“‘Well, I have thought some of following Dan into agriculture.’
“‘Don’t,’ was my answer. ‘You’re not the type for that kind of a job. Dan was brought up to work with his hands. I fear that you would be a Fifth Avenue farmer.’
“‘Well, what would you say to a plant for the manufacture of aeroplanes? I stopped at Dayton and looked into the matter, and learned to fly. I have ordered a biplane, and it will be delivered in the spring.’
“I vetoed that plan, and asked where he proposed to settle.
“‘Right here––if possible,’ said Harry.
“‘Good! There’s one thing about your family tree that I like, and you ought to be proud of it. Your forebears, having been treated with shameless oppression, came to these inhospitable shores in 1630. They needn’t have done it if they had been willing to knuckle down and say they liked crow when they didn’t. They wouldn’t do that, so they left the old sod and ventured forth in a little sailing-vessel on the mighty deep. It required some courage to do that. They landed safely, and for nearly three hundred years their descendants have lived and worked and suffered all manner of hardships 158 in New England. It’s a proper thing, Harry, that you should do your work where, mostly, they did their work––in dear old Connecticut.’
“‘And besides, it’s the home of Marie,’ he said.
“‘And let us consider what there is to be done in the home of Marie,’ I went on. ‘Here in the very town where so many of your fathers have lived and worked we find a singular parade of folly. The idle rich from a near city are closing in upon us. Many of the Yankees have acquired property and ceased to work. Back in the distant hills they toil not, but live from hand to mouth in a pitiful state of degeneration. The work of the hand is almost entirely that of Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and Greeks.
“‘Our tradesmen have a low code of honor. They overcharge us for the necessities of life. Many of them have been caught cheating. Our wives and sons and 159 daughters are living beyond their means, as if ignorant of the fact that it is the beginning of dishonesty. Our poverty is mostly that of the soul. The churches are dying, and the sabbath is dead. What we need is a return to the honor, sanity, and common sense of old New England, which gave of its fullness to the land we love. Let’s start a school of old-fashioned decency and Americanism. Let’s call it the Church of All Faiths and make it a center of power.’