“But I can't,” said I. “And I wouldn't if I could—because that's me!”
One Saturday he brought a dancing master down to my country place—Dawn Hill, which I bought of the Dumont estate and completely remodeled. I saw what the man's business was the instant I looked at him. I left him in the hall and took Monson into my den.
“Not for me!” I protested. “There's where I draw the line.”
“You don't understand,” he urged. “This fellow, this Alphonse Lynch, out in the hall there, isn't going to teach you dancing so that you may dance, but so that you shall be less awkward in strange company.”
“My walk suits me,” said I. “And I don't fall over furniture or trip people up.”
“True enough,” he answered. “But you haven't the complete control of your body that'll make you unconscious of it when you're suddenly shot by a butler into a room full of people you suspect of being unfriendly and critical.”
Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I yield. It may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to caper about in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but Monson was right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has brought on me by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since he turned against me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of chuckleheads to laugh where they ought to applaud; their habit is to laugh and to applaud in the wrong places. There's no part of my career that I'm prouder of than the whole of this thorough course of education in the trifles that are yet not trifles. To have been ignorant is no disgrace; the disgrace comes when one persists in ignorance and glories in it.
Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired, what would they not do?
All this time I was giving myself—or thought I was giving myself—chiefly to my business, as usual. I know now that the new interests had in fact crowded the things down town far into the background, had impaired my judgment, had suspended my common sense; but I had no inkling of this then, The most important matter that was occupying me down town was pushing Textile up toward par. Langdon's doubts, little though they influenced me, still made enough of an impression to cause me to test the market. I sold for him at ninety, as he had directed; I sold in quantity every day. But no matter how much I unloaded, the price showed no tendency to break.
“This,” said I to myself, “is a testimonial to the skill with which I prepared for my bull campaign.” And that seemed to me—all unsuspicious as I then was—a sufficient explanation of the steadiness of the stock which I had worked to establish in the public confidence.