hat?"

"I'm a weak man," said Alston, looking up at him unhappily. "I don't
half care for these things. I like the decent thing done, but, Jeff, I
don't want to pitch into the dirty business and call names and be called
names and uncover smells. I'd rather quit the whole business and go to
Europe."

"And let Addington go to pot? Why, we'd all rather go to Europe, if
Addington could be kept on her pins without us. But she can't. We've got
to see the old girl through."

"She's gone to pot anyway," said Choate. "So's the country. There aren't
any Americans now. They're blasted aliens."

"Ain't you an American?" asked Jeff, forgetting his grammar. "I am. And
I'm going to die in my tracks before I'm downed."

"You will be downed."

"I don't care. I don't care whether in a hundred years' time it's stated
in the history books that there was once a little tribe called New
Englanders and if you want to learn about 'em the philologists send you
to the inscriptions of Mary Wilkins and Robert Frost."

(This was before Robert Frost had come into his fame, but New England
had printed a verse or two and then forgotten them.)

"I didn't know you were such a fellow," said Choate, really interested,
in an impersonal way. "You go to my head."

"Sometimes I think," said Jeff, not half noticing him, "that what really
was doing in me in jail was country--country--patriotism, a kind of
irrational thing--sort of mother love applied to the soil--the thing men
die for. Call it liberty, if you want to, but it's all boiled down now
to Addington. Choate, don't you see Addington took hold on eternal
things? Don't you know how deep her roots go? She was settled by
English. You and I are English. We aren't going to let east of Europe or
south of Europe or middle Europe come over here and turn old Addington
into something that's not Anglo-Saxon. O Choate, wake up. Come alive.
Stop being temperate. Run for mayor and beat Weedie out of his skin."

"Dear fellow," said Choate, looking at him as if for an instant he too
were willing to speak out, "you live in a country where the majority
rules. And the majority has a perfect right to the government it wants.
And you will be voted down by ten aliens this year and a hundred next,
and so on, because the beastly capitalist wants more and more aliens
imported to do his work and the beastly politician wants them all thrown
into citizenship neck and heels, so he can have more votes. You're
defeated, Je