Plays
FEJEVARY: Ah, no--I didn't give it to you.
SILAS: Well, you made me know 'twas there. You said things that woke
things in me and I thought about them as I ploughed. And that made me
know there had to be a college there--wake things in minds--so
ploughing's more than ploughing. What do you say, Felix?
FELIX: It--it's a big idea, Uncle Silas. I love the way you put it. It's
only that I'm wondering--
SILAS: Wondering how it can ever be a Harvard College? Well, it can't.
And it needn't be (_stubbornly_) It's a college in the cornfields--where
the Indian maize once grew. And it's for the boys of the cornfields--and
the girls. There's few can go to Harvard College--but more can climb
that hill, (_turn of the head from the hill to_ FELIX) Harvard on a
hill? (_As_ FELIX _smiles no_, SILAS _turns back to the hill_) A college
should be on a hill. They can see it then from far around. See it as
they go out to the barn in the morning; see it when they're shutting up
at night. 'Twill make a difference--even to them that never go.
GRANDMOTHER: Now, Silas--don't be hasty.
SILAS: Hasty? It's been company to me for years. Came to me one
night--must 'a' been ten years ago--middle of a starry night as I was
comin' home from your place (_to_ FEJEVARY) I'd gone over to lend a hand
with a sick horse an'--
FEJEVARY: (_with a grateful smile_) That was nothing new.
SILAS: Well, say, I'd sit up with a sick horse that belonged to the
meanest man unhung. But--there were stars that night had never been
there before. Leastways I'd not seen 'em. And the hill--Felix, in all
your travels east, did you ever see anything more beautiful than that
hill?
FELIX: It's like sculpture.
SILAS: Hm. (_the wistfulness with which he speaks of that outside his
knowledge_) I s'pose 'tis. It's the way it rises--somehow--as if it knew
it rose from wide and fertile lands. I climbed the hill that night,
(_to_ FEJEVARY) You'd been talkin'. As we waited between medicines you
told me about your life as a young man. All you'd lived through seemed
to--open up to you that night--way things do at times. Guess it was
'cause you thought you was goin' to lose your horse. See, that was
Colonel, the sorrel, wasn't it?
FEJEVARY: Yes. Good old Colonel.
SILAS: You'd had a long run o' off luck. Hadn't got things back in shape
since the war. But say, you didn't lose him, did you?
FEJEVARY: Thanks to you.
SILAS: Thanks to the medicine I keep in the back kitchen.
FEJEVARY: You encouraged him.
GRANDMOTHER: Silas has a way with all the beasts.
SILAS: We've got the same kind of minds--the beasts and me.
GRANDMOTHER: Silas, I wish you wouldn't talk like that--and with Felix
just home from Harvard College.
SILAS: Same kind of minds--except that mine goes on a little farther.
GRANDMOTHER: Well I'm glad to hear you say that.
SILAS: Well, there we sat--you an' me--middle of a starry night, out
beside your barn. And I guess it came over you kind of funny you should
be there with me--way off the Mississippi, tryin' to save a sick horse.
Seemed to--bring your life to life again. You told me what you studied
in that fine old university you loved--the Vienna,--and why you became a
revolutionist. The old dreams took hold o' you and you talked--way you
used to, I suppose. The years, o' course, had rubbed some of it off.
Your face as you went on about the vision--you called it, vision of what
life could be. I knew that night there was things I never got wind of.
When I went away--knew I ought to go home to bed--hayin' at daybreak.
'Go to bed?' I said to myself. 'Strike this dead when you've never had
it before, may never have it again?' I climbed the hill. Blackhawk was
there.
GRANDMOTHER: Why, he was _dead_.
SILAS: He was there--on his own old hill, with me and the stars. And I
said to him--
GRANDMOTHER: Silas!
SILAS: Says I to him, 'Yes--that's true; it's more yours than mine, you
had it first and loved it best. But it's neither yours nor mine,--though
both yours and mine. Not my hill, not your hill, but--hill of vision',
said I to him. 'Here shall come visions of a better world than was ever
seen by you or me, old Indian chief.' Oh, I was drunk, plum drunk.
GRANDMOTHER: I should think you was. And what about the next day's hay?
SILAS: A day in the hayfield is a day's hayin'--but a night on the
hill--
FELIX: We don't have them often, do we, Uncle Silas?
SILAS: I wouldn't 'a' had that one but for your father, Felix. Thank God
they drove you out o' Hungary! And it's all so dog-gone _queer_. Ain't
it queer how things blow from mind to mind--like seeds. Lord
A'mighty--you don't know where they'll take hold.
(_Children's voices off_.)
GRANDMOTHER: There come those children up from the creek--soppin' wet, I
warrant. Well, I don't know how children ever get raised. But we raise
more of 'em than we used to. I buried three--first ten years I was here.
Needn't 'a' happened--if we'd known what we know now, and if we hadn't
been alone. (_With all her strength_.) I don't know what you mean--the
hill's not yours!
SILAS: It's the future's, mother--so's we can know more than we know
now.
GRANDMOTHER: We know it now. 'Twas then we didn't know it. I worked for
that hill! And I tell you to leave it to your own children.
SILAS: There's other land for my own children. This is for all the
children.
GRANDMOTHER: What's all the children to you?
SILAS: (_derisively_) Oh, mother--what a thing for you to say! You who
were never too tired to give up your own bed so the stranger could have
a better bed.
GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their way.
FEJEVARY: So are we.
(SILAS _turns to him with quick appreciation_.)
GRANDMOTHER: That's just talk. We're settled now. Children of other old
settlers are getting rich. I should think you'd want yours to.
