surance 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 universal suffrage
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 sleeping wilderness 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,