SILAS:  I’d like to go to a war celebration where they never mentioned war.  There’d be a way to celebrate victory, (hearing a step, looking out) Mother, here’s Felix.

(FELIX, a well-dressed young man, comes in.)

GRANDMOTHER:  How do, Felix?

FELIX:  And how do you do, Grandmother Morton?

GRANDMOTHER:  Well, I’m still here.

FELIX:  Of course you are.  It wouldn’t be coming home if you weren’t.

GRANDMOTHER:  I’ve got some cookies for you, Felix.  I set ’em out, so you wouldn’t have to steal them.  John and Felix was hard on the cookie jar.

FELIX:  Where is John?

SILAS:  (who is pouring a glass of wine for FELIX) You’ve not seen John yet?  He was in town for the exercises.  I bet those young devils ran off to the race-track.  I heard whisperin’ goin’ round.  But everybody’ll be home some time.  Mary and the girls—­don’t ask me where they are.  They’ll drive old Bess all over the country before they drive her to the bam.  Your father and I come on home ’cause I wanted to have a talk with him.

FELIX:  Getting into the old uniforms makes you want to talk it all over again?

SILAS:  The war?  Well, we did do that.  But all that makes me want to talk about what’s to come, about—­what ’twas all for.  Great things are to come, Felix.  And before you are through.

FELIX:  I’ve been thinking about them myself—­walking around the town to-day.  It’s grown so much this year, and in a way that means more growing—­that big glucose plant going up down the river, the new lumber mill—­all that means many more people.

FEJEVARY:  And they’ve even bought ground for a steel works.

SILAS:  Yes, a city will rise from these cornfields—­a big rich place—­that’s bound to be.  It’s written in the lay o’ the land and the way the river flows.  But first tell us about Harvard College, Felix.  Ain’t it a fine thing for us all to have Felix coming home from that wonderful place!

FELIX:  You make it seem wonderful.

SILAS:  Ah, you know it’s wonderful—­know it so well you don’t have to say it.  It’s something you’ve got.  But to me it’s wonderful the way the stars are wonderful—­this place where all that the world has learned is to be drawn from me—­like a spring.

FELIX:  You almost say what Matthew Arnold says—­a distinguished new English writer who speaks of:  ’The best that has been thought and said in the world’.

SILAS:  ‘The best that has been thought and said in the world!’ (slowly rising, and as if the dream of years is bringing him to his feet) That’s what that hill is for! (pointing) Don’t you see it?  End of our trail, we climb a hill and plant a college.  Plant a college, so’s after we are gone that college says for us, says in people learning has made more:  ‘That is why we took this land.’

GRANDMOTHER:  (incredulous) You mean, Silas, you’re going to give the hill away?