FEJEVARY: It's beautiful this summer. She was so pleased with the new purple kind you gave her. I do wish you could get over to see them. GRANDMOTHER: Yes. Well, I've seen lots of pansies. Suppose it was pretty fine-sounding speeches they had in town? FEJEVARY: Too fine-sounding to seem much like the war. SILAS: I'd like to go to a war celebration where they never mentioned war. There'd be a way to celebrate victory, (_hearing a step, looking out_) Mother, here's Felix. (FELIX, _a well-dressed young man, comes in_.) GRANDMOTHER: How do, Felix? FELIX: And how do you do, Grandmother Morton? GRANDMOTHER: Well, I'm still here. FELIX: Of course you are. It wouldn't be coming home if you weren't. GRANDMOTHER: I've got some cookies for you, Felix. I set 'em out, so you wouldn't have to steal them. John and Felix was hard on the cookie jar. FELIX: Where is John? SILAS: (_who is pouring a glass of wine for_ FELIX) You've not seen John yet? He was in town for the exercises. I bet those young devils ran off to the race-track. I heard whisperin' goin' round. But everybody'll be home some time. Mary and the girls--don't ask me where they are. They'll drive old Bess all over the country before they drive her to the bam. Your father and I come on home 'cause I wanted to have a talk with him. FELIX: Getting into the old uniforms makes you want to talk it all over again? SILAS: The war? Well, we did do that. But all that makes me want to talk about what's to come, about--what 'twas all for. Great things are to come, Felix. And before you are through. FELIX: I've been thinking about them myself--walking around the town to-day. It's grown so much this year, and in a way that means more growing--that big glucose plant going up down the river, the new lumber mill--all that means many more people. FEJEVARY: And they've even bought ground for a steel works. SILAS: Yes, a city will rise from these cornfields--a big rich place--that's bound to be. It's written in the lay o' the land and the way the river flows. But first tell us about Harvard College, Felix. Ain't it a fine thing for us all to have Felix coming home from that wonderful place! FELIX: You make it seem wonderful. SILAS: Ah, you know it's wonderful--know it so well you don't have to say it. It's something you've got. But to me it's wonderful the way the stars are wonderful--this place where all that the world has learned is to be drawn from me--like a spring. FELIX: You almost say what Matthew Arnold says--a distinguished new English writer who speaks of: 'The best that has been thought and said in the world'.