Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/252

 there among the cab-drivers and the police. He thinks that he is being like Roosevelt. And that he's like Roosevelt when he goes around among the 'peasantry,' as he calls them, whooping it up for big families, and patting them on the back for having eighteen little morons, and making it a crime to tell them how to get a chance to live like civilized beings."

"I've heard your father say very sensible things about that. You do him an injustice."

"No, I don't. We believe in telling people the truth; and in finding out first what it is. Father believes in making a Federal statute first, to keep the peasantry peasants, and busy propagating mill-hands and soldiers; and then in violating it himself as he sees fit. Father is personally interested in the truth, and he really knows a lot about it; but he wouldn't dream of telling it to anyone but an intimate friend—he doesn't think it's safe. And mother doesn't think it's decent. Besides, she hates like sin to admit even to herself the existence of any fact that doesn't fit into her vision of a 'nice' world. She likes to sit on the shore and order the sea back. She really enjoys deceiving herself, and is pretty good at it. Father isn't like that."