quit touching
that!" Then he walked quickly to the door and opened it and looked out
on the night. There was no hall, the sitting-room is straight on the
street. He took a great deep breath and came back again, and then he
laughed, "Guess I'm a pretty fool," he said; "I've had them pointed
direct at me with the finger on the trigger, too, and never turned a
hair, but, by the Lord, to see your flower face close to that grim thing
makes me kind of sick." It moved me deeply, Mamma; I wonder why?

The whole company walked home with us, but I clung on to the Senator's
arm and let my other be held by the one with the roguish smile of the
night before; and Nelson seemed to be extraordinarily gay as he strode
beside Octavia, though when we said goodnight, just outside my room, his
eyes were full of mist.

I don't feel the least sleepy, and I am sitting here in the
rocking-chair thinking of all our trip, and the different impressions it
has made, and how deeply I admire and respect this wonderful people.
As soon as they have grown out of being touchy, and rounded off their
edges, they will have no equals on earth. This great vast country we
have come through seems like the great vast brains of the men from here
who are the real nation builders. The successful schemers and business
men are remarkable, too, but these are the ones who make for splendour
and glory and noble ideas. They are like strong pure air blowing away
migraines; and yet the business men also are to be respected; it
requires such indomitable pluck in either case, only this kind of
outdoor pluck makes male creatures turn more into the things which women
love.

There was one point I did not remember to tell you about in its place,
and that was the rather pathetic spectacle the boys are, in numbers of
families in the East,--tied to their mothers' apron strings, treated
like girls and taken constantly to Europe with or without a tutor;
little, blase grandfathers driving motor cars and dressing in grown up
clothes. I longed to send them all to Eton and let them get flogged and
have to fag and be turned into children first, and then men. I asked the
fourteen year old Spleist boy to get me down a branch of blossom far up
on an apple tree, and for the world he wouldn't have rubbed his patent
leather boots, even if he had known how to hold on to reach so high. All
the children are old, more or less, and wearied with expensive toys and
every wish gratified. Only that t