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Show -55 "I don't know. It took me years and years to forget some of the things he taught us as gospel which turned out to be crazy. Anyhow he didn't want to be loved by anybody. He hid behind his work. This was his excuse for not getting close to anyone." I touched the little buffalo. It was a good reproduction but it lacked everything. Where there should have been a distorting flicker of genius there was only the flat imitation of life. My father was a good craftsman; he had a good eye and a skillful hand but he didn't take the chances that can make you an artist. Jacob was sitting dreamy-eyed, lost in the green thickets of our childhood. "Every Fourth of July he read us the Declaration of Independence right at this table. At night we went to the park to see the fireworks. Do you remember?" For all his praise of Indians and savages, my father loved that Reasonable document, the Declaration. Perhaps he was a man of Reason too. His buffalo was a Jeffersonian beast, comprehensible and tame. The true wild sculptor would make a buffalo that you'd have to keep your children away from so that they wouldn't be scared out of their wits. "He could never make up his mind whether America was a holy enterprise or a snakepit," Jacob said. "Which America do you believe in?" Morgan asked me. "Both," I said seriously. I was beginning to get sleepy- Carlo sat under xMorgan' s wing, frowning and grimacing to |