Rose Wilder Lane

“ She felt ashamed while she finished dressing. They were lovely to her, she thought, and they accepted people as they were, without sneaking little criticisms and feelings of superiority. She did not know what she thought about anything.
Her indecisions were cut short by the squawk of an automobile-horn beneath the windows. With last hasty slaps of powder-puffs and a snatching of gloves, they hurried down to meet Mr. Kennedy at the door, and again Helen felt his charm like a tangible current between them. Words choked in her throat, and she stood silent in a little whirlpool of greetings. ”

“ Then the great bell clanged once, and he and all the men hurried into the house, where, sitting at one long table in the kitchen, they ate the breakfast Margaret and the hired girls brought to them, piping hot from the stove. After that they scattered, driving down the farm lanes to the fields, while the sun rose, and the meadows, sparkling with dew, scented the air with clover.
The sun rose higher, pouring its heat down upon them as they worked, and a shrill, whirring noise rose from all the tiny insects in the grass, a note like the voice of the heat. ”

“ Beyond Shijak the road goes over the last low hill, and twenty miles of plain lie before it, most sparsely dotted with the great white houses of the beys of central Albania. Against the eastern sky the towering mountains, with their eternal smoke of clouds, catch the last rays of the sun and make magic with it. For an hour the colors shift and change, plum purple, orange gold, mauve and violet and sea green, until at last only a pale gold moon and a silvery star shine in a lemon-yellow sky. And the seven white minarets of Tirana lift above the green of trees. ”

“ His footsteps followed her through the ghostly dimness of the house. The floor seemed far beneath her feet, and through her quivering emotions shot a gleam of amusement. She was feeling like a girl in her teens! Her hand sought the electric light-switch as it might have clutched at a life-line.
"Helen, wait a minute!" She started, stopped, her arm out-stretched toward the wall "I've got to say something."
The tortured determination of his voice told her that the coming moment could not be evaded. A cool, accustomed steadiness of nerves and brain rose to meet it. ”

“ By some trick of light reflected from peak or cloud, the trail and the valley below it were visible in a green-gray ghost of daylight, which made us seem unreal even to ourselves. And we climbed, interminably, forever, putting one foot before the other with the patient deep attentiveness of trudging animals, while rain dripped unheeded from forehead to cheek to chin. We climbed, absorbed in detail of slippery shale and stubborn bowlder, till Perolli’s exclamation shocked us as though a rock had spoken. ”

“ The whirling dust-eddies over the cobbles, the blown scraps of paper, the flapping of her skirts, seemed part of the miserable confusion in her own mind.
How could she have forgotten Paul even for a moment? She had been heartless, head-strong, foolish to stay on in San Francisco, trifling so with the most precious thing in her life. Paul had been superhumanly patient and kind and unselfish to let her do it. She had never loved him more deeply than at that moment when with a dim sense of fleeing to him for refuge she hurried toward a telephone. ”

“ It is not strange, with this belief of millions of persons that the men who have been at the head of our great business development are greater than ordinary men, that most of them believe it themselves and act on that assumption. Henry Ford does not. His greatness lies in that.
With millions piling upon millions in our hands, most of us would lose our viewpoint. He has kept his—a plain mechanic’s outlook on life and human relations. He sees men all as parts of a great machine, in which every waste motion, every broken or inefficient part means a loss to the whole. ”

“ Now that I am back in my own century, writing of those days in the Albanian mountains, I understand why men so easily slip into the ancient savagery of war and all war’s atrocities. All that we call civilization is like a tune heard yesterday, a little thing floating on the surface of our minds, which sometimes we can keep step to, and then in a moment it is gone so that we cannot remember it.
Upon the trail that day we were barbarians, simple and primitive; we were isolated, small bits of warmth and energy in a hostile universe of stone and rain. ”

“ It's eight o'clock and of course you've had your supper. Your mother's probably finishing up the kitchen work and putting the bread to rise, and you haven't anything to do but sit on the porch and look at the stars and the lighted windows here and there in the darkness, and listen to the breeze in the trees. And here I am, sitting in a place that looks just like a hothouse with all the flowers come to life. There's a ball up-stairs, and a million girls have gone through the corridors, with flowers and feathers and jewels in their hair, and dresses and evening cloaks as beautiful as petals. ”

