"But there's one Emperor of Germany and one King of England outside them places--an' they're on thrones. All the masters of the world have felt their power an' folks have laughed at 'em--at first." Ham spoke with desperate seriousness that made his eyes glow steadily and forcefully. "And yet the big things have been done by those men, and from the first _they_ knew that they were different. You say I've been braggin'. Did you ever hear me say one word before yesterday about bein' different from any other boy? I'm sayin' it now because there isn't any use in lyin'. I _know_ just as well as if I'd already done it, that I can look down on other successful men as far as a mountain-top looks down on a little hill. I've done my work here on this farm, an' I haven't ever shirked. Now I want my chance--an' I don't want my family to go to seed. I want the blood of the Standishes and the Hamiltons to climb up and not to run down hill and die out in a rotting puddle at the bottom. I want these things and I'm goin' to have 'em--This farm an' you have fought for a lifetime an' the farm's whipped you. I tell you there is just one thing in God Almighty's world that can whip me--just one thing that I'm afraid of--an' it's this farm. If you stay here I reckon I can't hardly desert you, but I'd rather you'd kill me outright. That's all I've got to say."
Tom Burton rose from his chair and took two or three turns across the frayed strips of carpet. His eyes were no longer the eyes of a father irritated by the insubordinate fret of a fledgling son begging permission to test his wings. His bearded face bore the seamed uncertainty of his deeply vexed spirit. Perhaps in that moment there came to him some sense of conversion to the prophet-like assurance of his son. Perhaps he felt the dread of transplanting and a vague wonder whether the gifts of wealth, if they came, might not bring disaster in their wake. At last he turned, cramming his hands into his trousers' pockets, and swept the little family circle with eyes in which flashed something of patriarchal fire.
"Mother," he demanded, "you have heard what the boy says. Does it sound like reason to you, or is it just a stripling's restlessness?"