The flush had faded from Mildred’s cheek, but I fancied from the look in her eyes that she was in no mood to be trifled with; this was no mere passing gust of passion. She had received a wound which had cut her to the quick; for, as I afterwards learned to know, hers was one of those rare natures, rare in men, rarer still in women, which scarcely feels a personal slight, but to which a grand, absorbing idea is more real and vital than all else, and which counts treason to this the unpardonable sin. “If I speak, I must speak plainly,” said Mildred. “I have neither time nor wit to clothe my thoughts in ambiguous, inoffensive words. Like plain, blunt Antony, I can only ‘speak right on’ and say ‘what in my heart doth beat and burn.’” “Good, I like that,” said Mr. Mather gravely, and there was an instant’s silence, broken only by the chime of the cathedral clock as it struck the hour. “I have been thinking,” said Mildred quietly, “of those words in that record of the young Hebrew, who, it is said, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. I have been thinking also of those words of our own Emerson: ‘We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another name for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of Providence in behalf of the human race.’ Perhaps you do not see the connection between these two thoughts, but to me it seems very close. To have for one’s inheritance the birthright of American citizenship seems to me something so rich and precious that to despise it and ignobly sell it,—not like Esau for the mess of pottage which could relieve his hunger,—but to sell it to the stranger for the sake of gaining immunity from responsibility, yes, more than that, throwing it away out of sheer contempt for it and ingratitude for what it has done for one, this seems to me the acme of cowardice and selfishness.” I noticed that Mr. Mather knit his brows at this, and I thought I detected a slight flush in his cheeks, but perhaps it was only the firelight. Mildred did not look up or hesitate, but went steadily on. “We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom’s honey and milk; But ’twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.” “Yes, they won it, not we; and we, the heirs of all the ages, for whom the whole creation has groaned and travailed until now, we, the favored children of the best age, the best land which history has known, we idly fold our hands and let the wealth of all the past, which others have toiled for and shed bloody sweat to gain, fall into our laps as a matter of course, as if it were but the just due of such lordly creatures as we. “Of what value, pray, is all our study of history if we have so little realizing sense of its meaning, if we have no imagination to fill out with quivering, throbbing life this record of the past, which shows what mankind has been, and what, thank God, we have escaped?