SILAS: I want other things more. I want to pay my debts 'fore I'm too
old to know they're debts.
GRANDMOTHER: (_momentarily startled_) Debts? Huh! More talk. You don't
owe any man.
SILAS: I owe him (_nodding to_ FEJEVARY). And the red boys here before
me.
GRANDMOTHER: Fiddlesticks.
FELIX: You haven't read Darwin, have you, Uncle Silas?
SILAS: Who?
FELIX: Darwin, the great new man--and his theory of the survival of the
fittest?
SILAS: No. No, I don't know things like that, Felix.
FELIX: I think he might make you feel better about the Indians. In the
struggle for existence many must go down. The fittest survive. This--had
to be.
SILAS: Us and the Indians? Guess I don't know what you mean--fittest.
FELIX: He calls it that. Best fitted to the place in which one finds
one's self, having the qualities that can best cope with conditions--do
things. From the beginning of life it's been like that. He shows the
growth of life from forms that were hardly alive, the lowest animal
forms--jellyfish--up to man.
SILAS: Oh, yes, that's the thing the churches are so upset about--that
we come from monkeys.
FELIX: Yes. One family of ape is the direct ancestor of man.
GRANDMOTHER: You'd better read your Bible, Felix.
SILAS: Do people believe this?
FELIX: The whole intellectual world is at war about it. The best
scientists accept it. Teachers are losing their positions for believing
it. Of course, ministers can't believe it.
GRANDMOTHER: I should think not. Anyway, what's the use believing a
thing that's so discouraging?
FEJEVARY: (_gently_) But is it that? It almost seems to me we have to
accept it because it is so encouraging. (_holding out his hand_) Why
have we hands?
GRANDMOTHER: Cause God gave them to us, I s'pose.
FEJEVARY: But that's rather general, and there isn't much in it to give
us self-confidence. But when you think we have hands because ages
back--before life had taken form as man, there was an impulse to do what
had never been done--when you think that we have hands today because
from the first of life there have been adventurers--those of best brain
and courage who wanted to be more than life had been, and that from
aspiration has come doing, and doing has shaped the thing with which to
do--it gives our hand a history which should make us want to use it
well.
SILAS: (_breathed from deep_) Well, by God! And you've known this all
this while! Dog-gone you--why didn't you tell me?
FEJEVARY: I've been thinking about it. I haven't known what to believe.
This hurts--beliefs of earlier years.
FELIX: The things it hurts will have to go.
FEJEVARY: I don't know about that, Felix. Perhaps in time we'll find
truth in them.
FELIX: Oh, if you feel that way, father.
FEJEVARY: Don't be kind to me, my boy, I'm not that old.
SILAS: But think what it is you've said! If it's true that we made
ourselves--made ourselves out of the wanting to be more--created
ourselves you might say, by our own courage--our--what is
it?--aspiration. Why, I can't take it in. I haven't got the mind to take
it in. And what mind I have got says no. It's too--
FEJEVARY: It fights with what's there.
SILAS: (_nodding_) But it's like I got this (_very slowly_) other way
around. From underneath. As if I'd known it all along--but have just
found out I know it! Yes. The earth told me. The beasts told me.
GRANDMOTHER: Fine place to learn things from.
SILAS: Anyhow, haven't I seen it? (_to_ FEJEVARY) In your face haven't I
seen thinking make a finer face? How long has this taken, Felix,
to--well, you might say, bring us where we are now?
FELIX: Oh, we don't know how many millions of years since earth first
stirred.
SILAS: Then we are what we are because through all that time there've
been them that wanted to be more than life had been.
FELIX: That's it, Uncle Silas.
SILAS: But--why, then we aren't _finished_ yet!
FEJEVARY: No. We take it on from here.
SILAS: (_slowly_) Then if we don't be--the most we can be, if we don't
be more than life has been, we go back on all that life behind us; go
back on--the--
(_Unable to formulate it, he looks to_ FEJEVARY.)
FEJEVARY: Go back on the dreaming and the daring of a million years.
(_After a moment's pause_ SILAS _gets up, opens the closet door_.)
GRANDMOTHER: Silas, what you doing?
SILAS: (_who has taken out a box_) I'm lookin' for the deed to the hill.
GRANDMOTHER: What you going to do with it?
SILAS: I'm going to get it out of my hands.
GRANDMOTHER: Get it out of your hands? (_he has it now_) Deed your
father got from the government the very year the government got it from
the Indians?
(_rising_) Give me that! (_she turns to_ FEJEVARY) Tell him he's crazy.
We got the best land 'cause we was first here. We got a right to keep
it.
FEJEVARY: (_going soothingly to her_) It's true, Silas, it is a serious
thing to give away one's land.
SILAS: You ought to know. You did it. Are you sorry you did it?
FEJEVARY: No. But wasn't that different?
SILAS: How was it different? Yours was a fight to make life more, wasn't
it? Well, let this be our way.
GRANDMOTHER: What's all that got to do with giving up the land that
should provide for our own children?
SILAS: Isn't it providing for them to give them a better world to live
in? Felix--you're young, I ask you, ain't it providing for them to give
them a chance to be more than we are?
FELIX: I think you're entirely right, Uncle Silas. But it's the
practical question that--
SILAS: If you're right, the practical question is just a thing to fix
up.
FEJEVARY: I fear you don't realize the immense amount of money required
to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would have to
interest rich men; you'd have to have a community in sympathy with the
thing you wanted to do.
GRANDMOTHER: Can't you see, Silas, that we're all against you?
SILAS: All against me? (_to_ FEJEVARY) But how can you be? Look at the