David Graham Phillips

“ And Hargrave read, forgetting his surroundings, forgetting everything in his enthusiasm for this dream of his life—a university, in fact as well as in name, which would attract the ambitious children of rich and well-to-do and poor, would teach them how to live honestly and nobly, would give them not only useful knowledge to work with but also the light to work by. "You see, Hiram, I think a child ought to begin to be a man as soon as he begins to live—a man, standing on his own feet, in his own shoes, with the courage that comes from knowing how to do well something which the world needs." ”

“ Whitney for an hour before lunch she was in walking costume—hat, dress, gloves, shoes, stockings, sunshade, all the simplest, most expensive-looking, most unpractical-looking white. From hat to heels she was the embodiment of luxurious, "ladylike" idleness, the kind that not only is idle itself, but also, being beautiful, attractive, and compelling, is the cause of idleness in others. She breathed upon Arthur the delicious perfume of the elegant life from which he was being thrust by the coarse hand of his father—and Arthur felt as if he were already in sweaty overalls. ”

“ Thenceforth some one other than herself would know her as she really was—not at all the nice, delicate lady with instincts as fine as those of the heroines of novels, who, even at their most realistic, are pictured as fully and grandly dressed of soul in the solitude of bedroom as in crowded drawing-room. "I don't care!" concluded Adelaide. "If she, or anyone, thinks the worse of me for being a human being, it will show either hypocrisy or ignorance of human nature." ”

“ Ross did not answer immediately. He was looking into the distance, his expression melancholy. His abstraction gave Adelaide a chance to verify the impression she had got from a swift but femininely penetrating first glance. Yes, he did look older; no, not exactly older—sad, rather. Evidently he was unhappy, distinctly unhappy. And as handsome and as tasteful as ever—the band of his straw hat, the flower in his buttonhole, his tie, his socks—all in harmony; no ostentation, just the unerring, quiet taste of a gentleman. What a satisfactory person to look at! ”

“ Adelaide disliked Mrs. Whitney, but there seemed to be no alternative. Mrs. Whitney was at Paris, on the way to America after the wedding and a severe cure at Aix and an aftercure in Switzerland. She had come for the finishing touches of rejuvenation—to get her hair redone and to go through her biennial agony of having Auguste, beauty specialist to the royalty, nobility and fashion, and demimonde, of three continents, burn off her outer skin that nature might replace it with one new and fresh and unwrinkled. She was heavily veiled as she and Adelaide traveled down to Cherbourg to the steamer. ”

“ Hiram paused and counted the boxes—five huge trunks—Adelaide's beyond doubt; four smaller ones, six of steamer size and thereabouts—profuse and elegant Arthur's profuse and elegant array of canvas and leather. This mass of superfluity seemed to add itself to his burden. He recalled what his wife had once said when he hesitated over some new extravagance of the children's: "What'd we toil and save for, unless to give them a better time than we had? What's the use of our having money if they can't enjoy it?" ”

“ O Arthur, Arthur, what a fraud you are! Here, I've been admiring your fine talk about your being a laborer, about what you'd do if you ever got the power. And it was all simply envy and jealousy and trying to make yourself believe you weren't so low down in the social scale as you thought you were. You're too fine a gentleman for Madelene Schulze, Arthur. Wait till you get back your lost paradise; then take a wife who gives her heart only where her vanity permits. ”

“ Ranger became absolute; and swiftly yet imperceptibly the house, which had so distressed Adelaide, was transformed, not into the exhibit of fashionable ostentation which had once been Adelaide's and Arthur's ideal, but into a house of comfort and beauty, with colors harmonizing, the look of newness gone from the "best rooms," and finally the "best rooms" themselves abolished. And Ellen thought herself chiefly responsible for the change. "I'm gradually getting things just about as I want 'em," said she. "It does take a long time to do anything in this world!" ”

“ Where a man learns is nothing; the important thing is his capacity to learn. If a man's got the capacity to learn, he'll learn, he'll become somebody. If he hasn't, then no man nor no woman can teach him. No, my dear, you may be sure that anybody who amounts to anything has got it in himself. And Arthur Ranger is a credit to any father. He's becoming famous—the papers are full of what he's accomplishing. And he's respected, honest, able, with a wife that loves him. Would he have been anybody if his father had left him the money that would have compelled him to be a fool? ”

