over,” said I. He thought I meant that I'd think over dropping my power—thought I was as big a snob as he and his friends of the Travelers, willing to make any sacrifice to be “in the push.” But, while Matthew Blacklock has the streak of snob in him that's natural to all human beings and to most animals, he is not quite insane. No, the thing I intended to think over was how to stay in the “bucket-shop” business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are—silly to look down, sillier to feel badly when we're looked down upon.
VI. OF “GENTLEMEN”
When I got back to my office and was settling in to the proofs of the “Letter to Investors,” which I published in sixty newspapers throughout the country and which daily reached upward of five million people, Sam Ellersly came in. His manner was certainly different from what it had ever been before; a difference so subtle that I couldn't describe it more nearly than to say it made me feel as if he had not until then been treating me as of the same class with himself. I smiled to myself and made an entry in my mental ledger to the credit of Mowbray Langdon.
“That club business is going nicely,” said Sam. “Langdon is enthusiastic, and I find you've got good friends on the committee.”
I knew that well enough. Hadn't I been carrying them on my books at a good round loss for two years?
“If it wasn't for—for some features of this business of yours,” he went on, “I'd say there wouldn't be the slightest trouble.”
“Bucket-shop?” said I with an easy laugh, though this nagging was beginning to get on my nerves.
“Exactly,” said he. “And, you know, you advertise yourself like—like—”
“Like everybody else, only more successfully than most,” said I. “Everybody advertises, each one adapting his advertising to the needs of his enterprises, as far as he knows how.”
Prev.
Back
Top