Of course, the story ends with a perfect Pathetic Fallacy:
"The wind outside had strengthened, a trumpet voice beneath heaven, and every autumn leaf was a banner flying in challenge." (p. 115)
In the following story, Dan Coffin is old, widowed and participating in the Constitutional Convention. Politics must catch up with growing population and expanding economy. His oldest granddaughter, married to a Svoboda, and her family come to live with Coffin in the big, old, otherwise empty house.
"...these days time went like the wind...." (p. 123)
Time is a hunter blowing a horn and a bridge burning behind us and it goes like the wind. Poul Anderson's sf is about human life.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I thought it was amusing how Dan Coffin found a way to inveigle Thomas de Smet to set aside his scruples at agreeing to offering loans to low land entrepreneurs.
Yes, by the time Dan Coffin was an old man, population and wealth alike were inevitably and rightly shifting from High America to the Rustumite lowlands. That meant political forms and arrangements had to be readjusted. It would be best for everybody if that could be done peacefully, voluntarily, and by consensus. To say nothing of how the Convention had to come to an agreement on how best to handle the unexpected influx of 5000 immigrants from Earth!
Sean
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