Bestselling historical novels were laid in the United States and popular
operas were written about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson.
Men told their growing sons to work hard, for now there was left no land
of opportunity to which they could emigrate, no country where they could
become rich overnight with little effort. Instead of fairytales children
demanded stories of fortyniners and the Wedding of the Rails; and on the
streets of Bombay and Cairo urchins, probably quite unaware of the
memorial gesture, could be heard whistling _Casey Jones_.
But handinhand with this newfound romantic love went a completely
practical attitude toward those Americans still existing in the flesh.
The earliest expatriates, being generally men of substance, were well
received. The thousands who had crossed by small boats from Canada to
Greenland and from Greenland to Iceland to Europe were by definition in
a different category and found the quota system their fathers and
grandfathers had devised used to deny their own entrance.
They were as bewildered and hurt as children that any nation could be at
once so shortsighted and so heartless as to bar homeless wanderers. We
bring you knowledge and skills and our own need, they said in effect, we
will be an asset to your country if you admit us. The Americans could
not understand; they themselves had been fair to all and only kept out
undesirable immigrants.
Gradually the world geared itself to a slower tempo. The gogetter
followed the brontosaurus to extinction, and we Americans with the
foresight to carry on our businesses from new bases profited by the
unAmerican backwardness of our competitors. At this time I daresay I was
among the hundred most important figures of the world. In the marketing
and packaging of our original products I had been forced to acquire
papermills and large interests in aluminum and steel; from there the
progression to tinmines and rollingmills, to coalfields and railroads,
to shippinglines and machineshops was not far. Consolidated Pemmican,
once the center of my business existence, was now but a minor point on
its periphery. I expanded horizontally and vertically, delighted to show
my competitors that Americans, even when deprived of America, were not
robbed of the traditional American enterprise.
_68._ It was at this time, many months after we had given up all hope of
hearing from Joe again, that General Thario received a longdelayed
package from his son. It contained the third movement of the symphony
and a covering letter:
"Dear Father--Stuart Thario--General-- I shall not finish this letter
tonight; it will be sent with as much of the First Symphony as makes a
worthy essence when it goes. The whole is greater than the sum of its
parts, but there is a place (perhaps not in life, but somewhere) for the
imperfect, for the incomplete. The great and small alike achieve
fulfillment, satisfaction--must this be a ruthless denial of all
between?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account