"I might go on like this for fifty years," he continued, "and I should be no better off then than I am now."
"It really appears so," I said; "and to be honest with you, Gideon, if all the people I had dealings with resembled you, I should myself be no better off."
I said this quite calmly and dispassionately. It is hurtful to a man to be forever angry about things he cannot alter for the better, be he on the right or the wrong side with respect to them.
"I have served you faithfully, Master Fink. As apprentice and workman I have worked for you for more than ten years."
"Yes," said I, "it is more than ten years since you first entered my shop." And there rose before me the vision of his mother, my old sweetheart, as she appeared to me ten years ago, to beg me to take her son as my apprentice and make an upright man of him. Conscientiously had I endeavored to do my duty by him, to guide him in the straight path, to make him truthful, industrious, honest, and brave. As well might I have striven to alter the nature of a fox, and to instil into the heart of that treacherous animal noble and faithful qualities. Sadly did I confess that his mother's cherished dreams of the future could never be realized, and that she would one day awake to the bitter reality.
"Master Fink," said Gideon, the years I have worked for you have been wasted. I stand here today without a florin, compelled to do without many things I desire to possess."
"It is a common calamity," I remarked "all men suffer from it."
"We are sent into the world," said Gideon, gloomily, "with a common right, the poor as well as the rich, to enjoy what there is in it."
"Ah, ah," thought I, "is this young man a member of one of those secret societies I have read of, whose aim it is to root up the very foundations of society?" And I said aloud, "Yes, to enjoy what belongs to us, what we have worked for and honestly earned. Proceed, and leave politics out of the question. You say that the ten years you have worked for me have been as good as wasted. Have you not learned a trade?"
"My pockets are empty," he retorted. "Suppose that I wished to settle in life--" He paused suddenly.