“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.”

McGlenn smiled, and his smile had two meanings, one for his friends and another for his enemies.  His friends saw a thoughtful countenance illumined by an intellectual light; his enemies recognized a sarcasm that had escaped from a sly and revengeful spirit.  But Henry was his friend.

“John,” said Richmond, “you think”—­

McGlenn turned out his thumb and began to motion with his fist.  “I won’t submit to the narrow dictum of a man who presumes to tell me what I think.”

“But if nobody were to tell you, how would you find out what you think?  Oh,” he added, “I admit that it was presumption on my part.  I was presuming that you think.”