“No, by God,” swore Samuel Dodsworth.
“It isn’t that. A drink or two, and a jolly bunch, do loosen me up. I’m slow at starting—Hm! Very slow! Here I am fifty-two years old, and just this last year or so I’ve wanted to be more than a money-coining machine. … To be something. Though God knows what! … Eh?” (He answered furiously a chorus of accusers.) “I have been a good citizen! And I have brought up my children! And I have paid my debts! And I have done the job that was first at hand! And I have loved my friends! And now I’m not going to stand back the rest of my life and be satisfied and dead—dead on my feet—dead!
“I wish I’d known Kurt before. I’d like to’ve gone off for a few weeks with him and Ross Ireland. Only I ought to’ve done it ten years ago, and now it’s—But I won’t let it be too late!
“Hm! You let! It’s what Fran will let her dear husband do—
“Why is it I always go back to that—as though it was she that cramped my style, instead of my own lack of brains?”
And, annoyed by the way in which thoughts scamper around in circles if you once let them loose, Sam came abruptly out of his meditation and was again the large and prosperous American husband of a lovely American wife, a worthy husband listening with meekness to the conversation of her European friends.
Sam had noted, and been rather surprised at it, that Kurt von Obersdorf did not condescend to a mere university professor, as any American of good family would have done. For all his love of gossiping, Kurt listened humbly when Professor Braut really got going, like a liner towed out through little ripples of talk, tugs yanking at its sulky ponderousness, but finally plunging into the long rollers of conversation.
Braut was lecturing Fran as though she were a rather small seminar. He did violence, while he talked, to the English W and V and T, yet in his earnestness, his was no comic dialect:
“Emotionally, as a Prussian, with the symbols of blood and iron, of Bismarck and Luther and der alte Fritz, I detest the prostituted elegance of Paris and the Italians, like children playing at Empire. Yet all the time I think of myself—most people like me think of themselves—more as Europeans than as German or French or Polish or Hungarian; we think of ourselves, whatever family differences we may have, as standing together against the Russians (who are certainly not European but Asiatic), against the British, the Americans—however we admire them—the Latin Americans, the Asiatics, the colonists. The European culture is aristocratic. I do not mean that boastfully; I do not speak of famous old families, like that of our friend Graf Obersdorf here. I mean that we are aristocratic, as against democratic, in that we believe that the nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men—like Einstein and Freud and Thomas Mann—and that ordinary, undistinguished people (who may be, mind you, counts or kings, as well as servant maids) are happier in contributing to produce such great men than in having more automobiles and bathtubs.
“And by the aristocratic tradition of the real Europe I do not mean any hauteur. I think perhaps I have seen more rudeness to servants—as well, of course, as more rudeness to masters—in America than anywhere in Europe. Servants here are not so well paid, but they have more security and more respect. An American thinks of a good cook as a low person; a European respects him as an artist.
“The European, the aristocrat, feels that he is responsible to past generations to carry on the culture they have formed. He feels that graciousness, agreeable manners, loyalty to his own people, are more important than wealth; and he feels that to carry on his tradition, he must have knowledge—much knowledge. Why, think of what the young European must learn, if he is not to be ashamed of himself!
“He must know at least two languages, and if he does not know them, his friends are sorry that he is so poor a linguist. He must have—even though he may plan to be a stockbroker or an importer, or sell your automobiles, Mr. Dodsworth—he must have some understanding of music, painting, literature, so that he will really enjoy a concert or an exhibition of pictures, and not go there to make an impression. His manners must be so good that he can be careless. He must know the politics of all the great countries—I would bet you, Mrs. Dodsworth, that my four grandsons, though they have never been in America or England, know as much about President Coolidge and Secretary Hoover and Governor Smith as most Americans of their age.
“They must know cooking and wines. They themselves may prefer to live on bread and cheese, but they must be able to give their guests good dinners, and at not much cost—oh, so terribly little cost most of us can afford now since the war! And most of all, they must understand women, and the beginning of that—I t’ink Mrs. Dodsworth will agree—is really to like women, and to like them to be women, and not imitation men!
“That is a small bit of the required training of the real European—German or Swiss or Dutch or whatefer! And that training helps to keep us together, understanding each other, no matter how foolish we are and suicide with Great Wars! However we may oppose it, we are all at heart Pan-Europeans. We feel that the real Continental Europe is the last refuge of individuality, leisure, privacy, quiet happiness. We think that good talk between intelligent friends in a café in Vienna or Paris or
