There is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One senses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions are not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first mark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in matter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece. They are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see ahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision—the real democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to kill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this, of the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates them the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is Ignorance, personified so often in their elders.
It is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger, swifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and finer than the passing generation. They have the new healthiness. They belong to the open and are practically immune to disease. Theirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit—vitality instead of constitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution is weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, constantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining. Constitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to die....
The young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free spoken. They are capable of friendships; they are not adverse to being wholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women, who surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy and such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them. They have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt to go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when the chosen father of their children arrives.
All of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy and religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or nothing—prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's dream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The slightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony.
Perhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search about for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put to it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up through all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity. Often they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings and eagles.
2
QUICKENINGS
A few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There is a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban car-line—a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer evenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true pastorale—lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and the murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with passing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much. A lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone.
He was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been thinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of his talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt voice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: "John, I want you to write that—either to-night or to-morrow."