His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he
shook her hand warmly.
As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with
the waiter, "poor cuss." But he lay awake to think of Theresa's
hair and hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who
curtly summoned bank-presidents and who had--he tossed the
bedclothes about in his struggle to get the word--who had a
_punch!_
He would do that Great Traveling of his in the land of Big
Business!
The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves
against the four million ungrateful slaves had devised the
sacred symbols of dress-coats, large houses, and automobiles as
the outward and visible signs of the virtue of making money, to
lure rebels into respectability and teach them the social value
of getting a dollar away from that inhuman, socially injurious
fiend, Some One Else. That Our Mr. Wrenn should dream for
dreaming's sake was catastrophic; he might do things because
he wanted to, not because they were fashionable; whereupon,
police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and
Fifth Avenue would go thundering down.
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