and put my tongue out
at you, anything that would adequately express my disdain! For
pig-headed bigotry, bounded on the north by high principles and on the
south by big dreams, give me a New Englander! You make me tired!"

"For the Lord's sake, Pen!"

Pen laid down her bit of sewing and looked at Jim long and earnestly,
then she said, quietly, "Jim, why don't you go to work?"

Jim looked flushed and bewildered. "I work eighteen hours a day."

Pen groaned. "I'm talking about your capacity, not your output. You are
only using half of what is in you, Still. You build the dam and you
refuse to do anything else. Why, with your kind of creative, engineering
mind, you are perfectly capable of administering the dam, too. Of
handling all the problems connected with it in a cool, scientific way
that would come very near being ideal justice. You know that the
projects are an experiment in government activity. You know that the
people who will control them have no experience or training that will
fit them for handling the projects. Yet you refuse to help them. You are
just as stupid and just as selfish as if you had built a complicated
machine and had turned it over to children to run, refusing them all
explanation or guidance."

Pen paused, breathless, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes glowing. Jim
watched her, his face pitifully eager. Perhaps, he thought, Pen was
actually going to lay her finger on the cause of his inadequacy.

"Instead of antagonizing every farmer on the Project, you ought to be
making them feel that you are their partner and friend in a mighty
difficult business. You told us yesterday that your ancestors not only
made the trail but also the law of the trail. What are you doing? It's
your own fault if you lose your job, Still!"

Pen got up and turned Sara's pillow and shaded the light from his face,
mechanically.

"You are just like all the rest of what you call the Anglo-Americans.
You go about feeling superior and abused and calling the immigrants hard
names. You are just a lot of quitters. You have refused national
service. If you _are_ a dying race and you _are_ convinced that the
world can't afford to lose your institutions, how low down you are not
to feel that your last duty to society is to show by personal example
the value of your institutions."

"I don't see what I can do," protested Jim.

"That's just what I'm trying to show you," retorted Pen. "I have to plow
through your ignorance first--cl