“I guess not. Not if you want Margaret.”
“But what has that got to do with me—with us? It’s—it’s unreasonable!”
“Oh, well, when you have as many gray hairs as I have, you’ll learn that the most reasonable thing to expect of a woman is unreasonableness. Suit your own conscience. But—” he put his arm on his son’s shoulder, “but don’t take it so hard. Just think it over.”
XXVIII
Robert was on his way to Chicago, with his credentials as Grand Bogey of the Trick Track Tribe secure in his breast pocket. In a large, black leather bag were his propaganda supplies, booklets and cards about the black peril, the yellow peril, the political activities of the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish problem, the menace of foreign immigration. He had scarcely time to look at them. Most of his supplies had, of course, been sent by express directly to the office of the Dearborn Statistical Bureau.
Before leaving Corinth, Griffith and Lister had both given him a new conception of the scope of the Trick Track Tribe. Its sphere had been called the Fourth Dimension, because like the fourth dimension it was to be invisible to outsiders, yet it was to form a part of the entire political, economic and social fabric of the country. It was to support good government against bad, combat radicalism and immorality, uphold the best traditions of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The Bogeys were to go forth like knights of old, except that they were to work unseen, in the Fourth Dimension, fighting for God and their country.
Robert had been provided with a number of cards to distribute among his prospects—cards resembling those which he had received, with the motto Non Silba Sed Anthra on them. Griffith had suggested that he begin proselytising on the train, and accordingly Robert studied his fellow passengers.
“Get the young fellows,” Griffith had advised. “As many of the ex-service men as you can and of fellows who weren’t drafted, but who would like to get in with men who were in the army. In the cities, of course, you’ll have to work systematically. First, get a few of the big guns: a big minister, a public official, a prominent business man. Then you can use their names in getting the rest. But on the train I’d try the young fellows.”
In the smoking car Robert tried to manipulate the conversation so as to sound the feelings of the men with whom he conversed. Everyone, of course, approved of such a generalization as Americanism, although each had his own solution of his idea of what that problem constituted.
“What we need is to get down to work and do less shouting,” was one choleric old gentleman’s rather vague recipe.