in it, Matt,” said Sam. “But—well—you haven't traveled with our crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially as—as energetic a sort of stranger as you are. You're too sudden, Matt—too dazzling—too—”
“Too shiny and new?” said I, beginning to catch his drift. “That'll be looked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit.”
“I can't ask you to people's houses,” protested he, knowing I'd not realize what a flimsy pretense that was.
While we were talking I had been thinking—working out the proposition along lines he had indicated to me without knowing it. “Look here, Sam,” I said. “You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot of people that don't know me and don't want to know me. But that ain't my point of view. Those people can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do I care whether they want to be useful to me or not? The machine'd have run down and rusted out long ago if you and your friends' idea of a gentleman had been taken seriously by anybody who had anything to do and knew how to do it. In this world you've got to make people do what's for your good and their own. Your idea of a gentleman was put forward by lazy fakirs who were living off of what their ungentlemanly ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to be disturbed. So they 'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and your kind are fools enough to abide by—that is, you are fools, unless you haven't got brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all.”
Sam laughed.. “There's a lot of truth in what you say,” he admitted.
“However,” I ended, “my plans don't call for hurry just there. When I get ready to go round, I'll let you know.”
VII. BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
This brings me to the ugliest story my enemies have concocted against me. No one appreciates more thoroughly than I that, to rise high, a man must have his own efforts seconded by the flood of vituperation that his enemies send to overwhelm him, and which washes him far higher than he could hope to lift himself. So I do not here refer to any attack on me in the public prints; I think of them only with amusement and gratitude. The story that rankles is the one these foes of mine set creeping, like a
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