The broad, rich land
demanded gigantic figures, and the minds of men had created the figures.
Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Sherman, and a half dozen other men were
something more than human in the minds of the generation that came
immediately after the days of their stirring performance. Already industry
was creating a new set of semi-mythical figures. The factory at work in the
night-time in the town of Bidwell became, to the mind of the woman sitting
by the window in the farm house, not a factory but a powerful animal,
a powerful beast-like thing that Hugh had tamed and made useful to his
fellows. Her mind ran forward and took the taming of the beast for granted.
The hunger of her generation found a voice in her. Like every one else she
wanted heroes, and Hugh, to whom she had never talked and about whom she
knew nothing, became a hero. Her father, Alfred Buckley, Steve Hunter and
the rest were after all pigmies. Her father was a schemer; he had even
schemed to get her married, perhaps to further his own plans. In reality
his schemes were so ineffective that she did not need to be angry with him.
There was but one man of them all who was not a schemer. Hugh was what she
wanted to be. He was a creative force. In his hands dead inanimate things
became creative forces. He was what she wanted not herself but perhaps a
son, to be. The thought, at last definitely expressed, startled Clara, and
she arose from the chair by the window and prepared to go to bed.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282