with its fires.
And then the modulation into melancholy; grey skies, leafless trees, brown faded stubble; a modulation into the minor mode, as winter trombones and violins sigh and moan with the winds over hill and dale, mountain and plain, and the frost glimmers in the moonlight, all sap sinks into the ground, miserere chants, shrill fifes announce sharp winds, snow flurries, as nature passes into somber resignation. Winter, in mass, moving south, ever southward, its Vanguard now lost in the blue waters; its serried ranks sifting snow flakes in the air till the sleeping earth lies still under beauteous coverlet of white within the vast brooding power that came from the north.
Again the menopause.
Again the call of Spring.
Again a menopause.
Again the flaming banners and the field of white. Northward and southward, southward and northward, moving in superb rhythms of alternate urging, o’er the expanse of what was once a virgin sleeping continent, now peopled by millions with one language in common, but no soul, a people unaware, their shadows rummaging like swine in the muck of cupidity. A people of enormous power—and devil take the hindmost. A time of laissez faire and unto him that hath, if he can grab it, shall be given; with here and there a soul pleading for kindness, and peace, and sanity.
Louis, through the years, had become powerfully impressed by two great rhythms discernible alike in nature and in human affairs, as of the same essence. These two rhythms he called Growth and Decadence; and in 1886 he wished to say something about them. He wished, for the first time, to put his thoughts in writing; and a convention of The Western Association of Architects furnished the pretext and occasion. He called his essay “Inspiration.” The thesis fell into three parts: “Growths: A Spring Song”; “Decadence: An Autumn Reverie”; “The Infinite: A Song of the Sea”; the transition from part to part effected by two interludes; the thought sustained to the point of rhapsody, in utterance, lyric and dramatic, of flowing prose: The poet in solitude, alone with nature’s moods; first ecstasy, then sorrow and bewilderment, then tragic appeal that the sea might give answer:
Deny me not, Oh sea! for indeed I am come to thee as one aweary with long journeying returns expectant to his native land.
Deny me not that I should garner now
