“I couldn't tell you any more than I could enable you to recognize a person you'd never seen by describing him.”
“Ain't I a gentleman?” I inquired.
He laughed, as if the idea tickled him. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
“Ain't I got as proper a country place as there is a-going? Ain't my apartment in the Willoughby a peach? Don't I give as elegant dinners as you ever sat down to? Don't I dress right up to the Piccadilly latest? Don't I act all right—know enough to keep my feet off the table and my knife out of my mouth?” All true enough; and I so crude then that I hadn't a suspicion what a flat contradiction of my pretensions and beliefs about myself the very words and phrases were.
“You're right in it, Matt,” said Sam. “But—well—you haven't traveled with our crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially as—as energetic a sort of stranger as you are. You're too sudden, Matt—too dazzling—too—”
“Too shiny and new?” said I, beginning to catch his drift. “That'll be looked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit.”
“I can't ask you to people's houses,” protested he, knowing I'd not realize what a flimsy pretense that was.
While we were talking I had been thinking—working out the proposition along lines he had indicated to me without knowing it. “Look here, Sam,” I said. “You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot of people that don't know me and don't want to know me. But that ain't my point of view. Those people can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do I care whether they want to be useful to me or not? The machine'd have run down and rusted out long ago if you and your friends' idea of a gentleman had been taken seriously by anybody who had anything to do and knew how to do it. In this world you've got to make people do what's for your good and their own. Your idea of a gentleman was put forward by lazy fakirs who were living off of what their ungentlemanly ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to be disturbed. So they 'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and your kind are fools enough to abide by—that is, you are fools, unless you haven't got brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all.”
Sam laughed.. “There's a lot of truth in what you say,” he admitted.
“However,” I ended, “my plans don't call for hurry just there. When I get ready to go round, I'll let you know.”