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Page 79
"Why," said I, "I hardly know, John. There's a saying: 'Love levels
all ranks,' you know."
"Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank--on the
level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate-
glass. These kind of books are wrong, and yet I never go into a train
but what they pile 'em up on me. No good can come out of an
international clinch between the Old-World aristocracy and one of us
fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they generally hunt
up somebody in their own station. A fellow usually picks out a girl
that went to the same high-school and belonged to the same singing-
society that he did. When young millionaires fall in love, they
always select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on the
lobster that he does. Washington newspaper correspondents always many
widow ladies ten years older than themselves who keep boarding-houses.
No, sir, you can't make a novel sound right to me when it makes one of
C. D. Gibson's bright young men go abroad and turn kingdoms upside
down just because he's a Taft American aud took a course at a
gymnasium. And listen how they talk, too!"
Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page.
"Listen at this," said he. "Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess
Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:
"'Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would
I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am
only--myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I
have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm
and a sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of
traitors.'
"Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing
anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He'd be much
more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it."
"I think I understand you, John," said I. "You want fiction-writers
to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't mix
Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island
clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or
Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs of India."
"Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em," added Pescud.
"It don't jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it
or not, and it's everybody's impulse to stick to their own class.
They do it, too. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds
of thousands of books like that. You don't see or hear of any such
didoes and capers in real life."
III
"Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time.
Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me
more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"
"Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised
twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a
neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house
on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock.
Oh, I'm in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's
elected!"
"Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.
"Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader
grin.
"0-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate-
glass to have a romance?"
"No, no," said John. "No romance--nothing like that! But I'll tell
you about it.
"I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months
ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I'd ever
laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you
want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business,
either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, and she
wasn't the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her
business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by
residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes,
and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case
of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never
thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to
smash for a while.
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