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Lady Baltimore-Part34_Owen Wister(1860-1938)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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hatch their eggs in a week, and next, a league of earnest women will



advocate a Constitutional amendment that men only shall bring forth

children. Oh, we Americans are very thorough!" And I laughed.



But John's face was not gay. "Well," he mused, "South Carolina took a

short-cut to pure liquor and sober citizens--and reached instead a new



den of thieves. Is the whole country sick?"

"Sick to the marrow, my friend; but young and vigorous still. A nation in



its long life has many illnesses before the one it dies of. But we shall

need some strong medicine if we do not get well soon."



"What kind?"

"Ah, that's beyond any one! And we have several things the matter with



us--as bad a case, for example, of complacency as I've met in history.

Complacency's a very dangerous disease, seldom got rid of without the



purge of a great calamity. And worse, where does our dishonesty begin,

and where end? The boy goes to college, and there in football it awaits



him; he graduates, and in the down-town office it smirks at him; he rises

into the confidence of his superiors, the town's chief citizens, and



finds their gray hairs crowned with it,--the very men he has looked up

to, believed in, his ideals, his examples, the merchant prince, the



railroad magnate, the president of insurance companies--all dirty

rascals! Presently he faces worldly success or failure, and then, in the



new ocean of mind that has swallowed morals up, he sinks with his

isolated honesty, like a fool, or swims to respectability with his



brother knaves. And into this mess the immigrant sewage of Europe is

steadily pouring. Such is our continent to-day, with all its fair winds



and tides and fields favorable to us, and only our shallow, complacent,

dishonest selves against us! But don't let these considerations make you



gloomy; for (I must say it again) nothing is final; and even if we rot

before we ripen--which would be a wholly novel phenomenon--we shall have



made our contribution to mankind in demonstrating by our collapse that

the sow's ear belongs with the rest of the animal, and not in the voting



booth or the legislature, and that the doctrine of universalsuffrage

should have waited until men were born honest and equal. That in itself



would be a memorable service to have rendered."

We had come into the divine, sad stillness of the woods, where the warm



sunlight shone through the gray moss, lighting the curtained solitudes

away and away into the depths of the golden afternoon; and somewhere amid



the miles of sleepingwilderness sounded the hoarse honk of the

automobile. The Replacers were abroad, enjoying what they could in this



country where they did not belong, and which did not as yet belong to

them. Once again we heard their honk off to our left, from a farther



distance, and I am glad to say that we did not see them at all.

"If," said John Mayrant, "what you have said is true, the nation had



better get on its knees and pray God to give it grace."

I looked at the boy and saw that his countenance had grown very fine.



"The act," I said, "would bring grace, wherever it comes from."

"Yes," he assented. "If in the stars and awfulness of space there's



nothing, that does not trouble me; for my greater self is inside me,

safe. And our country has a greater self somewhere. Think!"



"I do not have to think," I replied, "when I know the nobleness we have

risen to at times."



"And I," he pursued, "happen to believe it is not all only stars and

space; and that God, as much as any ship-builder, rejoices to watch every



tiniest boat meet and brave the storm."

Out of his troubles he had brought such mood, sweetness instead of



bitterness; he was saying as plainly as if his actual words said it,

"Misfortune has come to me, and I am going to make the best of it." His



nobleness, his moral elegance, compelled him to this, and I envied him,

not sure if I myself, thus placed, would acquit myself so well. And there



was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me to the

troubled aspects of our national hour. I thought, "Invisible among our



eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in the depths,




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