“ Hargrave and his daughter-in-law drove to the railway station in the ancient and roomy phaeton which was to Saint X as much part of his personality as the aureole of glistening white hair that framed his majestic head, or as the great plaid shawl that had draped his big shoulders with their student stoop every winter day since anyone could remember. Despite his long exposure to the temptation to sink into the emasculate life of unapplied intellect, mere talker and writer, and to adopt that life's flabby ideals, he had remained the man of ideas, the man of action. ”

“ Hiram, are you going to leave your wealth so that it may continue to do good in the world? Or, are you going to leave it so that it may tempt your children to vanity and selfishness, to lives of idleness and folly, to bring up their children to be even less useful to mankind than they, even more out of sympathy with the ideals which God has implanted? All of those ideals are attainable only through shoulder-to-shoulder work such as you have done all your life. ”

“ From Del's eyes blazed that fury which we reserve for those we love when they exasperate us. "Shame on you, Arthur Ranger!" she exclaimed. "Shame on you! See what a snob you have become. Except that he's poor, Dory Hargrave has the advantage of any man we know. He's got more in his head any minute than you or your kind in your whole lives. And he is honorable and a gentleman—a real gentleman, not a pretender. You aren't big enough to understand him; but, at least, you know that if it weren't for your prospects from father, you wouldn't be in the same class with him. He is somebody in himself. ”

“ Henrietta Hastings laughed. "Only stupid people are happy, my dear. Theresa may be happy, but not Ross. He's far too intelligent. And Theresa isn't capable of giving him even those moments of happiness that repay the intelligent for their routine of the other sort of thing."
"Marriage doesn't mean much in a man's life," said Adelaide. "He has his business or profession. He is married only part of each day, and that the least important part to him."
"Yes," replied Henrietta, "marriage is for a man simply a peg in his shoe—in place or, as with Ross Whitney, out of place. ”

“ At sight of Henrietta, Hiram's face brightened; and well it might. In old-fashioned Saint X it was the custom for a married woman to "settle down" as soon as she returned from her honeymoon—to abandon all thoughts, pretensions, efforts toward an attractive exterior, and to become a "settled" woman, "settled" meaning purified of the last grain of the vanity of trying to please the eye or ear of the male. And conversation with any man, other than her husband—and even with him, if a woman were soundly virtuous, through and through—must be as clean shorn of allurement as a Quaker meetinghouse. ”

“ Adelaide was annoyed by Madelene's lack of emotion. She had thought her sister-in-law would be stirred by a recital so romantic, so dark with the menace of tragedy. Instead, the doctor was acting as if she were dealing with mere measles. Adelaide, unconsciously, of course—we are never conscious of the strong admixture of vanity in our "great" emotions—was piqued into explaining. "We can never be anything to each other. There's Dory; then there's Theresa. And I'd suffer anything rather than bring shame and pain on others." ”

“ She had yet to learn that "man of the world" means man of a very small and insignificant world, while Dory Hargrave had been born a citizen of the big world, the real world—one who understands human beings, because his sympathies are broad as human nature itself, and his eyes clear of the scales of pretense. He was an illustration of the shallowness of the talk about the loneliness of great souls. It is the great souls that alone are not alone. They understand better than the self-conscious, posing mass of mankind the weakness and the pettiness of human nature ”

“ Arthur passed, though he noted, the unconscious superciliousness in this tribute; he felt that it was a genuine tribute, that, for all its discoloration in its passage through the tainted outer part of Ross's nature, it had come from the unspoiled, untainted, deepest part. Fortunately for us all, the gold in human nature remains gold, whatever its alloys from base contacts; and it is worth the mining, though there be but a grain of it to the ton of dross. As Ross spoke Arthur warmed to him. ”

