three picture-frames on the desk and his fingers bent caressingly.

Two of these frames held photographs of four young children--a boy and
a girl comprising each group. The children had the air of being well
enough bred to be well behaved before the camera, but of being unruly
and disorderly out of sheer health and a wild naturalness. All of them
looked straight at you; all had eyes wide open with American frankness
and good humor; all had mouths shut tight with American energy and
determination. Apparently they already believed that the New World was
behind them, that the nation backed them up. In a way you believed
it. You accepted them on the spot as embodying that marvellous
precocity in American children, through which they early in life
become conscious of the country and claim it their country and believe
that it claims them. Thus they took on the distinction of being a
squad detached only photographically from the rank and file of the
white armies of the young in the New World, millions and millions
strong, as they march, clear-eyed, clear-headed, joyous, magnificent,
toward new times and new destinies for the nation and for humanity--a
kinder knowledge of man and a kinder ignorance of God.

The third frame held the picture of a woman probably thirty years of
age. Her features were without noticeable American characteristics.
What human traits you saw depended upon what human traits you saw
with.

The hair was dark and abundant, the brows dark and strong. And the
lashes were dark and strong; and the eyes themselves, so thornily
hedged about, somehow brought up before you a picture of autumn
thistles--thistles that look out from the shadow of a rock. They had a
veritable thistle quality and suggestiveness: gray and of the fields,