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Rob’s manly and self-reliant nature had the settler’s typical buoyancy and hopefulness, as well as a certain power of analysis, which enabled
him now to say: "The fact is, we fellers holdin’ down claims out here ain’t fools clear to the rine. We know a couple o’ things. Now I didn’t leave Waupac County f’r fun. Did y’ ever see Wanpac? Well, it’s one o’ the handsomest counties the sun ever shone on, full o’ lakes and rivers and groves of timber. I miss ’em all out here, and I miss the boys an’ girls; but they wa’n’t no chance there f’r a feller. Land that was good was so blamed high you couldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole from a balloon. Rent was high, if you wanted t’ rent, an’ so a feller like me had t’ get out, an’ now I’m out here, I’m goin’ f make the most of it. Another thing," he went on, after a pause–"we fellers workin’ out back there got more ‘n’ more like hands, an’ less like human beings. Y’know, Waupac is a kind of a summer resort, and the people that use’ t’ come in summers looked down on us cusses in the fields an’ shops. I couldn’t stand it. By God!" he said with a sudden im pulse of rage quite unlike him, "I’d rather live on an ice-berg and claw crabs f’r a livin’ than have some feller passin’ me on the road an’ callin’ me fellah!’"

Seagraves knew what he meant and listened in astonishment at this outburst.

"I consider myself a sight better ‘n any man who lives on somebody else’s hard work. I’ve never had a cent I didn’t earn with them hands. " He held them up and broke into a grin. "Beauties, ain’t they? But they never wore gloves that some other poor cuss earned. "

Seagraves thought them grand hands, worthy to grasp the hand of any man or woman living.

"Well, so I come West, just like a thousand other fellers, to get a start where the cussed European aristocracy hadn’t got a holt on the people. I like it here–course I’d like the lakes an’ meadows of Waupac better–but I’m my own boss, as I say, an’ I’m goin’ to stay my own boss if I haf to live on crackers an’ wheat coffee to do it; that’s the kind of a hairpin I am. "

In the pause which followed, Seagraves, plunged deep into thought by Rob’s words, leaned his head on his hand. This working farmer had voiced the modem idea. It was an absolute overturn of all the ideas of nobility and special privilege born of the feudal past. Rob had spoken upon impulse, but that impulse appeared to Seagraves to be right.

"I’d like to use your idea for an editorial, Rob," he said.

"My ideas!" exclaimed the astounded host, pausing in the act of filling his pipe. "My ideas! why, I didn’t know I had any. "

"Well, you’ve given me some, anyhow. "

Seagraves felt that it was a wild, grand upstirring of the modern democrat against the aristocratic, against the idea of caste and the privilege of living on the labor of others. This atom of humanity (how infinitesimal this drop in the ocean of humanity!) was feeling the nameless longing of expanding personality, and had already pierced the conventions of society and declared as nil the laws of the land–laws that were survivals of hate and prejudice. He had exposed also the native spring of the emigrant by uttering the feeling that it is better to be an equal among peasants than a servant before nobles.