Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/253

 "So you side with him there?"

"Yes, except that father is a sort of double personality. Privately, you know, dad is a cynical cosmopolitan, and he thinks America is a hick joint except for half a dozen of his own cronies. But you know how he stands in public, wrapping the flag around him, and doing the big bowwow at Japan and Mexico, and standing pat with the pattest element of the Grand Old Party's patriots. Dad knows who cuts the melons. Dolly and I are sick of that. We want to come in on the ground floor and on the square. We want to have careers that we have made for ourselves, and not be handed something on a silver plate by one of father's friends. Then we are sort of sick of this 'cosmopolitan' stuff—which means only that you hate your own things and can't even smoke American tobacco unless it's been imported from England. We've got so tired of it that we are going to organize a new party with Flapjacks and Ham and Eggs for our slogan. The fact is, we get a sort of kick out of our feeling for the country—as our own, you know, a poor thing but our own; and we want to try and see if we can't be honest-to-goodness Americans before we die—if you understand what I mean."