United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
And now it seemed that the end had come; he was old, he was tired, he
was not sure. Claus Hansen would have his land and his son would join
hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting. And far
deeper and sadder and more bitter than that, he had not transmitted the
America of his heart even to his own son. He was not leaving someone to
fight for it in his stead, to win where he had failed. Fred saw in
it but a place for gain. “I lived all my life with you to learn from
failure the value of success.” That was what he had given to his boy.
Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to America. Could the failure, the
futility of his life be more clearly revealed?
Twice Martha had called to him, but still he sat, smoking, thinking.
There was much to think about to-night.
Finally, it was not thought, but visions. Too tired for conscious
thinking, he gave himself up to what came--Fred's America, his America,
the America of the dreamers--and the things which stood between. The
America of the future---what would that America be?
At the last, taking form from many things which came and went, shaping
itself slowly, form giving place to new form, he seemed to see it grow.
Out beyond that land Claus Hansen was to have, a long way off, there
rose the vision of the America of the future--an America of realities,
and yet an America of dreams; for the dreamers had become the
realists---or was it that the realists had become dreamers? In the
manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying dualism had made way
for the strength and the dignity and harmony of unity. He watched it as
breathlessly, as yearningly, as the nineteen-year-old boy had watched
the other America taking shape in the distance some forty years before.
“How did you come?” he whispered. “What are you?”
And the voice of that real America seemed to answer: “I came because for
a long-enough time there were enough men who held me in their hearts. I
came because there were men who never gave me up. I was won by men who
believed that they had failed.”
Again there was a lump in his throat--once more an exultation flooded
all his being. For to the old man--tired, stiff, smitten though he had
been, there came again that same uplift which long before had come to
the boy. Was there not here an answer to “What's the use?” For he would
leave America as he came to it--loving it, believing in it. What were
the work and the failure of a lifetime when there was something in his
heart which was his? Should he say that he had fought in vain when
he had kept it for himself? It was as real, as wonderful--yes as
inevitable, as it had been forty years before. Realities had taken his
land, his career, his hopes for the boy. But realities had not stripped
him of his dream. The futility of the years could not harm the things
which were in his heart. Even in America he had not lost His America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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