So it's my job, my
consecrated job in this earth--to water the geranium, to prune the rose,
to mulch the roots of self-respect among these people, and I am happy,
father, happier every day that I walk that way."

She looks wistfully into her father's face. "Father, you won't quite
understand me when I tell you that the tomato cans with their geraniums
behind those gray lace curtains, that make Harvey people smile, are
really not tomato cans at all. They are social dynamite bombs that one
day will blow into splinters and rubbish the injustices, the cruel
injustices of life that the poor suffer at the hands of their
exploiters. The geranium is the flower, the spring flower of the divine
discontent, which some day shall bear great and wonderful fruit."

"Rather a swift pace you're setting for a fat man, Laura," pipes the
Doctor, adding earnestly: "There you go talking like Grant Adams! Don't
let Grant Adams fool you, child: the end of the world isn't here.
Grant's a good boy, Laura, and I like him; but he's getting a kind of
Millerite notion that we're about to put on white robes and go straight
up to glory, politically and socially and every which way, in a few
years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good
brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"--the Doctor pounds his
chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just
the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to
jump into the crack o' doom for the established order!"

The daughter smiles at him, but she answers:

"Perhaps Grant is touched--touched with the mad impatience of God's
fools, father. I don't always follow Grant. He goes his way and I go
mine. But I am sure of this, that the thing which will really start
South Harvey, and all the South Harveys in the world out of their dirt
and misery, and vice, is not our dreams for them, but their dreams for
themselves. They must see the vision. They must aspire. They must feel
the impulse to sacrifice greatly, to consecrate themselves deeply, to
give and give and give of themselves that their children may know better
things. And it is my work to arouse their dreams, to inspire their
visions, to make them yearn for better living. I am trying to teach them
to use and to love beautiful things, that they may be restless among
ugly things. I think beauty only serves God as the handmaiden of
discontent! And, father, way down deep in my heart--I know--I know
s