However, no matter what the rewards of such industry, it must not be imagined that its disabilities did not insist upon due recognition and ugly ravel, and that such shred and fibre did not obtrude their unwelcome appeals for repair upon their central figure.
Shrewd, intelligent, persistent, he soon discovered that the very qualities which made him successful in his calling rendered him obnoxious to those who were unable to harmonize his promise with his condition.
However, like the majority of his countrymen, outside of those who constituted the Manhattan police force and provided the country with justices of the peace, this young man was a philosopher.
He could always provide a silver lining for a cloud as long as it was plausible to do so, and when he had exhausted his genial resources, he looked at facts squarely.
On this basis he decided, finally, that his was a case of “bricks without straw,” enthusiasm minus its basis, an unhappy conclusion which was emphasized by his patient attempts to soften his angularities with the advantages provided by a night school.
Unfortunately, a business man, with an eye to the bizarre, to whom Dennis had presented some of his characteristic enterprises, had put the young Irishman in the way of securing a biography of the Hebrew premier, whom he provided with such an absurd travesty of likeness, and the “ole clo’ merchant” was so impressed by the resolution and dexterity of the celebrated statesman, that he became, from that moment, the prey of a consuming ambition whose direction he could not determine.
He grew positive daily, however, that, in view of these stimulating aspirations, he could no longer pursue his embarrassing avocation.
On the basis, therefore, that the greater the pent the more pronounced the explosion, the young merchant developed a dangerous readiness to embrace the first opportunity that presented herself in the hope that the caress would be returned.
Presently, the determination to exchange his present humiliations for future uncertainties advanced him to the point where he informed his father of his decision, and the latter immediately succumbed to a collapse which was Hebraic in its despair and entirely Celtic in its manifestation.
When this irate parent realized, at last, that this invaluable arm of his business could not be diverted from its purpose, with cruel celerity he cut off his son from all further consideration and forbade him the premises.