Aunt Basha did for her country."

Eleanor's eyes, sending out not only clear vision but a brown light as
of the light of stars, shone on the boy. She bent forward, and her
slender arms were about her knee. She gazed at David, marveling. How
could it be that a human being might have all that David appeared to her
to have--clear brain, crystal simplicity, manliness, charm of
personality, and such strength and beauty besides!

"Yes," she said, "Aunt Basha gave the most. She has more right than any
of us to say that it's her country." She was silent a moment and then
spoke softly a single word. "America!" said Eleanor reverently.

America! Her sound has gone out into all lands and her words into the
end of the world. America, who in a year took four million of sons
untried, untrained, and made them into a mighty army; who adjusted a
nation of a hundred million souls in a turn of the hand to unknown and
unheard of conditions. America, whose greatest glory yet is not these
things. America, of whom scholars and statesmen and generals and
multi-millionaires say with throbbing pride today: "This is my country,"
but of whom the least in the land, having brought what they may, however
small, to lay on that flaming altar of the world's safety--of whom the
least in the land may say as truly as the greatest, "This is my country,
too."




THE SWALLOW