This Month's Installment
What's italicized is what I'm unsure about
But now when I am become old and tired and hoped to find well-earned rest on it and later on to see my body be bedded down in her bosom, now they come and force me abroad away from it!"His watery, dark eyes shimmered; even the other two were moved."Those are the sacrifices that the Fatherland demands from us, Manny!" the privy councillor eventually said."The Fatherland!" retorted the old man, "I know it well. But then what is the Fatherland? For all who sit here around us, for all country-born, it is the small piece of earth that they cultivate. The soil is our home, and what you call love of the Fatherland arises out of the love for the soil. My whole life long, I have known to treasure the produce of the spirit and of the culture; Hans there knows that the best. But they are the artistic creations; they are not the original ones, the natives. That is the piece of land that the man conquers anew every day with his strength and work; only through this does it become his property."Speaking became difficult for him. But he pulled himself together and went on: "Certainly, we sacrifice it, must sacrifice it so that the whole will be saved. For in all of us, whoever we are, is and lives nothing else but the Fatherland. But we people of the land give our last with it, and while we give it, we bleed to death, not much different from the soldier in the field. But especially when we become old and already so united with our soil that---186---we are no longer able to create a new home for ourselves."
