In this manner, she passed through the first part of the evening very comfortably, only dimly aware that she was floundering in the outskirts of a perfect maze of big words dealing with Americanization, which Eveley vaguely understood to be something on the order of standing up to _The Star Spangled Banner_, and marching in parades with a flag and shouting "Hurrah for the President," in the presence of foreigners. The third speaker was a minister, and ministers are accustomed to penetrating the blue mazes of mental abstraction. This minister did. He began by telling three funny stories, and Eveley, who loved to exercise her sense of humor, came back to the Current Club and joined their laughter. In the very same breath with which he ended the last funny story, he began breezily discoursing on everybody's duty as a loyal American. Eveley, to whom the word "duty" was the original red rag, sniffed inaudibly but indignantly to herself. And while she was still sniffing the speaker left "duty as American citizens" far behind, and was deep in the intricacies of Americanization. Eveley found to her surprise that this was something more than saluting the flag and shouting. She grew quite interested. It seemed that ordinary, regular people were definitely, determinedly working with little scraps of the foreign elements, Chinese, Mexican, Russian, Italian, yes, even German,--though Eveley considered it asking entirely too much, even of Heaven, to elevate shreds of German infamy to American standards. At any rate, people were doing this thing, taking the pliant, trusting mind of the foreigner, petting it, training it, coaxing it,--until presently the flotsam and jetsam of the Orient, of war-torn Europe, of the islands of the sea, of all the world, should be Americanized into union, and strength, and loyalty, and love. It fascinated Eveley. She forgot that it was her duty as a patriotic American. She forgot that nobody had any business doing anything but minding one's own business. She fairly burned to have a part in the work of assimilation. Her eyes glowed with eagerness, her cheeks flushed a vivid scarlet, her lips trembled with the ecstatic passion of loyalty. In the open discussion that followed after the last address, Eveley suddenly, quite to her own surprise, found that she had something to say. "But--isn't it mostly talk?" she asked, half shyly, anxious not to offend, but unable to repress the doubt in her mind. "It does not seem practical. You say we must assimilate the foreign element. But can one assimilate a foreign element? Doesn't the fact that it is foreign--make it impossible of assimilation? Oh, I know we have to do something, but as long as we are foreigners, we to them, and they to us,--what can we do?" The deadly silence that greeted her words frightened her, yet somehow gave her courage to go on. She must be saying something rather sensible, or they would not pay attention.