At two o’clock Sam, with the little girl in
his arms and with one of the boys seated on either
side of him, sat in a stateroom of a New York flyer
—bound for Sue.
Sam McPherson is a living American. He is a rich
man, but his money, that he spent so many years and
so much of his energy acquiring, does not mean much
to him. What is true of him is true of more wealthy
Americans than is commonly believed. Something
has happened to him that has happened to the others
also, to how many of the others? Men of courage,
with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have
come of a strong race, have taken up what they had
thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward.
Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs
a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree.
Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions
have become weak. Old gods are dying.
“It is only when you are torn from
your mooring and
drift like a rudderless ship
I am able to come
near to you.”
The banner has been carried forward by a strong daring
man filled with determination.
What is inscribed on it?
It would perhaps be dangerous to inquire too closely.
We Americans have believed that life must have point
and purpose. We have called ourselves Christians,
but the sweet Christian philosophy of failure has been
unknown among us. To say of one of us that he
has failed is to take life and courage away.
For so long we have had to push blindly forward.
Roads had to be cut through our forests, great towns
must be built. What in Europe has been slowly
building itself out of the fibre of the generations
we must build now, in a lifetime.
In our father’s day, at night in the forests
of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and on the wide prairies,
wolves howled. There was fear in our fathers and
mothers, pushing their way forward, making the new
land. When the land was conquered fear remained,
the fear of failure. Deep in our American souls
the wolves still howl.
* * * *
*
There were moments after Sam came back to Sue, bringing
the three children, when he thought he had snatched
success out of the very jaws of failure.
But the thing from which he had all his life been
fleeing was still there. It hid itself in the
branches of the trees that lined the New England roads
where he went to walk with the two boys. At night
it looked down at him from the stars.
Perhaps life wanted acceptance from him, but he could
not accept. Perhaps his story and his life ended
with the home-coming, perhaps it began then.
The home-coming was not in itself a completely happy
event. There was a house with a fire at night
and the voices of the children. In Sam’s
breast there was a feeling of something alive, growing.
Sue was generous, but she was not now the Sue of the
bridle path in Jackson Park in Chicago or the Sue
who had tried to remake the world by raising fallen
women. On his arrival at her house, on a summer
night, coming in suddenly and strangely with the three
strange children—a little inclined toward
tears and homesickness—she was flustered
and nervous.