“ America has built on them the richest, most successful nation in the world to-day. Just so far as we continue to trust them, to build on them, we will continue to be prosperous and successful.
"I know this. If my life has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that. I will spend every ounce of energy I have, every hour of my life, in the effort to prove it to other people. Only so far as we all believe it, only so far as we all use our strength and our abilities, not to hurt, but to help, other peoples, will we help ourselves." ”

“ The government had made Tirana the capital for the same reason that the teacher puts the worst boy of the class in the front seat. But this was no solace to Scutari or Elbassan.
Tirana, the white, low town, drowsed in the sun; water rippled in the gutters of the winding, walled streets; donkeys laden with cedar boughs, the brooms of Tirana, carefully picked their footing on the uneven cobbles; women with gayly painted cradles on their backs trudged behind the donkeys. ”

“ Through the thin wall of leaves they caught glimpses of the broad river, the yellow waves of which gave back the color of the sky in flashes of metallic blue. And suddenly, stepping out of the perfumed shadow, they saw the orchards. A sea of petals, fragile, translucent, unearthly as waves of pure rosy light, rippled at their feet.
The loveliness of it filled Helen's eyes with tears. "Oh!" she said, softly. "Oh—Paul!" Her hand went out blindly toward him. One more breath of magic would make the moment perfect. She did not know what she wanted, but her whole being was a longing for it. ”

“ He knew machines. He knew that the smallest part of one was as necessary as the largest, that every nut and screw was indispensable to the success of the whole. And while he brooded over the mighty machine his genius had created, the thought slowly formed itself in his mind that those multiplying millions of his were the weak spot in the organization. Those millions represented energy, and through him they were draining out of the machine, accumulating in a useless, idle store. ”

“ At four in the morning the house was astir. Out of the darkness yawning men came to stir the slumbering fire; the byraktor appeared without his turban, a weird figure with his shaven, skin-white head and long black scalplock, and began to make the morning coffee; the sheep and goats were driven out into the rain by the ragged shepherdesses. I sat up and put on my opangi, and the sleepy Rexh, still streaked with red dye from his fez, rolled out of his blankets. ”

“ It was all that Helen did not have. The crudely papered walls enclosed a haven warmed by innumerable homely satisfactions. How sweet to have no care but the crispness of curtains, the folding away of linen, the baking of bread! She was an alien spirit here, with her aching head and heart, her disheveled hair and dusty shoes. A tear slipped down her cheek and spread into a damp splash on the white pillow.
She rose quickly, knowing that she must be stronger than the longing that shook her. ”

“ A simple man, seeing things simply, he had arrived at a place of tremendous power in America. He had come to a time when he need no longer work at his engine or his factory organization. He had leisure to survey his country and its problems, to apply to them his machine idea.
And he saw in America a great machine, made up of countless human parts—a machine which should work evenly, efficiently, harmoniously, for the production and just distribution of food, shelter, clothes, all the necessities of a simple and comfortable life. ”

“ We had ventured out of the courtyard into Tirana, that low white town that, to the eye, seemed sleeping in the moonlight, and to the ear was bedlam. Bullets were whizzing, scattering white plaster, smashing tiles. But mosques and minarets, arcaded streets, arched stone bridge, rippling water, were peaceful in the moonlight. No human being seemed to be abroad, save us two, who wandered like forsaken ghosts through the incredible clamor.
The windows of the Vocational School were alight, the American flag was over the gate. ”

“ Helen found occupation enough in the sheer delight of going so swiftly through a blur of light and darkness toward an unknown end. She did not resist the fascination of the man beside her; there was exhilaration in his being there, security in his necessary attention to handling the big machine. They passed the park gates, and the car leaped like a live thing at the touch of a whip, plunging faster down the smooth road between dark masses of shrubbery. ”

“ The donkey walked with little, quick, indefatigable steps; the gendarme swung along easily, his rifle on his back; Rexh trudged beside me with his hand on the saddle. The soft earth let us pass without a sound.
“Tired, Rexh?”
“No, Mrs. Lane.”
“What is the matter?”
“I am thinking that you will go away to your own country and forget us. You say you will come back to Albania, but you never will. It is easy to forget when one is far away; the mind changes. A mind is like the water in a river. We will forget you, too. ”