Glenway Wescott

“ So young wives imitated the mothers of the men they loved. America became a matriarchate.
Meanwhile the colonists had moved and moved again, from east to west, into every corner of the continent; and each migration repeated, with a little less religion and a little more weariness, the pilgrimage which had brought them there: disappointed men going further, hoping still . . .
At last there was no corner where wealth and joy might be thought to dwell, no riverbed without a city, no empty valley, no more coasts. ”

“ Alwyn said, "She lived with us when I was a child. I watched them all closely then, much too closely. . . ."
As he remembered his childhood, it seemed that much of it had been spent in the center of a carpeted floor; and all about in a circle of rocking-chairs there had been women and men—-grandparents, and their friends, and old cousins, and great-aunts, and uncles; and behind each one a life had extended into the past like a corridor—poorly lighted, long corridors winding away in every direction, through reticence and forgetfulness, to their youth ”

“ Lifting two heavy rings in the air with his blue-white hand, a hunchbacked critic could be heard saying, "The psychology of love undergoes a complete revolution every twenty-five years. In America, I am told, every fifteen years; but they have no fine arts, so their passions are lacking in interest." ”

“ From the half-ashamed love-making sprang a great population, and from the prayers muttered in new log cabins, the certainty that the God of poverty had blessed this people with His uplifted, enigmatic finger. ”

“ Some believed that America was like a goblet lying in the ocean, and when one drank from it one would become so happy that one would dare to remember one's grief. Some tried to believe that it was an earthly heaven or heavenly earth, where saintliness which other men would worship would be easy, where wealth would be apportioned according to saintliness. Those who died were never disillusioned ”

“ Two younger sons had been obliged to come to America in search of fortune. They had failed to find it; their descendants were still seeking, seeking among fools and brutes. Superior men, cheated of their inheritance, disguised as inferiors and unable to reveal themselves. . . . They said little, but this conviction took possession of all their minds: they were not born to be beasts of burden; they should not have to work as these others worked; they were not menials, but deserved a sweeter fate; life was unjust. This conviction was inherited by every Tower, from father to son ”

“ So a series of sad persecutions took place.
It became the land of extreme youth. Middle age was merely a struggle; old age was a time when failure could not be disguised, or a time of success which did not satisfy. ”

“ Men grew rich in a day or overnight; they could always grow richer; the future was illimitably generous. Nevertheless, millions remained poor. Before their eyes lay the feast—they could not eat; and though there were millions of them, each felt alone in his poverty. ”

“ He tried to picture to himself his ancestors: ignorant men with delicate bodies, hoping for wealth as a reward for virtue; boys with chapped mouths hunting by the light of lanterns; fearless girls becoming sickly mothers. A company of dead or distant relatives, on a continent without much elegance, without palaces, without rest. . . . There sprang up in his mind a great number of stories and fragments of stories, in which they were gesticulating and embracing and working.
Alwyn daydreaming in Austria, a little self-consciously a poet. ”

“ Disillusioned but imaginative, these went through the motions of hope, still pioneers. They will be seen while America lasts, proud and poor (like pretenders to royal blood, the site of whose throne has long been forgotten) among mechanics, surgeons, singers with androgynous voices, reporters, professional players of games, orators, gamblers in food, hooded vigilants, gold diggers, salesmen of salves, film stars, architects, trance mediums.
It was too well, that is, too badly written, in the style (Alwyn thought) of a public speech. ”

“ For a moment all Europe seemed less significant than the vicissitudes of pioneers, men who were anonymous unless they were somebody's relatives. He did not quite like their suffering, their illiterate mysticism, their air of failure; but he understood them, or fancied that he did. It did not matter whether he liked them or not—he was their son. ”

“ Alwyn's friend looked at him sharply over the grapes and figs on the table. "A good woman. . . .But I don't understand how you found out her secrets. You know them as well as if you had been her lover. But it all took place before your father was born. She didn't tell you that story as you tell it, did she?"
"Not in so many words. . . ."
"Of course you knew them all—your grandfather and grandmother, your-great-uncle, wouldn't he be? But they were old then, very old, I should think; and old people don't tell that sort of thing. Don't be cross," he added. ”

“ Down to the seaports came disappointed men—no one who was happy would have set sail for a phantom. Some were hopelessly poor: they had dreamed of states in which all the poor would be rich, and their revolutions had been crushed. ”

“ Generation after generation of coarser men—their inferiors in probity, in talent, in dignity—took the good things of this world away from them. Immigrants who began life as their hired men, ended as landowners and holders of mortgages on their land. ”

“ Men envied young men, and put them at their sides in positions of great responsibility, so that from eyes which glittered with reflections of the future, their eyes might catch fire for a moment. The whole country had one symbol: a very young man, always at the beginning of a career, always beside his mother. ”

“ Perpetual pioneers—the Towers were men of that sort. "Well, he's a Tower," his grandmother had often said, as if in explanation of her husband's behavior or that of one of her sons. What had she meant? Alwyn decided to write a character sketch, enumerating the traits of his relatives. Turning over the pretentious essay, he took a fountain pen out of his pocket and wrote on the back of its pages:
A curl of dark or ash-blond hair on the forehead; a smile as strained as a frown; obstinate blue eyes which seemed to see visions, and mouths which doubted them. ”

“ Some were failures and the sons of men who had failed: success being impossible on this earth, perhaps it would be possible on a continent which a few years before had not been on the earth. Some were criminals or adventurers, whose regret wore masks of bravado. ”

“ They did not love cities, but loved the country as those who take refuge in it from cities do. Thoughtful without shrewdness—not one had ever got on in the world. Ill-advised by their imagination, they never forgave themselves for the mistakes they made ”

“ The redskins were dangerous but pitiable, in their animal hiding places; and as the whites proceeded to exterminate them they could never bear to think what they were doing. Their own number was reduced by diseases; those who did not die were strengthened by the thought of the early Christians. ”

“ In the wars which were fought they never achieved the rank which was due them; their painstaking bravery went unrewarded. They believed in democracy, hoping that it would reinvest with power those who deserved it. ”

“ Proud men with fine bodies, frequently ill. Slight men who had a talent for music and an aptitude for every sort of culture, of which they were suspicious as forms of weakness; men who were slightly ashamed both of their gifts and their neglect of them. ”

“ Whoever faltered closed his eyes and summoned up a fierce idealism. Men, women, and children worked side by side, making of delicate nerves a machine. In the noon of their holidays guns were fired and great schemes invented. ”