The Colossus Part 19

"Some people can't form an opinion of a man after a year's acquaintance with him, but I can. I go by a certain instinct, and when the wrong sort of man rubs up against me I know it. I don't need to wait until he has worked me before I find out that he is an impostor.

But, as I was going to say, the trouble with you is that you forget the difference that exists between new and old cities. A new community worships material things; and if it pays tribute to an idea, it must be that idea which appeals quickest to the eye--to the commoner senses. And in this Chicago is no worse than other raw cities. Fifty years from now "--

"Who wants to live fifty years in this miserable world?" McGlenn broke in. "There is but one community in which the writer is at ease, and that is the community of death. It is populous; it is crowded with writers, but it holds an easy place for every one. The silence of that community frightens the rich but its democracy pleases the poor."

"I suppose, then, that you want to die."

"I do."

"But you didn't want to die yesterday?"

"Yes, it was the very time when I should have died--I had just eaten a good dinner. You don't know how to eat, John. You stuff yourself, John. Yes, you stuff yourself and think that you have dined. The reason is that you have never taken the trouble to become civilized.

It's my misfortune to have friends who can't eat. But some of my friends can eat, and they are therefore great men. Tod Cowles strikes a new dish at a house on the North Side and softens his voice and says, 'Ah hah.' He is a great man, for he knows that he has discovered an additional pleasure to offset another trouble of this infamous life; and Colonel Norton is a great man--he knows how to eat; but you, John, are an outcast from the table, and therefore civilization cannot reach you. Civilization comes to the feast and asks, 'Where is John Richmond, whom I heard some of you say something about?' and we reply, 'He holds us in contempt,' and Civilization p.r.o.nounces these solemn words: 'He who holds ye in contempt, the same will I banish.'"

"But," rejoined Richmond, "civilization teaches one of two things--to think or to become a glutton. Somehow I was kept away from the feast and had to accept the other teaching. I don't go about deifying my stomach and making an apostle of the palate of my month. When I eat"--

"But you don't eat; you stuff. I have sat down to a table with you, and after giving your order you would fill yourself so full of bread and pickles or anything within reach that you couldn't eat anything when the order was brought."

"That was abstraction of thought instead of hunger," Richmond replied.

"No, it was the presence of gluttony. Can you eat, Mr. Witherspoon?"

"I fear that I must confess a lack of higher civilization. I am not well schooled in anything, and I suppose that you must cla.s.s me with Richmond--as a barbarian. I lack"--

"Art," McGlenn suggested. "But for you there is a chance. John Richmond is hopelessly gone."

"I sometimes feed my dogs on stewed tripe," said Whittlesy, "and the good that it does them teaches me that man is to be judged largely by what he eats."

"There is absolutely no use for all this b.l.o.o.d.y rot," Mortimer declared. "Eating is essential, of course, but I don't see how men can talk for an hour on the subject, and talk foolishly, at that."

"If eating is essential," Richmond replied, "it is a wonder that you don't kick against it."

"Ah, but isn't it a good thing that I don't kick against non-essentials? Wouldn't I be obliged to kick against this a.s.semblage and its beastly rot?"

Mortimer sometimes emphasized his walk with a peculiar springiness of step, and with this emphasis he walked off, biting the stem of his pipe.

"I thought that by this time you would begin to show a weariness of the Press Club," McGlenn said to Henry.

"I don't see why you should have thought that. I said at first that I was one of you."

"Yes, but I didn't know but by this time you might have discovered your mistake."

"I made no mistake, and therefore could discover none. Let me tell you that between George Witherspoon's cla.s.s and me there is but little affinity. You may call me a crank, and perhaps I am, but I was poor so long that I felt a sort of pride in the fight I was compelled to make.

Poverty has its arrogance, and foppery is sometimes found in rags. I don't mind telling you that I have been strongly urged to take what is called my place in the world; but that place is so distasteful to me that I look on it with a shudder. I despise barter--I am compelled to buy, but I am not forced to sell. I am not a sentimentalist--if I were I should attempt to write poetry. I am not a philosopher--if I were I shouldn't attempt to run a newspaper. I am simply an ordinary man who has pa.s.sed through an extraordinary school. And what I think are virtues may be errors."

