"You can compose just as well in Europe, if it is so important to you. In France, say, or England, away from this danger and discomfort. There is no doubt the country is finished; come to safety while you can."
Florence was busy with a stack of musicpaper and offered no comment. Joe put his hand for a second on my shoulder and then turned away, talking with his eyes fixed out the window in the direction of the Grass.
"General Herkimer had both legs shot off at the battle of Oriskany. He made his men put his back to a treestump and with a flintlock rifle fired at the enemy until he bled to death. Commodore Lawrence, mortally wounded, had only one order. Schoolbooks hold the words of John Paul, selfnamed Jones, and of Hiram Ulysses Grant. Even yesterday, the old tradition was alive: 'Enemy landing; issue in doubt.' If I finish my symphony—"
"When you finish your symphony—" I encouraged.
"If you finish your symphony—" said Florence quietly.
"If I finish my symphony, it must be in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont." His speech took on a hushed, abstracted tone. "Massachusetts, Rhode Island or Connecticut. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania—" his voice rose higher— "Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia—" his shoulders shook and he seemed to be crying— "North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida ..."
I left them, convinced the madness of the country had found still another victim. That night I thankfully boarded the European Clipper for the last time. The next day I sank back into civilization as into a comfortable bed.
63. "The United States, July 4 (N.A.N.A.)—'A decent respect for the opinion of mankind' dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries past, a small group of smugglers, merchants and planters united in an insurrection which in its course gathered to itself such an accreta of riffraff—debtors, convicts, adventurers, careerists, foreigners, theoreticians, idealists, revolutionaries, soldiers of fortune and restless men, that at the height of their numbers they composed, with their sympathizers, perhaps a third of the people in the country. After seven years of inept war in which they had all the breaks, including that of a halfhearted enemy, they established 'upon this continent a new nation.' Some of the phrases thrown off in the heat of propaganda were taken seriously and despite shocked opposition written into basic law.
"The cryptogram is readable backward or forward, straightaway or upside down. Unparalleled resources, the fortuitous historical moment, the tide of immigration drawing on the best of the world, the implicit good in conception necessarily resultant in the explicit best of being; high purpose, inventive genius, exploratory urge, competitive spirit, fraternal enthusiasm, what does the ascription matter if the end product was clear for all to see?
"Is it not fitting that a nation calling itself lightly 'God's Country,' meaning a land abundantly favored by nature, should find its dispatch through an act of the benefactor become understandably irritable? This is not to pose the editorial question of justice, but to remember in passing the girdled forests, abused prairies, gullied lands, the stupidly harnessed plains, wasted coal, gas, petroleum; the millions of tons of rich mud denied hungry soil by Mississippi levees and forced profitlessly into the salt sea.