em wonderful.

SILAS: Ah, you know it's wonderful--know it so well you don't have to
say it. It's something you've got. But to me it's wonderful the way the
stars are wonderful--this place where all that the world has learned is
to be drawn from me--like a spring.

FELIX: You almost say what Matthew Arnold says--a distinguished new
English writer who speaks of: 'The best that has been thought and said
in the world'.

SILAS: 'The best that has been thought and said in the world!' (_slowly
rising, and as if the dream of years is bringing him to his feet_)
That's what that hill is for! (_pointing_) Don't you see it? End of our
trail, we climb a hill and plant a college. Plant a college, so's after
we are gone that college says for us, says in people learning has made
more: 'That is why we took this land.'

GRANDMOTHER: (_incredulous_) You mean, Silas, you're going to _give the
hill away_?

SILAS: The hill at the end of our trail--how could we keep that?

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I want to know why not! Hill or level--land's land
and not a thing you give away.

SILAS: Well, don't scold _me_. I'm not giving it away. It's giving
itself away, get down to it.

GRANDMOTHER: Don't talk to me as if I was feeble-minded.

SILAS: I'm talking with all the mind I've got. If there's not mind in
what I say, it's because I've got no mind. But I have got a mind, (_to_
FEJEVARY, _humorously_) Haven't I? You ought to know. Seeing as you gave
it to me.

FEJEVARY: Ah, no--I didn't give it to you.

SILAS: Well, you made me know 'twas there. You said things that woke
things in me and I thought about them as I ploughed. And that made me
know there had to be a college there--wake things in minds--so
ploughing's more than ploughing. What do you say, Felix?

FELIX: It--it's a big idea, Uncle Silas. I love the way you put it. It's
only that I'm wondering--

SILAS: Wondering how it can ever be a Harvard College? Well, it can't.
And it needn't be (_stubbornly_) It's a college in the cornfields--where
the Indian maize once grew. And it's for the boys of the cornfields--and
the girls. There's few can go to Harvard College--but more can climb
that hill, (_turn of the head from the hill to_ FELIX) Harvard on a
hill? (_As_ FELIX _smiles no_, SILAS _turns back to the hill_) A college
should be on a hill. They can see it then from far around. See it as
they go out to the barn in the morning; see it when they're shutting up
at night. 'Twill make a d