McGlenn replied: "John is your friend. John thinks that you are a strong man--I don't know yet, but I do know that you please me when you are silent and that you don't displease me when you talk. You are strong enough to say, 'I don't know,' and a confession of ignorance is a step toward wisdom. Ask John a question to-day and he may say, 'I don't know,' but to-morrow he does know--he has spent a night with it.

You are a remarkable man, Mr. Witherspoon," he added after a moment's reflection, "a very remarkable man. Your life up to a short time ago, you say, was a struggle; your uncle was a poor man. Suddenly you became the son of a millionaire. A weak nature would straightway have a.s.sumed the airs of a rich man; you remained a democrat. It was so remarkable that I thought the decision might react as an error, and therefore I asked if you had not begun to grow weary of this democracy, the Press Club."

McGlenn smiled, and his smile had two meanings, one for his friends and another for his enemies. His friends saw a thoughtful countenance illumined by an intellectual light; his enemies recognized a sarcasm that had escaped from a sly and revengeful spirit. But Henry was his friend.

"John," said Richmond, "you think"--

McGlenn turned out his thumb and began to motion with his fist. "I won't submit to the narrow dictum of a man who presumes to tell me what I think."

"But if n.o.body were to tell you, how would you find out what you think? Oh," he added, "I admit that it was presumption on my part. I was presuming that you think."

"I do think, and if some one must tell me _what_ I think, let him be a thinking man."

"John, you cry out for thought, and are the first to strike at it with your dogmatism. You don't think--you dogmatize."

McGlenn turned to Henry. "I had two delightful days last week. John Richmond was out of town."

"Yes," said Richmond, putting his feet on a chair. "Falsehood gallops in riotous pleasure when Truth is absent. Hold on! I can stand one wrinkle between your eyes, but I am afraid of two."

"A man of many accomplishments, but wholly lacking in humor," said McGlenn, seeming to study Richmond for the purpose of placing an apprais.e.m.e.nt on him. "A man who worships Ouida and decries Sir Richard Steele."

"No, I don't worship Ouida, but I read her sometimes because she is interesting. As for Steele, he is decried by your praise. Say, John, you advised me to change grocers every month, and I don't know but it would be a good plan. An old fellow that I have been trading with has sent me a bill for eighty-three dollars."

"John, he probably takes you for a great man and wants to compliment you."

"I don't object to a compliment, but that was flattery," Richmond, replied, taking his feet off one chair and putting them on another.

"Let's ride home, John; it's 'most too slippery to walk."

"All right. You have ruined my health already by making me walk with you. Come on; we'll go now."

CHAPTER XVII.

AN OLD MAN WOULD INVEST.

When Henry went home to dinner he found, already seated at the table, old man Colton, Mrs. Colton and Mrs. Brooks. The old Marylander got away from his soup, got off his chair, and greeted Henry with an effusive display of what might have been his pleasure at seeing the young man, but which had more of the appearance of a palavering pretense. He bowed, ducked his head first on one side and then on the other--and his colored handkerchief dangled at his coat-tails. He found his tongue, which at first he seemed to have lost, and with his bald head bobbing about, he appeared as an aged child, prattling at random.

"Hah, hah, delighted to see you again, my dear young man. Didn't know that I was coming when you were so kind as to take lunch with me to-day; ladies came in the afternoon; Brooks couldn't come with me, but he will be here later on. Hah, hah, they are taking excellent care of us, you see. Ah, you sit here by me? Glad."

Mrs. Colton was exceedingly feeble, and her daughter appeared as a very old-fashioned girl in a stylish habit--an old daguerreotype sort of face, smooth, shiny and expressionless.

"We have all been talking about you," Colton said, as Henry sat down.

"Your mother and sister think you a very wonderful man, and my dear friend Witherspoon"--

"Brother Colton is from Maryland," Witherspoon remarked.

Colton laughed and ducked his head. Ah, the listless wit of the rich!

It may be pointless, but how laughable is the millionaire's joke.

"But, my dear young man, we are determined to have you with us,"

Colton declared, when he had recovered himself. He nodded at Witherspoon.