scantiness of her vocabulary, but through her
mind still whirled wordless outcries of rebellion. Her one brief visit to
the city rose before her with all the horror of the inexplicable, strange,
and repellent life which it had revealed to her. The very conveniences of
the compact city apartment were included in her revulsion from all that it
meant. The very kindnesses of the pretty, plump German woman who was her
daughter-in-law startled and repelled her, as did the familiar, easy,
loud-voiced affection of the blond young German-Americans who were her
grandchildren. Even her own son, Hiram, become half Teutonic through the
influence of his business and social relations among the Germans, seemed
alien and remote to her. The stout, beer-drinking, good-natured and
easygoing man seemed another person from the shy, stiff lad who had gone
away from them many years ago, looking so like his father at nineteen that
his mother choked to see him.

She passed in review all the small rooms of her son's home, "strung along
the hall like buttons on a string," and thought of the three flights of
stairs which were the only escape from them--three long, steep flights,
which left her breathless, her knees trembling under her great weight, and
which led out on the narrow side street, full of noisy, impertinent
children and clattering traffic. Beyond that, nothing--a city full of
strangers whose every thought and way of life were foreign to her, whose
very breath came in hurried, feverish gasps, who exhaled, as they passed
her, an almost palpable emanation of hostile indifference to her and her
existence. It was no new vision to her. Ever since the doctor's verdict
had made it impossible longer to resist her son's dutiful urging of his
parents to make his home theirs she had spent scarcely an hour without a
sudden sick wave of dread of what lay before her; but the picture was the
none the less horrifying because of familiarity, and she struck her hands
together with a sharp indrawn breath.

The gaunt old man turned toward her, a helpless sympathy twisting his
seamed and weather-marked face. "It's too _bad_, mother," he said. "I know
just how you feel about it. But Hiram's a good son, and"--he hesitated,
casting about for a redeeming feature--"there's always the Natural
History Museum and the birds."

"That's just it, Nathaniel," returned the old rebel against fate. "You
have something there that's going on with _one_ thing you've done here