SENATOR:  The long low house?

FEJEVARY:  That’s it.  You see, the town for the most part swung around the other side of the hill, so the Morton place is still a farm.

SENATOR:  But you’re growing all the while.  The town’ll take the cornfield yet.

FEJEVARY:  Yes, our steel works is making us a city.

SENATOR:  And this old boy (turning to the portrait of SILAS MORTON) can look out on his old home—­and watch the valley grow.

FEJEVARY:  Yes—­that was my idea.  His picture really should be in Memorial Hall, but I thought Uncle Silas would like to be up here among the books, and facing the old place. (with a laugh) I confess to being a little sentimental.

SENATOR:  We Americans have lots of sentiment, Mr Fejevary.  It’s what makes us—­what we are. (FEJEVARY does not speak; there are times when the senator seems to trouble him) Well, this is a great site for a college.  You can see it from the whole country round.

FEJEVARY:  Yes, that was Uncle Silas’ idea.  He had a reverence for education.  It grew, in part, out of his feeling for my father.  He was a poet—­really, Uncle Silas. (looking at the picture) He gave this hill for a college that we might become a deeper, more sensitive people—­

(Two girls, convulsed with the giggles, come tumbling in.)

DORIS:  (confused) Oh—­oh, excuse us.

FUSSIE:  (foolishly) We didn’t know anybody was here.

(MR FEJEVARY looks at them sternly.  The girls retreat.)

SENATOR:  (laughing) Oh, well girls will be girls.  I’ve got three of my own.

(HORACE comes back, carrying an open book.)

HORACE:  Say, this must be a misprint.

FEJEVARY:  (glancing at the back of the book) Oh, I think not.

HORACE:  From his first inaugural address to Congress, March 4, 1861. (reads) ’This country with its institutions belong to the people who inhabit it.’  Well, that’s all right.  ’Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it’—­(after a brief consideration) I suppose that that’s all right—­but listen! ’or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.’

FEJEVARY:  He was speaking in another age.  An age of different values.

SENATOR:  Terms change their significance from generation to generation.

HORACE:  I suppose they do—­but that puts me in bad with these lice.  They quoted this and I said they were liars.

SENATOR:  And what’s the idea?  They’re weary of our existing government and are about to dismember or overthrow it?

HORACE:  I guess that’s the dope.

FEJEVARY:  Look here, Horace—­speak accurately.  Was it in relation to
America they quoted this?

HORACE:  Well, maybe they were talking about India then.  But they were standing up for being revolutionists.  We were giving them an earful about it, and then they spring Lincoln on us.  Got their nerve—­I’ll say—­quoting Lincoln to us.