Plays by Susan Glaspell Part 36

FEJEVARY: You couldn't show them a little more elegantly?

HORACE: I'm going to sick the Legion on 'em.

FEJEVARY: Are you talking about the Hindus?

HORACE: Yes, the dirty dagoes.

FEJEVARY: Hindus aren't dagoes you know, Horace.

HORACE: Well, what's the difference? This foreign element gets my goat.

SENATOR: My boy, you talk like an American. But what do you mean--Hindus?

FEJEVARY: There are two young Hindus here as students. And they're good students.

HORACE: Sissies.

FEJEVARY: But they must preach the gospel of free India--non-British India.

SENATOR: Oh, that won't do.

HORACE: They're nothing but Reds, I'll say. Well, one of 'em's going back to get his. (_grins_)

FEJEVARY: There were three of them last year. One of them is wanted back home.

SENATOR: I remember now. He's to be deported.

HORACE: And when they get him--(_movement as of pulling a rope_) They hang there.

FEJEVARY: The other two protest against our not fighting the deportation of their comrade. They insist it means death to him. (_brus.h.i.+ng off a thing that is inclined to worry him_) But we can't handle India's affairs.

SENATOR: I should think not!

HORACE: Why, England's our ally! That's what I told them. But you can't argue with people like that. Just wait till I find the speeches of Abraham Lincoln!

(_Pa.s.ses through to left_)

SENATOR: Fine boy you have, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: He's a live one. You should see him in a football game.

Wouldn't hurt my feelings in the least to have him a little more of a student, but--

SENATOR: Oh, well, you want him to be a regular fellow, don't you, and grow into a man among men?

FEJEVARY: He'll do that, I think. It was he who organized our boys for the steel strike--went right in himself and took a striker's job. He came home with a black eye one night, presented to him by a picket who started something by calling him a scab. But Horace wasn't thinking about his eye. According to him, it was not in the cla.s.s with the striker's upper lip. 'Father,' he said, 'I gave him more red than he could swallow. The blood just--' Well, I'll spare you--but Horace's muscle is one hundred per cent American. (_going to the window_) Let me show you something. You can see the old Morton place off on that first little hill. (_pointing left_) The first rise beyond the valley.

SENATOR: The long low house?

FEJEVARY: That's it. You see, the town for the most part swung around the other side of the hill, so the Morton place is still a farm.

SENATOR: But you're growing all the while. The town'll take the cornfield yet.

FEJEVARY: Yes, our steel works is making us a city.

SENATOR: And this old boy (_turning to the portrait of_ SILAS MORTON) can look out on his old home--and watch the valley grow.

FEJEVARY: Yes--that was my idea. His picture really should be in Memorial Hall, but I thought Uncle Silas would like to be up here among the books, and facing the old place. (_with a laugh_) I confess to being a little sentimental.

SENATOR: We Americans have lots of sentiment, Mr Fejevary. It's what makes us--what we are. (FEJEVARY _does not speak; there are times when the senator seems to trouble him_) Well, this is a great site for a college. You can see it from the whole country round.

FEJEVARY: Yes, that was Uncle Silas' idea. He had a reverence for education. It grew, in part, out of his feeling for my father. He was a poet--really, Uncle Silas. (_looking at the picture_) He gave this hill for a college that we might become a deeper, more sensitive people--

(_Two girls, convulsed with the giggles, come tumbling in_.)

DORIS: (_confused_) Oh--oh, excuse us.

FUSSIE: (_foolishly_) We didn't know anybody was here.

(MR FEJEVARY _looks at them sternly. The girls retreat_.)

SENATOR: (_laughing_) Oh, well girls will be girls. I've got three of my own.

(HORACE _comes back, carrying an open book_.)

HORACE: Say, this must be a misprint.

FEJEVARY: (_glancing at the back of the book_) Oh, I think not.

HORACE: From his first inaugural address to Congress, March 4, 1861.

(_reads_) 'This country with its inst.i.tutions belong to the people who inhabit it.' Well, that's all right. 'Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their const.i.tutional right of amending it'--(_after a brief consideration_) I suppose that that's all right--but listen! 'or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.'

FEJEVARY: He was speaking in another age. An age of different values.

SENATOR: Terms change their significance from generation to generation.

HORACE: I suppose they do--but that puts me in bad with these lice. They quoted this and I said they were liars.

SENATOR: And what's the idea? They're weary of our existing government and are about to dismember or overthrow it?

HORACE: I guess that's the dope.

FEJEVARY: Look here, Horace--speak accurately. Was it in relation to America they quoted this?

HORACE: Well, maybe they were talking about India then. But they were standing up for being revolutionists. We were giving them an earful about it, and then they spring Lincoln on us. Got their nerve--I'll say--quoting Lincoln to us.

SENATOR: The fact that they are quoting it shows it's being misapplied.

HORACE: (_approvingly_) I'll tell them that. But gee--Lincoln oughta been more careful what he said. Ignorant people don't know how to take such things.