FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136  
137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>  
beside the chauffeur as he used to sit behind the horseman, and they know that he has a mortgage in his pocket, and can foreclose it any time on the house they have hypothecated to buy their car. Ah!" The old man started forward with the involuntary impulse of rescue. But it was not one of the people who singly, or in terrorized groups, had been waiting at the roadside to find their way across; it was only a hapless squirrel of those which used to make their way safely among the hoofs and wheels of the kind old cabs and carriages, and it lay instantly crushed under the tire of a motor. "He's done for, poor little wretch! They can't get used to the change. Some day a policeman will pick _me_ up from under a second-hand motor. I wonder what the great Daniel from his pedestal up there would say if he came to judgment." "He wouldn't believe in the change any more than that squirrel. He would decide that he was dreaming, and would sleep on, forgetting and forgotten." "Forgotten," the elder sage assented. "I remember when his fame filled the United States, which was then the whole world to me. And now I don't imagine that our hyphenated citizens have the remotest consciousness of him. If Daniel began delivering one of his liberty-and-union-now-and-forever-one-and-inseparable speeches, they wouldn't know what he was talking about." The sage laughed and champed his toothless jaws together, as old men do in the effort to compose their countenances after an emotional outbreak. "Well, for one thing," the younger observed, "they wouldn't understand what he said. You will notice, if you listen to them going by, that they seldom speak English. That's getting to be a dead language in New York, though it's still used in the newspapers." He thought to hearten the other with his whimsicality, for it seemed to him that the elder sage was getting sensibly older since their last meeting, and that he would be the gayer for such cheer as a man on the hither side of eighty can offer a man on the thither. "Perhaps the Russian Jews would appreciate Daniel if he were put into Yiddish for them. They're the brightest intelligences among our hyphenates. And they have the old-fashioned ideals of liberty and humanity, perhaps because they've known so little of either." His gaiety did not seem to enliven his senior much. "Ah, the old ideals!" he sighed. "The old ideal of an afternoon airing was a gentle course in an open carriage on a soft dri
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136  
137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>  



Top keywords:
Daniel
 

wouldn

 

squirrel

 

ideals

 

change

 
liberty
 
younger
 

language

 
newspapers
 

hearten


laughed

 

champed

 
thought
 

toothless

 
effort
 

listen

 
countenances
 
notice
 

whimsicality

 

compose


emotional

 

observed

 

outbreak

 

English

 

seldom

 

understand

 

gaiety

 

humanity

 

enliven

 

senior


carriage

 
gentle
 

airing

 

sighed

 

afternoon

 
fashioned
 

hyphenates

 
eighty
 

meeting

 
sensibly

thither
 

Yiddish

 
brightest
 
intelligences
 

Perhaps

 

Russian

 
hyphenated
 

wheels

 
carriages
 

safely