"Of course they could not have had a society with the wealth and culture that we have now. The country was all new—something like the West is to-day, I suppose."
She laughed aloud. "And you are proud of them! How fine! Isn't it splendid to think that in two or three hundred years, when the West has been civilized and the Desert reclaimed as your pioneer forefathers civilized and reclaimed the East, when wealth and culture have come, a man's social standing will be determined by his relation to us and people will be proud of what we are doing? After all, Mr. Holmes, the only difference between the East and the West seems to be that you have ancestors and that we are going to be ancestors. You look back to what has been; we look forward to what will be. You are proud and take rank because of what your forefathers did; we are proud and take rank because of what we are doing. And we are doing exactly what they did! Honestly now, which would you rather—worship an ancestor or be an ancestor worshipped?"
When they had laughed together over this he said: "I am beginning to understand, Miss Worth, that the ideal American, whom we are always hearing about but never meet, must be a Westerner; he couldn't possibly be of the East, could he?" His words were almost a sneer.
"The ideal American is neither Eastern nor Western in the way you mean,
Mr. Holmes. He is both."
"Indeed? You admit that we of the East could give him something, then?"
"You could give him all that your forefathers have given you."
"And what could the West give him?"
She looked at him steadily a moment before answering slowly: "I think you will have to find that out for yourself."
He was taken a little aback by her answer. It sounded as though she wished to end the conversation. But her talk had stirred him strongly, though he tried to hide this under cover of a cynical tone. He said triumphantly: "But you see, after all, you admit that one is not altogether hopeless because he happens to come of a good family!"
"Certainly I admit it!" she cried, "but don't you see what I mean? Ancestors are to be counted as a valuable asset, but not as working capital."