Laudator Temporis Acti

Arthur Stanley Pease (1881-1964), "The Aims of a Liberal College," Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 14.2 (February, 1928) 135-141 (at 141):

We have tolerated too long from some recently imported elements in our country an easy and ignorant abuse of our ancestors, and the word "Puritan," in particular, has become a popular term of reproach among those inclined to think little and write much. The Puritans and their New England descendants had their faults, like the rest of us, yet if one examines their simple but beautifully proportioned architecture, their honestly built furniture, and the other surviving works of their hands, and then if he recalls their reverence for superiority (if not always for authority), their adventurous and pioneering spirit, their disregard of the easy, the shallow, and the dishonest, he may come to feel that they possessed qualities in need of revival in this age of the mechanical, the overgrown, the quick, the cheap, and the mediocre.