umanly possible an ideal as
democracy is a great feat and a wonderful exhibition of the powers of
our minds on this planet, I suppose. And I am not sure that it is a
greater proof of sincerity to practice it while denying it in theory,
as they do in the old countries, than to reverse the process in the
new ones. Americans are such incurable idealists! And if Plato is
right and the idea is the really important part of the matter, then
the idea of seventy--or is it eighty, now?--millions of equal lords of
creation is really more to the point than the fact that they don't
exist. But why, oh why, must equality produce such bad manners? They
must have been very bad to make such an impression upon a little lad
of ten. And who can explain its extraordinary effect upon the voice?
Why does it kill all modulation, all tone-color, all delicate shades
of thought and passion equally, and resolve that great gift, which I
sometimes think the greatest difference between me and my dog, into a
toneless, mumble-chopped grunting?

That was the glory of Margarita's voice: if she but informed you that
she would like more bread, your ear relished that series of
unimportant syllables precisely as the tongue relishes a satisfying
dish; with her, pleading, commanding, refusing, admiring, were four
perfectly different tonal processes; a blind man, an Eskimo or a South
Sea Islander would have understood that voice perfectly. And even now,
merely a shadow of what it once was, it is a lesson to all about her.

When Roger was seventeen and I but twelve he lost two years out of his
school-life, and this brought us closer together ultimately, as will
be seen. In some more than usually violent game of his favourite
baseball at this time he managed to fall so heavily on his chest as
slightly to bruise the lung, and a teasing cough that resulted from
this terrified his mother, over whom, like so many of her
pure-blooded countrywomen, the White Scourge hung threateningly, never
very far away. Good luck sent them just then an invitation from a
distant cousin, skipper of a large schooner that plied in Southern
waters, and she thankfully sent Roger off for a long cruise with him.
It was a fine experience, and oh, how bitterly I longed to share it,
as the skipper cousin urged me to do! But I was the only son of my
mother and she a widow, and so I swallowed my grief and contented
myself with writing. It had long been a great grief to me that I must
follow him