“Come,” Virginia said in quick business-like tones, “the kids will follow. I want you to meet my father and mother before they’re off to bed. In spite of modern progress they are the most pig-headed and persistent pair of fossils with whom I have to contend--” “I’ve often seen your father at the soldiers’ reunions--the youngest and finest looking man of the Old Guard, I’ve always thought.” “He is--isn’t he?” she said thoughtfully. “I wonder that the daughter of a soldier should take seriously all this talk about universal peace--” “Perhaps that’s the reason--” “Nonsense!” “Seriously. I’ve listened by the hour to his stories of the war. When I was very young I saw only the glamour and the romance and the glory and then as I grew older I began to think of the blackened chimneys of Southern homes and feel the misery and the desolation of it all. And we began to quarrel about war.” “Your father was in Sherman’s army, I believe?” “Yes--he ran away from his Western home at fourteen and joined the colors. Think of it! At eighteen he was mustered out in Washington a veteran of twenty-six pitched battles. He’s only sixty-odd today with every power alert except a slight deafness--and by the way--“ she paused and smiled--“I should tell you that his hobby just now is the immigration question. Don’t mind anything silly he may say, will you?” “Certainly not!” Vassar agreed. “I too am fighting against the invasion of this country by a foreign army--” “Yours a dream--my father’s grievance quite real you must admit.” “Seeing that a Pole is his Congressman neighbor--” Vassar admitted good-humoredly. “It must get on the nerves of the old boys who can’t see our point of view. The man or woman born in free America inherits it all as a matter of course. He rarely thinks of his priceless birthright. To my old father every day of life is a Fourth of July! To me it is the same. A frail half-starved little orphan clinging to his hand thirty-one years ago, I stood on the deck of a steamer and saw this wonderful Promised Land. You are American by the accident of birth. You had no choice. We are American because we willed to come. We love this land because it’s worth loving. We know why we love it. We lifted up our eyes from a far country--amid tears and ashes and ruins--and saw the light of liberty shining here across the seas. We came and you received us with open arms. You set no hired spies to watch us. You made our homes and our firesides holy ground. We kiss the soil beneath our feet. It is _our_ country--our flag, our nation, our people as it can’t be yours who do not realize its full meaning--can’t you see?” “Yes,” she answered softly. “And I never thought of it in that way before.” She glanced at the tall, straight, intense figure with new interest. They walked in silence for a block and he touched her arm with a movement of instinctive chivalrous protection as they crossed Second Avenue.