The doctor bowed encouragingly.
"Then I am sorry, too!"
This time the doctor did not move his head, and he did not open his lips. He saw that a new moment had arrived in the boy's growth—a consciousness of the universal tragedy and personal share and sorrow in it. He knew that many people never feel this; some feel it late; a few feel it early; he had always said that children should never feel it. He knew also that when once it has begun, it never ends. Nothing ever banishes it or stills it—that perception of the human tragedy and one's share and sorrow in it.
He did not welcome its appearance now, in his son least of all. For an instant he charged himself with having made a mistake in taking the child along on his visits to the sick, thus making known too early the dark side of happy neighborhood life. Then he went further back and traced this premature seriousness to its home and its beginning: in prenatal depression—in a mother's anguish and a wife's despair. It was a bitter retrospect: it kept him brooding.
The chatter was persistent. A hand was stretched up, and it took hold of his chin and shook it:—
"There ought to be a country where nobody suffers and there ought to be a time; a large country and a long time."
"There is such a country and there is such a time, Herbert," said the doctor, now with some sadness.
"Then I'll warrant you it's part of the United States," cried the boy, getting his idea of mortality slightly mixed with his early Americanism. "Texas would hold them, wouldn't it? Don't you think Texas could contain them all and contain them forever?"
The doctor laughed and seemed to think enough had been said on the subject of large enough graveyards for the race.
"Why don't you doctors send your patients to that country?"