in the
hall and took Monson into my den.

"Not for me!" I protested. "There's where I draw the line."

"You don't understand," he urged. "This fellow, this Alphonse Lynch, out in
the hall there, isn't going to teach you dancing so that you may dance, but
so that you shall be less awkward in strange company."

"My walk suits me," said I. "And I don't fall over furniture or trip people
up."

"True enough," he answered. "But you haven't the complete control of your
body that'll make you unconscious of it when you're suddenly shot by a
butler into a room full of people you suspect of being unfriendly and
critical."

Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I yield. It
may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to caper about
in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but Monson was
right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has brought on me
by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since he turned against
me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of chuckleheads to laugh
where they ought to applaud; their habit is to laugh and to applaud in the
wrong places. There's no part of my career that I'm prouder of than the
whole of this thorough course of education in the trifles that are yet not
trifles. To have been ignorant is no disgrace; the disgrace comes when one
persists in ignorance and glories in it.

Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world
regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride
themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and
ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a
race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired, what would they
not do?

All this time I was giving myself--or thought I was giving myself--chiefly
to my business, as usual. I know now that the new interests had in fact
crowded the things down town far into the background, had impaired my
judgment, had suspended my common sense; but I had no inkling of this then,
The most important matter that was occupying me down town was pushing
Textile up toward par. Langdon's doubts, little though they influenced me,
still made enough of an impression to cause me to test the market. I sold
for him at ninety, as he had directed; I sold in quantity every day. But no
matter how much I unloaded, the price showed no tendency to break.

"This," said I to myself, "