“You see? Because this old town of St. Louis was then only a village, and we just had bought our unknown country of France, and this town was on the eastern edge of it, the gate of it—the gate to the West, it used to be, before steam came, while everything went by keel boat; oar or paddle and pole and sail and cordelle. Ah, Sis, those were the days!”
“Think of the time it must have taken!”
“Think of the times they must have been!”
“But now one never hears of Lewis and Clark. We go by rail, so much faster. As for going up-river by steamboat, I never heard of such a thing!”
“But the boys have. I caught Jesse, even, pondering over my Catlin, looking at the buffalo and Indian pictures.”
“I never heard of Catlin.”
“Of course not. Well, he came much later than my captains, and was an artist. But my captains had found the way. Rob and Frank know. They’ve read the worked-over Journals of Lewis and Clark. Me, I’ve even seen the originals. I swear those curious pages make my heart jump to this very day, even after our travels on the soil of France just now—France, the country that practically gave us our country, or almost all of it west of the Missouri, more than a hundred years ago. She didn’t know, and we didn’t know. Well, we helped pay the rest of the price, if there was anything left back, at Château Thierry and in the Argonne.”
His sister was looking at the stiffened leg, and Uncle Dick frowned at that. “It’s nothing,” said he. “Think of the others.”
“And all for what?” he mused, later. “All for what, if it wasn’t for America, and for what America was meant to be, and for what America was and is? So, about my boys—what d’ye think, my dear, if they wandered with me, hobbling back from the soil of old France, over the soil of the New France that once lay up the Big Muddy, yon—that New France which Napoleon gave to make New America? Any harm about that, what?... Lest we forget! Lest all this America of ours to-day forget! Eh, what?”