It had been cold in Vermont, with early snow, but the white drifts lay to the earth so quietly, in unstained air, that the world seemed a silver-painted carnival, left to silence. Even on a moonless night, a pale radiance came from the snow, from the earth itself, and the stars were drops of quicksilver.
American whose fathers have lived in the country for over two generations is so utterly different from any other American.
Is it just possible,′ he sighed, ’that the most vigorous and obldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators?
Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word – just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours – not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini – like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days – and have ’em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again.
We ought to keep all these foreigners out of the country, and what I mean, the Kikes just as much as the Wops and Hunkies and Chinks.
West of Chicago, “You bet” means “Rather,” and “Yes indeed,” and “On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion,” and “You’re a liar but I can’t afford to say so.
Humor is next to Godliness.
As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests-he has a jest.
He had never found that more than five whiskeys and soda were beneficial to law-practice.
Yet all this while the power of thought, the pull of conscience, were feeble beside Alverna’s youth. It was his first love; the first time in his life that he had been roused to through away caution and dignity.
You poor kids! You talking children, that don’t know anything about anything that matters! Don’t you see? I can’t play either of your games. I’m ME! I’m going to be me! Oh, if you do love me a little, let me be me! Good-by.
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it’s less vigorous, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter.
He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.
He even got used to living in a lack of privacy like that of a monkey in a Zoo. After a time he could without self-consciousness sit and read the Paris editions.
Once upon a time in America there was a scholar who conducted a one-man revolution and won it. There.
America, like England and Scotland, had never really been a gay nation. Rather it had been heavily and noisily jocular, with a substratum of worry and insecurity, in the image of its patron saint, Lincoln of the rollicking stories and the tragic heart. But at least there had been hearty greetings, man to man; there had been clamorous jazz for dancing, and the lively, slangy catcalls of young people, and the nervous blatting of tremendous traffic.
I pledge myself to serve the Corporate State, the Chief, all Commissioners, the Mystic Wheel, and the troops of the Republic in every thought and deed.
All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.
Not answering him at all, Sarason demanded that, in order to bring and hold all elements in the country together by that useful Patriotism which always appears upon threat of an outside attack, the government immediately arrange to be insulted and menaced in a well-planned series of deplorable “incidents” on the Mexican border, and declare war on Mexico as soon as America showed that it was getting hot and patriotic enough.