Nerve'll take a man
anywhere."

"You never said a truer thing in your life," said I. "It'll take him
wherever he wants, and, after he's there, it'll get him whatever he wants."

And with that, I, thinking of my plans and of how sure I was of success,
began to march up and down the office with my chest thrown out--until I
caught myself at it. That stopped me, set me off in a laugh at my own
expense, he joining in with a kind of heartiness I did not like, though I
did not venture to check him.

So ended the first lesson--the first of a long series. I soon saw that
Monson was being most useful to me--far more useful than if he were a
"perfect gentleman" with nothing of the track and stable and back stairs
about him. Being a sort of betwixt and between, he could appreciate my
needs as they could not have been appreciated by a fellow who had never
lived in the rough-and-tumble I had fought my way up through. And being
at bottom a real gentleman, and not one of those nervous, snobbish
make-believes, he wasn't so busy trying to hide his own deficiencies
from me that he couldn't teach me anything. He wasn't afraid of being
found out, as Sam--or perhaps, even Langdon--would have been in the same
circumstances. I wonder if there is another country where so many gentlemen
and ladies are born, or another where so many of them have their natural
gentility educated out of them.

VIII. ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON

I had Monson with me twice each week-day--early in the morning and again
after business hours until bed-time. Also he spent the whole of every
Saturday and Sunday with me. He developed astonishing dexterity as a
teacher, and as soon as he realized that I had no false pride and was
thoroughly in earnest, he handled me without gloves--like a boxing teacher
who finds that his pupil has the grit of a professional. It was easy enough
for me to grasp the theory of my new business--it was nothing more than "Be
natural." But the rub came in making myself naturally of the right sort.
I had--as I suppose every man of intelligence and decent instincts has--a
disposition to be friendly and simple. But my manner was by nature what you
might call abrupt. My not very easy task was to learn the subtle difference
between the abrupt that injects a tonic into social intercourse, and the
abrupt that makes the other person shut up with a feeling of having been
insulted.

Then, there was the matter of good taste in conversation. Monson