"I sometimes feed my dogs on stewed tripe," said Whittlesy, "and the good that it does them teaches me that man is to be judged largely by what he eats."
"There is absolutely no use for all this bloody rot," Mortimer declared. "Eating is essential, of course, but I don't see how men can talk for an hour on the subject, and talk foolishly, at that."
"If eating is essential," Richmond replied, "it is a wonder that you don't kick against it."
"Ah, but isn't it a good thing that I don't kick against non-essentials? Wouldn't I be obliged to kick against this assemblage and its beastly rot?"
Mortimer sometimes emphasized his walk with a peculiar springiness of step, and with this emphasis he walked off, biting the stem of his pipe.
"I thought that by this time you would begin to show a weariness of the Press Club," McGlenn said to Henry.
"I don't see why you should have thought that. I said at first that I was one of you."
"Yes, but I didn't know but by this time you might have discovered your mistake."
"I made no mistake, and therefore could discover none. Let me tell you that between George Witherspoon's class and me there is but little affinity. You may call me a crank, and perhaps I am, but I was poor so long that I felt a sort of pride in the fight I was compelled to make. Poverty has its arrogance, and foppery is sometimes found in rags. I don't mind telling you that I have been strongly urged to take what is called my place in the world; but that place is so distasteful to me that I look on it with a shudder. I despise barter--I am compelled to buy, but I am not forced to sell. I am not a sentimentalist--if I were I should attempt to write poetry. I am not a philosopher--if I were I shouldn't attempt to run a newspaper. I am simply an ordinary man who has passed through an extraordinary school. And what I think are virtues may be errors."
McGlenn replied: "John is your friend. John thinks that you are a strong man--I don't know yet, but I do know that you please me when you are silent and that you don't displease me when you talk. You are strong enough to say, 'I don't know,' and a confession of ignorance is a step toward wisdom. Ask John a question to-day and he may say, 'I don't know,' but to-morrow he does know--he has spent a night with it. You are a remarkable man, Mr. Witherspoon," he added after a moment's reflection, "a very remarkable man. Your life up to a short time ago, you say, was a struggle; your uncle was a poor man. Suddenly you became the son of a millionaire. A weak nature would straightway have assumed the airs of a rich man; you remained a democrat. It was so remarkable that I thought the decision might react as an error, and therefore I asked if you had not begun to grow weary of this democracy, the Press Club."