Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will, whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack--oh slobbery morsel--about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as she dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think of his mother. At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not, the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps the reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to protect--If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor, do it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she is a Polock. You never saw such courage. The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of rails--steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these modern messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that one there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks, Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America! The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands. A fine woman. CHAPTER XI [Illustration] The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in Chile. They are bound. The background of America is not Europe but America. _Eh bien mon vieux coco_, this stuff that you have been writing today, do you mean that you are attempting to set down the American background? You will go mad. Why? Because you are trying to do nothing at all. The American background? It is Europe. It can be nothing else. Your very method proves what I say. You have no notion what you are going to write from one word to the other. It is madness. You call this the background of American life? Madness? As far as I have gone it is accurate. It is painting the wind. Ah, that would be something.