Sharon said, the
Whipple chicken coop had hatched a gosling that wanted to swim in
strange waters; but it was eventually decided that goslings were meant
to swim and would one way or another find a pond. Indeed, Harvey Whipple
was prouder of his son by adoption than he cared to have known, and
listened to him with secret respect, covered with perfunctory business
hints. He felt that Merle was above and beyond him. The youth, indeed,
made him feel that he was a mere country banker.

In the city of New York, after his graduation, Merle had come
into his own, forming a staunch alliance with a small circle of
intellectuals--intelligentzia, Merle said--consecrated to the cause of
American culture. He had brought to Newbern and to the amazed Harvey
Whipple the strange news that America had no native culture; that it was
raw, spiritually impoverished, without national self-consciousness; with
but the faintest traces of art in any true sense of the word. Harvey
Whipple would have been less shocked by this disclosure, momentous
though it was, had not Merle betrayed a conviction that his life work
would now be to uphold the wavering touch of civilization.

This brought the thing home to Harvey D. Merle, heading his valiant
little band of thinkers, would light a pure white flame to flush
America's spiritual darkness. He would be a vital influence, teaching
men and women to cultivate life for its own sake. For the cheap and
tawdry extravagance of our national boasting he would substitute a
chastening knowledge of our spiritual inferiority to the older nations.
America was uncreative; he would release and nurse its raw creative
intelligence till it should be free to function, breaking new
intellectual paths, setting up lofty ideals, enriching our common life
with a new, self-conscious art. Much of this puzzled Harvey D. and his
father, old Gideon. It was new talk in their world. But it impressed
them. Their boy was earnest, with a fine intelligence; he left them
stirred.

Sharon Whipple was a silent, uneasy listener at many of these talks. He
declared, later and to others, for Merle was not his son, that the young
man was highly languageous and highly crazy; that his talk was the
crackling of thorns under a pot; that he was a vain canter--"forever
canting," said Sharon--"a buffle-headed fellow, talking, bragging." He
was equally intolerant of certain of Merle's little band of
forward-looking intellectuals who came to stay week-e