Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, the great author of America.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.

Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas.

Where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls.

From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the

stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will.

And they come all graciously with no scorn or condescension.

So wed with truth, I dwell above the veil

W E.B Du Bois, the souls of black folk.

In March 1879, an Amherst College senior attended a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson in College Hall at Amers College. The senior, Henry Clay Folger, was

inspired by the lecture to read more Emerson, including a short speech Emerson

had delivered in 1864 on the Tersentenary of Shakespeare's birth.

This reading inspired Folger with a lifelong interest in Shakespeare.

Folder went on to become president and chairman of the board of the

Standard Oil Company of New York, and to marry Emily Clara Jordan. Together they studied and collected Shakespeare for the rest of their lives and conceived and provided for the creation of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

regarded by informed Shakespeareans as the finest Shakespeare

collection in the world.

Some lecture.

...