ATHEIST: Any man who does not believe in himself
ELBERT HUBBARD is an American Columbus who is discovering America. He is a greater influence than Emerson, Thoreau or Whitman. I can think of no man now living who will have a greater influence on American literature than the brilliant, sane and many-sided author of Little Journeys. He writes English fluently, but Americanese brilliantly.
In social criticism he began an era in America. The academic, the pedantic, the dryasdust—pouf! A Brain had arrived. General principles are one thing; a Man is another. Elbert Hubbard came with the unmuzzled, repercussive style, the incandescent temperament, the electric line. He combed his thoughts pompadour. Through his influence [74] many of the younger generation of writers no longer write their stories on ruled paper.
In the “garden” of American literature we find little else but paper roses steeped in eau de Cologne. In our Pantheon of living scribblers the gods have no stamens. Look at them, with their little blonde ringlets, their plaster-of-Paris brains, puddling in the stews of purulent, sentimental sweat!
Truly, a sweet and godly and “wholesome” thing is this our Pantheon of mollycoddles!
Source: The Feather Duster: or, Is He Sincere? 1912, pp. 73-74