exquisite tenderness: it rends the heart. It's a thing of God. And I lie
awake at nights and stretch out my hands in the darkness to this
lad--who will never know--until his sons come in their time...."

He made one of his quick turns again.

"And that's where our English way makes for distresses. Mr. Prussian
respects and fears his father; respects authorities, attends, obeys
and--_his father has a hold upon him_. But I said to myself at the
outset, 'No, whatever happens, I will not usurp the place of God. I will
not be the Priest-Patriarch of my children. They shall grow and I will
grow beside them, helping but not cramping or overshadowing.' They grow
more. But they blunder more. Life ceases to be a discipline and becomes
an experiment...."

"That's very true," said Mr. Direck, to whom it seemed the time was ripe
to say something. "This is the problem of America perhaps even more than
of England. Though I have not had the parental experience you have
undergone.... I can see very clearly that a son is a very serious
proposition."

"The old system of life was organisation. That is where Germany is still
the most ancient of European states. It's a reversion to a tribal cult.
It's atavistic.... To organise or discipline, or mould characters or
press authority, is to assume that you have reached finality in your
general philosophy. It implies an assured end. Heinrich has his assured
end, his philological professorship or thereabouts as a part of the
Germanic machine. And that too has its assured end in German national
assertion. Here, we have none of those convictions. We know we haven't
finality, and so we are open and apologetic and receptive, rather than