Bart flushed.
“I hope you’re not firing shots at me!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure I’m not envious of Mason; but I will confess that I have lost my confidence in the fellow. You know as well as I do that he is a conceited, self-satisfied prig. He thinks himself much better than common folks.”
“And do you reckon yourself as common?” asked Frank.
“Not common—but—er—well, you know what I mean. He always was that way. He can’t get over the idea that the son of a South Carolina landowner, a chap whose father has never done work, is better than the son of a Northern farmer, who has bent his back to the plow. That kind of a feeling makes him hold his nose high, and it makes me sick! I’ve never had to work; my father had money, and he never performed manual labor; but I know fellows here who are working their way through college who are just as good as I am—some of them may be a blamed sight better. Mason, if his father were to fail to-morrow, would have to quit his college course. He couldn’t get through just because he couldn’t bring himself to honest work. Think he’d go up in the White Mountains and be a waiter at a summer hotel? Not much! He tries to hide it, but I know he feels contempt for fellows who are compelled to do such work. And the real truth is that such fellows are a hanged sight better men than Mason or any of his ilk! There—now you know what I think of Hock Mason.”
Frank smiled.
“Bart,” he said, “I knew you were prejudiced against Mason, although you have never spoken thus plainly before. It is because you do not understand the fellow. His rearing has been different from that of Northern men. He cannot at once accept a new point of view. He has been raised where day labor was looked on as suited to the black man and to poor white trash. The colored men and the low whites have degraded labor in that way. In the North colored laborers and illiterate whites do not carry the great burden of work. Some of our millionaires have been poor boys who have had to work hard at any old thing, and thus we look at work from another view-point. But we must not be too hard on Mason and fellows like him from the South. Above all things, Hodge, you must not let personal likes and dislikes influence you in baseball. No matter how much you dislike a man, if he can play ball, you must go in with him and work for the good of the nine.”
Bart was fidgeting.
“That’s all right,” he said; “but Mason can’t play. He proved it yesterday.”
“Have you ever seen him put up such a game before?”