They don't on me. I
am not ornamental by nature. Now that I have told all there is to
tell, the reader is at liberty to agree with my little boy concerning
the upshot of it. He was having a heart-to-heart talk with his
mother the other day, in the course of which she told him that we
must be patient; no one in the world was all good except God.
[Illustration: The Cross of Dannebrog.]
"And you," said he, admiringly. He is his father's son.
She demurred, but he stoutly maintained his own.
"I'll bet you," he said, "if you were to ask lots of people around
here they would say you were fine. But"--he struggled reflectively
with a button--"Gee! I can't understand why they make such a fuss
about papa."
Out of the mouth of babes, etc. The boy is right. I cannot either,
and it makes me feel small. I did my work and tried to put into it
what I thought citizenship ought to be, when I made it out. I wish
I had made it out earlier for my own peace of mind. And that is
all there is to it.
For hating the slum what credit belongs to me? Who could love
it? When it comes to that, perhaps it was the open, the woods, the
freedom of my Danish fields I loved, the contrast that was hateful.
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