There had been once, in Herman Klein the making of a good American.
He had come to America, not at the call of freedom, but of peace and
plenty. Nevertheless, he had possibilities.
Taken in time he might have become a good American. But nothing was done
to stimulate in him a sentiment for his adopted land. He would, indeed,
have been, for all his citizenship papers, a man without a country but
for one thing.
The Fatherland had never let go. When he went to the Turnverein, it was
to hear the old tongue, to sing the old songs. Visiting Germans from
overseas were constantly lecturing, holding before him the vision of
great Germany. He saw moving-pictures of Germany; he went to meetings
which commenced with "Die Wacht am Rhine." One Christmas he received a
handsome copy of a photograph of the Kaiser through the mail. He never
knew who sent it, but he had it framed in a gilt frame, and it hung over
the fireplace in the sitting-room.
He had been adopted by America, but he had not adopted America, save
his own tiny bit of it. He took what the new country gave him with no
faintest sense that he owed anything in return beyond his small yearly
taxes. He was neither friendly nor inimical.
His creed through the years had been simple: to owe no man money, even
for a day; to spend less than he earned; to own his own home; to rise
early, work hard, and to live at peace with his neighbors. He had
learned English and had sent Anna to the public school. He spoke English
with her, always. And on Sunday he put on his best clothes, and sat
in the German Lutheran church, dozing occasionally, but always rigidly
erect.
With his first savings he had bought a home, a tiny two-roomed frame
cottage on a bill above the Spencer mill, with a bit of waste land that
he turned into a thrifty garden. Anna was born there, and her mother
had died there ten years later. But long enough before that he had added
four rooms, and bought an adjoining lot. At that time the hill had been
green; the way to the little white house had been along and up a winding
path, where in the spring the early wild flowers came out on sunny
banks, and the first buds of the neighborhood were on Klein's own
lilac-bushes.
He had had a magnificent sense of independence those days, and of
freedom.
He voted religiously, and now and then in the evenings he had been the
moderate member of a mild socialist group. Theoretically, he believed
that no man should amass a fortune by the labor of others. Actually he
felt himself well paid, a respected member of society, and a property
owner.