The Herr Director was astonished and the Frau Directorin pained to find that we lived in a servantless house and in practically a servantless town; that we were our own cooks and housemaids, butlers and gardeners. When the Herr Director saw me mowing my lawn in broad daylight he wondered that I did not lose caste among my fellows.
The Frau Directorin was remarkably adaptable. She delighted in wielding the dustless mop (to reduce “the meat”), she dusted the bric-à-brac, and out of the kindness of her heart and in spite of our protests, became “first aid” to my wife.
One morning, just as I was waking, I heard the rattle of a lawn-mower under my window; not the quick, sharp, sustained noise which usually arouses the neighborhood, but a slow, measured sound, by fits and starts. In between I could hear puffing and panting, like that of a small steam engine. When I looked out of the window I saw something which my eyes could not believe. The Herr Director had begun mowing the lawn, and I let him finish it. It pretty nearly finished him; but after his bath and a generous American breakfast, he glowed from health and happiness.
“I never knew,” he said, “the elevating power of physical labor. I think I will take a lawn-mower home with me.”
The Frau Directorin put a damper upon his enthusiasm by reminding him that he would have to take a lawn home with him too, and more than that, the town itself; for in their environment he would not dare use the lawn-mower even if he had one.
I am quite sure now that the Herr Director would have liked to take my little town home with him, with the lawn-mower and the lawn. If he could have done so, he might have changed the course of empires.
I urged him, if he really wished to annex us, to do it soon; for there is no little danger that we, too, shall lose faith in the redemptive power of labor, the sufficiency of little things, the grandeur of plain living and high thinking, the exaltation of the humble, the inheritance for the meek and the reward of the righteous. When we lose those, we have lost that which, in our proud, provincial way, we call “The Grinnell Spirit”—an integral part of the American—the World-spirit.
XIV
The Commencement and The End
THERE are some aspects of our American life which I tried to hide from my guests. I kept as many of our national family skeletons as possible in their closets, and made sure that the doors were securely locked.
I was glad that the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin were to leave this country before our insane Fourth of July, which we are endeavoring to make sane. I did not care to have them here on Thanksgiving Day from which, through the superabundance of turkey and cranberry sauce, the element of Thanksgiving has been almost eliminated. I was profoundly grateful that during their visit there was no election day with its sordid partisanship, its ballot box, not yet sacred enough to make beautiful or place nobly in some civic temple; but we did urge them to remain over Commencement day, that most happy, sweetly solemn occasion, unspoiled as yet by rich display. It is the great festival of our democracy, shared by town and gown, when we open the gates to rich and poor, to common opportunity and duty.