Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/148

 palliative to my mortification—that Mrs. Gerould was in some slight degree responsible for my unhappy gaucherie. She might, so to speak, have taken the precaution of drawing the curtains and closing the door.

Embarrassed as I was by overhearing her confidential opinions of the West and its universities, I was even more acutely perturbed by another matter. I felt quite indecently out of place and ruddy with shame at having thrust myself into the private circle to which alone she must have desired to communicate her views of Miss Alcott's New England and the culture of Concord. Like many Americans, whether still dwelling in adorable nooks where their ancestors settled two hundred years ago, or whethei scattered across the plains or among the Sierras or up and down the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, I feel a mysterious and almost passionate tenderness for New England. Wherever the sons and daughters of her spirit may sojourn or wander New England still pulls at their hearts as their motherland. With her exquisite white villages, clustering around the white church spire, under the maples and the pure blue heaven, between overshadowing hills, she flashes upon the inward eye, in smoky city