"Big money! I do make big money—for a man of my class," he replied with a gentle smile. "I wouldn't know what to do with much more. I've got health and a comfortable home, the affection of an honest woman and two fine children. I work hard, sleep like a log, and get a couple of sets of tennis or a round of golf on Saturdays and Sundays. I have the satisfaction of knowing I give you your money's worth for the salary you pay me. My kids have as good teachers as there are anywhere. We see plenty of people and I belong to a club or two. I bear a good reputation in the town and try to keep things going in the right direction. We have all the books and magazines we want to read. What's more, I don't worry about trying to be something I'm not."
"How do you mean?" I asked, feeling that his talk was money in my moral pocket.
"Oh, I've seen a heap of misery in New York due to just wanting to get ahead—I don't know where; fellows that are just crazy to make 'big money' as you call it, in order to ride in motors and get into some sort of society. All the clerks, office boys and stenographers seem to want to become stockbrokers. Personally I don't see what there is in it for them. I don't figure out that my boy would be any happier with two million dollars than without. If he had it he would be worrying all the time for fear he wasn't getting enough fun for his money. And as for my girl I want her to learn to do something! I want her to have the discipline that comes from knowing how to earn her own living. Of course that's one of the greatest satisfactions there is in life anyway—doing some one thing as well as it can be done."
"Wouldn't you like your daughter to marry?" I demanded.
"Certainly—if she can find a clean man who wants her. Why, it goes without saying, that is life's greatest happiness—that and having children."
"Certainly!" I echoed with an inward qualm.
"Suppose she doesn't marry though? That's the point. She doesn't want to hang round a boarding house all her life when everybody is busy doing interesting things. I've got a theory that the reason rich people—especially rich women—get bored is because they don't know anything about real life. Put one of 'em in a law office, hitting a typewriter at fifteen dollars a week, and in a month she'd wake up to what was really going on—she'd be alive!"
"'The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!'"
said I. "What's Sylvia going to do?"
"Oh, she's quite a clever little artist." He handed me some charming sketches in pencil that were lying on the table. "I think she may make an illustrator. Heaven knows we need 'em! I'll give her a course at Pratt Institute and then at the Academy of Design; and after that, if they think she is good enough, I'll send her to Paris."