FEJEVARY: I fear you don't realize the immense amount of money required to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would have to interest rich men; you'd have to have a community in sympathy with the thing you wanted to do.
GRANDMOTHER: Can't you see, Silas, that we're all against you?
SILAS: All against me? (to FEJEVARY) But how can you be? Look at the land we walked in and took! Was there ever such a chance to make life more? Why, the buffalo here before us was more than we if we do nothing but prosper! God damn us if we sit here rich and fat and forget man's in the makin'. (affirming against this) There will one day be a college in these cornfields by the Mississippi because long ago a great dream was fought for in Hungary. And I say to that old dream, Wake up, old dream! Wake up and fight! You say rich men. (holding it out, but it is not taken) I give you this deed to take to rich men to show them one man believes enough in this to give the best land he's got. That ought to make rich men stop and think.
GRANDMOTHER: Stop and think he's a fool.
SILAS: (to FEJEVARY) It's you can make them know he's not a fool. When you tell this way you can tell it, they'll feel in you what's more than them. They'll listen.
GRANDMOTHER: I tell you, Silas, folks are too busy.
SILAS: Too busy!' Too busy bein' nothin'? If it's true that we created ourselves out of the thoughts that came, then thought is not something outside the business of life. Thought—(with his gift for wonder) why, thought's our chance. I know now. Why I can't forget the Indians. We killed their joy before we killed them. We made them less, (to FEJEVARY, and as if sure he is now making it clear) I got to give it back—their hill. I give it back to joy—a better joy—joy o'aspiration.
FEJEVARY: (moved but unconvinced) But, my friend, there are men who have no aspiration. That's why, to me, this is as a light shining from too far.
GRANDMOTHER: (old things waked in her) Light shining from far. We used to do that. We never pulled the curtain. I used to want to—you like to be to yourself when night conies—but we always left a lighted window for the traveller who'd lost his way.
FELIX: I should think that would have exposed you to the Indians.