Dangerous Days

There had been once, in Herman Klein the making of a good American.

He had come to America, not at the call of freedom, but of peace and

plenty. Nevertheless, he had possibilities.

Taken in time he might have become a good American. But nothing was done

to stimulate in him a sentiment for his adopted land. He would, indeed,

have been, for all his citizenship papers, a man without a country but

for one thing.

The Fatherland had never let go. When he went to the Turnverein, it was

to hear the old tongue, to sing the old songs. Visiting Germans from

overseas were constantly lecturing, holding before him the vision of

great Germany. He saw moving-pictures of Germany; he went to meetings

which commenced with "Die Wacht am Rhine." One Christmas he received a

handsome copy of a photograph of the Kaiser through the mail. He never

knew who sent it, but he had it framed in a gilt frame, and it hung over

the fireplace in the sitting-room.

He had been adopted by America, but he had not adopted America, save

his own tiny bit of it. He took what the new country gave him with no

faintest sense that he owed anything in return beyond his small yearly

taxes. He was neither friendly nor inimical.

His creed through the years had been simple: to owe no man money, even

for a day; to spend less than he earned; to own his own home; to rise

early, work hard, and to live at peace with his neighbors. He had

learned English and had sent Anna to the public school. He spoke English

with her, always. And on Sunday he put on his best clothes, and sat

in the German Lutheran church, dozing occasionally, but always rigidly

erect.

With his first savings he had bought a home, a tiny two-roomed frame

cottage on a bill above the Spencer mill, with a bit of waste land that

he turned into a thrifty garden. Anna was born there, and her mother

had died there ten years later. But long enough before that he had added

four rooms, and bought an adjoining lot. At that time the hill had been

green; the way to the little white house had been along and up a winding

path, where in the spring the early wild flowers came out on sunny

banks, and the first buds of the neighborhood were on Klein's own

lilac-bushes.

He had had a magnificent sense of independence those days, and of

freedom.

He voted religiously, and now and then in the evenings he had been the

moderate member of a mild socialist group. Theoretically, he believed

that no man should amass a fortune by the labor of others. Actually he

felt himself well paid, a respected member of society, and a property

owner.