Chapter IV

I know a man who years ago
Departed from his native land,
With treasures, wife and child;
And settled in the kingdom of the sea.
Rich he was, and, in due time, the king made him a lord.
He was born in America, and had breathed her
Principle of life, yet never known her Soul;
Was born in America, yet had not been American.

I know a woman of leisure who lived in Paris;
Ten happy, fleeting years she had spent there;
Then she returned to the land of her birth--
For a visit.
She made the visit shorter than she had intended;
She thought of the arts she had left behind;
She thought of the boulevards and lighted cafes;
She thought of the Countess de C. and her _cercle_ of friends;
Our streets and cities she no longer liked;
Our people seemed bourgeois to her;
Our life was too busy, and fulsome of noise;
She longed for leisure and fashion;
She scorned our ways.
She, too, had not known the Soul of our land,
Though born under the Stars and Stripes.
My brothers, there are many of these.