Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/463

 fashion of your country and of your century, that's the thing for you to do, whether or not.

"I believe that's what Europe has done for me, made me realize that our present fashion isn't foreordained, nor the only one natural to men. Think of all the centuries after the Roman bridges went down, when people got along without bridges, because no provision was made to keep alive the minds that happened to be born with latent constructive powers. No, no, there must be no fooling around with godless abstract mathematical ideas, nor fiddling with compasses. A crucifix or a sword must be in every man's hand. Every man must be a fighter or a saint, if he was to be allowed by public opinion to have his necessary share of esteem and self-respect. And there are so many kinds of folks besides fighters and saints! Century after century they died without having lived, and we're walking around over their dust this minute. And yet even the fighters and the saints needed bridges! And here we are in the twentieth century, jumping the life out of anybody who isn't interested in building bridges, and hooting at him if he feels the impulse to try to be a saint. It's enough to make you tear your hair out by handfuls, isn't it?"

Another day Marise launched him off on the same theme by asking him skeptically, "Well, suppose you could have your own way about things, what would you do to help people find their own right group and work and climate and surroundings? I don't see how there is the faintest possibility of helping them."

"I'd start in," said Neale, "by suggesting to them, all through their youth, in every way possible, the idea that folks could and should move freely from the life they're born to, to another one that suits their natures. They have to do it while they're young and footfree, don't they? I wouldn't start in by hammering them over the head with the idea that there are only one or two classes that anybody wants to belong to. I'd jump with all my weight on that idiotic notion that one class is better than another, as if any class was any good at all for you, if it's not the one you belong to naturally! I'd grease the ways to get from one to another, instead of building