The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-08-03
CHAPTER VII.


Pigs and Politics.
When a man is sixty and has lived
well; when he has had money without
moiiing and honor without envy; has
received and amplihed to the full a
heritage of the best without effort and
without price; when youth and ma
turity have been chastened and nodded
by that fine, rugged American tradi-
ton which began with the founding of
Harvard and the jamestown planters,
and followed easily the fighting line OF
pioneers as the frontiers of the repub-
lie were lengthened-when one has, in
deed, had, righteously and wholesomely,
all there is to be had, there is apt
to come an arrest of development.
There comes a GOODNESS of blood, re-
serve OF faiths, a caution of more than
age and the finer usage One will dis
cover at least one family of this sort
in every small town of the midwest
which is of and yet apart from the
local aristocracy of the Soil-enriched,
the banker, the grocer, the lawyer, and
landholder; family with an Eastern
tradition of the best-New England or
Virginia. pretension to the elegance
of culture; a group which, while easily
the leaders, sits in state of correct
isolation lest their honorable indIvidu-
alism be trampled by the newer. needs
of newer blood.
The Van Harris, migrating leisurely
behind the star of empire, had beheld
altar the dust and shouting; they had
been formed by social forces that had
run their fire of youth, that New Eng
land state of mind of ante-slavery
days which had once been the national
conscience, but was now vestigal and
static. The inpouring of hungrier races
TO the midwest, who had scratched
the bleak prairies, finding the fat and
virgin lands now gone; the surge OF
the political revolts of the trans
Mississippi settlers, time and again
from the days Of populism to the pres
ent; the pathos and the idealism of all
this eager building, had not touched
them. Their county, one of the Iowa
Reserve, had felt family the thunder
OF the awakening; the dingy Offices of
the Rome courthouse had been filled
by a group of the best people" so
long that they seemed the heredita-
ment of a class and leadership.
There were younger men who grew
up to feel vaguely the lapse between
what was best in the days of their
fathers and the needs of today. Har-
Ian Van Hart himself had discerned
curiously the rift between the fine
spiritual environ of his fathers exam
pie and the new, troublous, social con-
science. In his debates of high school,
his loungings about Wiley Curran's
news shop, his friendship with Arne
Vance, son of Old Jake, the political
farmer" the county's first insurgent,
he had wondere': at. The new move
ment was no hunger-rebellion of the
cities, the midwest was enriched
why, then, the outcry?
Harlan was packing for his depar-
ture He thought rather grimly of the
journey East. Elise would be on the
train on her way to school, also, and
he would have to talk to her. Elise
and all the town were curious with
some story concerning him and Au-
relic Lindstrom-nothing definite, but
all the more perplexing for that. Har-
Ian had slowly famed since last night
complacence of his life. When the
packing was done he sat by the win
dow, where he could see the red and
covering the rock race of Eagle Point,
back of the town. Today a blue haze
enveloped the highest pinnacle. Some
where, out of this lazy freedom, a
COW bell tinkled. 1t was Saturday, and
he knew the boys were gathering wild
crabapples up along Sinsinawa in the
hills and routing rabbits out of the
fence corners. He felt immeasurably
old, some way, and out of all this
kindly prosiness. He had an inclina-
ton to climb to the hills, and then
checked i with a bitter refusal-the
hills and all this autumn glory were
a part of her and the inextricable
confusion of wrong and right, duty
and honor, into which he was plunged.
He was angered at his mother; he was
enraged at Aurel:e. He had asked her
to give up this silly business of her
prize-winning, and she had sturdily re-
fused at the last. His mother, his
class. his tradition, career, Harvard,
and the laval had to do with his
intolerable sense OF rebellion and de-
feat. Something was inevitably wrong,
perhaps with himself. Perhaps, he did
not even love Aurelie so much-it was
summer madness, as his mother had
said; but he felt a shame that he
would allow this. A man, he told him.
self, would smash his way through to
win, if he greatly desired; but he was
a Van Hart and they were not given
to that sort of thing. They would
coolly consider a great many things
before they struck blow.
He had intended to go down to the
drug store corner, where the fellows
usually met to smoke and chaff and
grind out airs on Plsyter's photograph,
while groups of girls came in from
school or shopping to buy sodas. He
would meet them all in the frank COM
radeship of the towns way, walk home
with one, or loiter at the high school
practice. There were any number of
f,es -.