mmunity inclusive
of the living beings of all nations. France and Germany uniting
precisely as Saxony and Prussia and Bavaria have united. And, most of
all, a general realization that the fact that we cannot accomplish all
these things at once does not indicate that they are hopeless; an
understanding that one of the wonders of the future is the fact that
we shall _always_, in all ages, have improvements to look forward to.

"Fellow-students, object as strongly as you wish to the petty
narrowness and vituperation of certain street-corner ranters, but do
not be petty and narrow and vituperative in doing it!

"Now, to relate all this to the plays of Bernard Shaw. When he
says----"

* * * * *

Professor Frazer's utterances seem tamely conservative nowadays; but
this was in 1905, in a small, intensely religious college among the
furrows. Imagine a devout pastor when his son kicks the family Bible
and you have the mental state of half the students of Plato upon
hearing a defense of socialism. Carl, catching echoes of his own talks
with Bone Stillman in the lecture, exultantly glanced about, and found
the class staring at one another with frightened anxiety. He saw the
grim Plain Smith, not so much angry as ill. He saw two class clowns
snickering at the ecstasy in the eyes of Genie Linderbeck.

* * * * *

In the corner drug-store, popularly known as "The Club," where all
the college bloods gather to drink lemon phosphate, an excited old
man, whose tieless collar was almost concealed by his tobacco-stained
beard, pushed back his black slouch-hat with the G. A. R. cord, and
banged his fist on the prescription-counter, shouting, half at the
clerk and half at the students matching pennies on the soda-counter,
"I've lived in Plato, man and boy, for forty-seven years--ever since
it wa'n't nothing but a frontier trading-post. I packed logs on my
back and I tramped fifty-three miles to get me a yoke of oxen. I
remember when the Indians went raiding during the war and the cavalry
rode here from St. Paul. And this town has always stood for decency
and law and order. But when things come to such a pass that this
fellow Frazer or any of the rest of these infidels from one of these
here Eastern colleges is allowed to stand up on his hind legs in a
college building and bray about anarchism and tell us to trample on
the old flag that we fought for, and none of these profes