influence, or an energy only to be qualified as hellish. The first two

I had now lost; to the third I never had the smallest claim; and yet I

wanted the cowardice (or perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back

on my career without a fight. I told him, besides, that however poor

my chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were yet worse in

business, for which I equally lacked taste and aptitude. But upon this

head, he was my father over again; assured me that I spoke in ignorance;

that any intelligent and cultured person was Bound to succeed; that I

must, besides, have inherited some of my father's fitness; and, at

any rate, that I had been regularly trained for that career in the

commercial college.

"Pinkerton," I said, "can't you understand that, as long as I was there,

I never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing? The whole

affair was poison to me."

"It's not possible," he would cry; "it can't be; you couldn't live in

the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of soul,

you couldn't help! Loudon," he would go on, "you drive me crazy. You

expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a

dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all

day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it

at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your

hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst--one foot on

bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning

round you like a mill--raking in the stamps, in spite of fate and

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