“ If he could have looked in upon Ross's mind, he might have been abruptly thrust far along the toilsome road toward his goal. In this world, roses and thorns have a startling, preposterous way of suddenly exchanging natures so that what was thorn becomes fairest rose, and what was rose becomes most poisonous of thorns. Ross had just fallen an amazed and incredulous victim to this alchemy. Though somewhat uncomfortable and downright unhappy at times, he had been, on the whole, well pleased with himself and his prospects until he heard that Adelaide was actually about to marry Dory. ”

“ Scarborough thought Whitney winced; but his reply was bland and frank enough. He turned to Dr. Hargrave. "The senator is right," said he. "I shall vote with him."
"Then it is settled," said Scarborough. "Ranger is to have absolute charge."
Dr. Hargrave was now showing every sign of his great age; the anguish of imminent despair was in his deep-set eyes and in his broken, trembling voice as he cried: "Gentlemen, this is madness! Charles, I implore you, do not take such precipitate action in so vital a matter! Let us talk it over—think it over. The life of the university is at stake!" ”

“ I tell you Adelaide, the time is coming when every kind of school except kindergarten will be self-supporting. And then you'll see a human race that is really fine, really capable, has a real standard of self-respect."
As Madelene talked, her face lighted up and all her latent magnetism was radiating. Adelaide, for no reason that was clear to her, yielded to a surge of impulse and, half-laughing, half in tears, suddenly kissed Madelene. "No wonder Arthur is mad about you, stark mad," she cried. ”

“ Adelaide were alone.
Del had recovered from her attack of what she had been denouncing to herself as snobbishness. For all the gingham wrapper and spectacles anchored in the hair and general air of hard work and no "culture," she was thinking, as she looked at Mrs. Whitney's artificiality and listened to those affected accents, that she was glad her mother was Ellen Ranger and not Matilda Whitney. "But mother doesn't believe she has a hard time," she answered, "and everything depends on what one believes oneself; don't you think so? I often envy her. She's always busy and interested. ”

“ Whitney posed, not without success, as an intellectual woman who despised the frivolities of a fashionable existence—this in face of the obvious fact that she led a fashionable existence, or, rather, it led her, from the moment her masseuse awakened her in the morning until her maid undressed her at night. But, although Adelaide was far too young, too inexperienced to know that judgment must always be formed from actions, never from words, she was not, in this instance, deceived. "It takes more courage than most of us have," said she, "to do what we'd like instead of what vanity suggests." ”

“ Arthur slowly rose to follow. He was weak with helpless rage. If his father had taken him into the office and had invited him to help in directing the intellectual part of that great enterprise, the part that in a way was not without appeal to the imagination, he felt that he might gradually have accustomed himself to it; but to be put into the mindless routine of the workingman, to be set about menial tasks which a mere muscular machine could perform better than he—what waste, what degradation, what insult! ”

“ He would not have been thus tactful and gentlemanly had he not realized that Dory meant the best in the world, and was wholly unconscious that envy was his real reason for taking on such a preposterous pose. "Poor chap!" Arthur had reflected. "One shouldn't blame him for snatching at any consolation, however flimsy." In those days Arthur often, in generous mood, admitted—to himself—that fortune had been shamefully partial in elevating him, without any effort on his part, but merely by the accident of birth, far above the overwhelming majority of young men. ”

“ Arthur reddened violently. Not all the daily contrasts thrust upon him in those months at the cooperage had so brought home to his soul the differences of caste. And there came to him for the first time that hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste. ”

“ A woman—at least a woman like me—doesn't love a man for his position, doesn't love him for his prospects. I've been taking you at just what you were—or seemed to be. And you—you haven't come, asking me to marry you. You treat me like one of those silly women in what they call 'society' here in Saint X. You ask me to wait until you can support me fashionably—I who am not fashionable—and who will always support myself. What you talked isn't what I call love, Arthur. ”

“ She knew why, knew also that he was right, ceased to bore herself and irritate him with attempts to make the Villa d'Orsay the social center of the university. But she continued to waste her days in the inane pastimes of Saint X's fashionable world, though ashamed of herself and disgusted with her mode of life. For snobbishness is essentially a provincial vice, due full as much to narrowness as to ignorance; and, thus, it is most potent in the small "set" in the small town. In the city even the narrowest are compelled to at least an occasional glimpse of wider horizons ”