easantly
unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual
dissolution--a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity
for being nobody in particular--which is the sort of man this nation
needs. Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do
you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the
avenue--a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?--the pompous obsequies of a
dead intellect?--a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of
all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you in
bankruptcy--I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single
flat on seven dollars and a half a week--I'd almost rather see you every
day at breakfast than have it come to that!

"Wake up and get jocund with life! Why, you could have all good citizens
stung to death if you chose. It isn't that I want you to make money; but
I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself--not in Wall
Street--a pool and its money are soon parted. But in your own home,
where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy and close
to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the cook is
red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler's cousin will bear
watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman's uncle is
a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies, drinks,
steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense. That
would mean the making of you; for, after all, Jack, you are no
genius--you're a plain, non-partisan, uninspired, clean-built, wholesome
citizen, thank God!--the sort whose unimaginative mission is to pitch in
with eighty-odd millions of us and, like the busy coral creatures,
multiply with all your might, and make this little old Republic the
greatest, biggest, finest article that an overworked world has ever yet
put up! . . . Now you can call for help if you choose."

Gatewood's breath returned slowly. In an intimacy of many years he had
never suspected that sort of thing from Kerns. That is why, no doubt,
the opinions expressed by Kerns stirred him to an astonishment too
innocent to harbor anger or chagrin.

And when Kerns stood up with an unembarrassed laugh, saying, "I'm going
to the office; see you this evening?" Gatewood replied rather vacantly:
"Oh, yes; I'm dining here. Good-by, Tommy."

Kerns glanced at his watch, lingering. "Was there anything you wished to
ask me, Jack?" he inquire