so much—he has such interesting things to say—really, the amount he knows is simply stupendous!”
“Hm, yes,” old Mr. Joel agreed with a consenting growl, as he tugged thoughtfully at his grizzled grey moustache, “—but a little superficial, too…. The whole lot is like that… go hell-for-leather at everything for three weeks at a time—and then forget it…. Still,” he muttered, “… an able fellow—very able…. Pity this thing had to happen to him just at the start of his career.”
“Still, Father,” Mrs. Pierce put in, “—don’t you think he’d gone about as far as he was going when this thing hit him?… I mean, of course, he is a charming person—everyone agrees on that. I never knew a man with more native charm than Frank—But for all his charm, don’t you think there’s something rather weak in his character?… Do you think he would have had the stamina and determination to go much further if this disease hadn’t forced him to retire?”
“Um,” Mr. Joel growled, as he tugged thoughtfully at his short cropped moustache. “… Hard to say…. Hard to tell what would have happened to him…. A little soft, perhaps, but great ability… great charm… and great opportunists, everyone of them…. Have instinctive genius for seizing on the moment when it comes…. Never know what’s going to happen to a man like that—”
“Well,” said Mrs. Pierce, politely, but with an accent of conviction—“he might have kept on going—but I think he was through—that he’d gone as far as he could—I don’t think he could have stood the gaff—I don’t believe he had it in him.”
“Um,” Mr. Joel growled, “perhaps you’re right…. But great pity just the same…. Always liked Frank…. Very able fellow—”
The conversation proceeded in these channels for some time, the guests discussing politics, ambassadorships, using the names of the great and celebrated people of the earth with the casual and familiar intimacy of people talking about lifelong friends whom they had last seen at dinner Tuesday evening. It was the “inside” of the great world of wealth and fame and fashion—the world that the youth had read and heard about all his life—but that he had thought about, had visioned, as Olympus, mantled in celestial clouds, and for ever remote from the intruding gaze of common men. Now, to hear these great names, these celestial personages, bandied about on the tip of the tongue just as familiarly as one spoke of one’s own friends—to hear these people speak of the habits, the
