SILAS:  The hill at the end of our trail—­how could we keep that?

GRANDMOTHER:  Well, I want to know why not!  Hill or level—­land’s land and not a thing you give away.

SILAS:  Well, don’t scold me.  I’m not giving it away.  It’s giving itself away, get down to it.

GRANDMOTHER:  Don’t talk to me as if I was feeble-minded.

SILAS:  I’m talking with all the mind I’ve got.  If there’s not mind in what I say, it’s because I’ve got no mind.  But I have got a mind, (to FEJEVARY, humorously) Haven’t I?  You ought to know.  Seeing as you gave it to me.

FEJEVARY:  Ah, no—­I didn’t give it to you.

SILAS:  Well, you made me know ’twas there.  You said things that woke things in me and I thought about them as I ploughed.  And that made me know there had to be a college there—­wake things in minds—­so ploughing’s more than ploughing.  What do you say, Felix?

FELIX:  It—­it’s a big idea, Uncle Silas.  I love the way you put it.  It’s only that I’m wondering—­

SILAS:  Wondering how it can ever be a Harvard College?  Well, it can’t.  And it needn’t be (stubbornly) It’s a college in the cornfields—­where the Indian maize once grew.  And it’s for the boys of the cornfields—­and the girls.  There’s few can go to Harvard College—­but more can climb that hill, (turn of the head from the hill to FELIX) Harvard on a hill? (As FELIX smiles no, SILAS turns back to the hill) A college should be on a hill.  They can see it then from far around.  See it as they go out to the barn in the morning; see it when they’re shutting up at night.  ’Twill make a difference—­even to them that never go.

GRANDMOTHER:  Now, Silas—­don’t be hasty.

SILAS:  Hasty?  It’s been company to me for years.  Came to me one night—­must ‘a’ been ten years ago—­middle of a starry night as I was comin’ home from your place (to FEJEVARY) I’d gone over to lend a hand with a sick horse an’—­

FEJEVARY:  (with a grateful smile) That was nothing new.

SILAS:  Well, say, I’d sit up with a sick horse that belonged to the meanest man unhung.  But—­there were stars that night had never been there before.  Leastways I’d not seen ’em.  And the hill—­Felix, in all your travels east, did you ever see anything more beautiful than that hill?

FELIX:  It’s like sculpture.

SILAS:  Hm. (the wistfulness with which he speaks of that outside his knowledge) I s’pose ’tis.  It’s the way it rises—­somehow—­as if it knew it rose from wide and fertile lands.  I climbed the hill that night, (to FEJEVARY) You’d been talkin’.  As we waited between medicines you told me about your life as a young man.  All you’d lived through seemed to—­open up to you that night—­way things do at times.  Guess it was ‘cause you thought you was goin’ to lose your horse.  See, that was Colonel, the sorrel, wasn’t it?