“For during the war it wasn’t real. It was like a house with all the rugs up and chairs out, and arranged to accommodate a lot of strangers—that is, the cities were like that. And the country where they were fighting was no longer France or Belgium or Germany any more than the slaughter-houses of Chicago are Chicago. I want to give it time to get back and then see it again.”
Not only Europe. He wanted to see South America, China, and to get acquainted with the East.
“What is the use of living if you live in a little suburb all your life?”
“But aren’t you going to do any work?” asked Horatia.
“Yes—later I mean to go into business with father. I shall like exporting. It makes me proud of my own country and keeps me in touch with the others. But I need background. Then, when I ship my wheat, I’ll know where I am shipping it.”
She regarded him gravely.
“There’s no loafer in you,” she admitted.
“No—I hope not. I want to work and to live in America, of course. First of all that. I’ve small patience with these globe-trotters. And I want an American wife and to help stabilize the country. All this discontent is the result of trying to bring in a vicious element which we don’t know how to handle because we’re ignorant of the nations from which these people come.”
“Don’t you think we treat them badly?”
“We treat them altogether too well. We overpay them—we excite them—we give them standards of living which make them discontented.”