rim respectability and
prudence. She had often inspired me with a crazy ambition to see her
being chased by a lunatic with a razor in his hand, or pursued by a
hungry Bengal tiger--to see her in some predicament which would crack
the shell of middle-class reserve in which she was secreted and show me
the live, scampering human being within: but just now I was appalled by
the formidable aspect of her disapproval. Even Jack was aware of it, for
he watched me to see what I would say. And what could I say? What could
any sane human being, with a knowledge of the world, say? I didn't say
anything. I scratched my chin and pretended to be thinking deeply.

"For without claiming any especial perspicuity, I must confess that I
have never been the raw material out of which 'suckers' are
manufactured. It has always seemed to me pertinent to enquire, when
Golcondas and Eldorados are offered for a song, why the vendor should be
so anxious to hypothecate his priceless privileges. I suppose I am a
skeptic. Business, after all, is very much like Religion: it is founded
on Faith. And men like my friend Jack, for instance, have great faith in
the written word, much more in the beautifully engraved word. For them
all the elaborate bunkum by which the financial spell-binder conceals
his sinister intentions is of no avail; the jargon of the prospectus,
the glittering generalties, the superb optimism, the assumption of
austere rectitude, the galaxy of distinguished patrons who for a
consideration lend their names to the venture. For it is a venture, and
men have always a pathetic hope that it may become an adventure as well,
and that their ship will come labouring home, loaded with gold.

"Women, especially married women, are not at all like that, but they are
not so much skeptics as infidels. They start up at the first distant
approach of the financier, every plume and pin-feather quivering. They
don't believe a word of it. They go down on their knees to their
husbands and beg and beseech and supplicate them to have nothing to do
with it. They shed tears over their children. They write long letters of
distracted eloquence to their mothers. The very extremity of their
impotence lends a certain tragic dignity to their tantrums. Of course if
the cruel domestic tyrant persists in casting his bread upon the waters
and speculation turns out to be a huge success, these Cassandras spend
the dividends with a sort of stern joy, as though the money we