"What can those people be like?" she demanded.
"They're like nobody," pronounced Calvin, shortly, "but themselves."
"Foreigners commit the crimes, do they not?"
"No; they're Americans."
"They can not be," she denied firmly.
"They're American born, the police records show," he maintained; "so if they aren't Americans, what are they?"
"An American to me," said his mother, with confident pride, "means a person of definite traditions and blood."
"I know," said Calvin, and realized that his mother Was repeating what he himself held, but now he opposed it. "On that basis, Chicago is certainly not an American city—nor will Boston be one, much longer," he added, with a puzzling impulse to offend her.
"The foreigners are visibly crowding in," she said, feeling it. "I hardly see how that can afford you satisfaction, Calvin."
"It doesn't," he denied, ashamed of himself. "I'm merely facing the fact. They're not crowding in now, mother. They completed that process before congress shut the doors. Now they are taking over."
"Taking over?" questioned his mother; but he knew she was merely combating the idea. She understood.
"Taking over the continent from us, mother."
"They can not."
"But they are."
"They can not," she repeated positively, with a ring of determination in her voice. "They can not because they have not the character. To take over a continent requires—character."
"Not if they're taking it from people who are dead," Calvin returned recklessly, forgetting his personal situation, until he realized that he had spoken as decisively as
