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Poor White by Sherwood Anderson
page 8 of 298 (02%)
in the new country, she heard much talk of mortgages and of the difficulty
of making ends meet, but every one spoke of the hard conditions as
temporary. In every mind the future was bright with promise. Throughout
the whole Mid-American country, in Ohio, Northern Indiana and Illinois,
Wisconsin and Iowa a hopeful spirit prevailed. In every breast hope fought
a successful war with poverty and discouragement. Optimism got into the
blood of the children and later led to the same kind of hopeful courageous
development of the whole western country. The sons and daughters of these
hardy people no doubt had their minds too steadily fixed on the problem
of the paying off of mortgages and getting on in the world, but there was
courage in them. If they, with the frugal and sometimes niggardly New
Englanders from whom they were sprung, have given modern American life a
too material flavor, they have at least created a land in which a less
determinedly materialistic people may in their turn live in comfort.

In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellow
defeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who had
become Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed the blood of
the pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She and her husband
would, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while and then move on
to a larger town and a better position in life. They would move on and up
until the little fat man was a railroad president or a millionaire. It was
the way things were done. She had no doubt of the future. "Do everything
well," she said to her husband, who was perfectly satisfied with his
position in life and had no exalted notions as to his future. "Remember to
make your reports out neatly and clearly. Show them you can do perfectly
the task given you to do, and you will be given a chance at a larger task.
Some day when you least expect it something will happen. You will be called
up into a position of power. We won't be compelled to stay in this hole of
a place very long."
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