American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
They took me to his church, where a large bronze tablet set forth
his virtues and his influence. They showed me the Ellis Randolph
Memorial Library. I was shown the public playground which he conceived
a generation before any one else thought of such a thing. But what
made the deepest impression on me were the men and women who came to
shake my hand because I was Uncle Ellis’ niece, because they wanted to
testify to the greatness of his value in their lives. The minister of
the town, a white-haired man, told me with a deep note of emotion in
his voice, that Dr. Randolph had done more than merely save his life;
in his wayward youth he had saved his soul alive. The banker told me
that he had heard many celebrated orators, but never any one who could
go straight to the heart like Dr. Randolph. “I often tell my wife that
she ought to be thankful to Dr. Randolph for a lecture on chivalry to
women which he gave to us boys, at an impressionable moment of our
lives.”
And the old principal of the school said, “Not a year goes by that I
do not thank God for sending that righteous man to be an example to my
youth. He left behind him many human monuments to his glory.”
What did I say to them? Oh, I didn’t say anything to them. I couldn’t
think of anything to say.
GOD’S COUNTRY
When I was a faculty-child living in a middle-western university town
we were all thrilled by the news that the energetic Chancellor of the
University had secured as head of the Department of Chemistry a noted
European scientist. Although still young he had made a name for himself
by some important discoveries in organic chemistry. We talked about
those discoveries as fluently, and understood about them as thoroughly
as we all now discuss and understand the theories of Professor Einstein.
Professor Behrens was not only a remarkable chemist, so we heard, but a
remarkable teacher and a man of wide sympathies and democratic ideals.
It was the candid period in American life, when, especially in the
west, the word “Europe” was pronounced with a very special intonation,
of which Henry James’ wistful admiration was the quintessence. It was
the time in American university life when Germany was the goal toward
which all our younger scholars ran their fastest race. Yet here was
Professor Behrens, leaving a University not only European but German,
from which our younger professors were proud to have a Ph.D. and
deliberately choosing our new, raw, young institution for the sake of
the free, untrammeled, democratic life in America. It went to our heads!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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