Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/139

 article about it for Broom. New York did not boast the only skyscrapers. What about the soaring smokestacks everywhere in the U.S? Weren't they the classic columns of America, and they had a functional use producing the highest standard of living the world ever had known. One strange thing though, American farmhouses never looked rooted in the soil as did Europe's. Perhaps Americans were a city people even on their farms, using the soil as a source of wealth to carry them away from the isolation of vast spaces. No, that was only part of it, not taking into account the pioneers. Immigrants molded in the melting pot. Like himself, taking off a beret for a felt hat. Uniformity was a composite. A new form.

"You see, it's a painting of the church where I went to Sunday school set in a typical Nebraska landscape," Clem explained to Lucy when she first looked at the painting.

"Then why don't you paint yourself in as a little boy?" Lucy asked, since to her what was unseen did not exist.

Clem had been annoyed by her literalness, but later a small dark figure walking toward the church seemed the final accent required. A design, more than a figure, it gave the painting a touch reminiscent of Rousseau, and this pleased him.

"Say," remarked Henkel, as Larson nodded enthusiastic agreement, "that's really swell. It'd make a swell Christmas card, or calendar. You could sell a lot."

This admiration added to the pleasure Clem already was feeling at having seen his "Hepaticas" at the top of a Saturday page in the Husker-Sun. I ought to give Semy a painting to show my appreciation, he had thought. But Semy had declined graciously, saying he wouldn't dream of accepting so generous an offer. Getting something from Clem could wait until a more propitious moment, he thought. Moreover, Clem's paintings left him cold.

The rocking yellow streetcar to the river woods vibrated with a clattering echo as though the earth were a drum. The motorman, bored with continual stopping and starting through populated streets, liked to get up a good speed through the fields of mustard flowers and clover to catch himself a few extra minutes of relaxation at the end of the line.

"Think I'll buy me an auto this summer, then we can take longer trips," Clem shouted above the screech of the wheels.

In the studio he had explained his feverish anticipation of the Rh