“You are mistaken, my boy,” answered Fenton quickly. “In that case I would have been a millionnaire long ago. I was afflicted with just enough heart to hamper my brain. The result is that I’m an assistant city editor in the prime of life, with a very short hill to roll down to the grave. But never mind what I am, or what I might have been. You are the only interesting personage present. You have come, like Nathan Hale, out of the ‘Down East,’ so to speak, to New York, to offer your youthful enthusiasm to a world that has too little of that sort of thing; so little, in fact, that it immortalizes Hale’s sacrifice, and forgets his mission.”
Fenton was silent for a moment.
“Just what do you mean by that last remark?” asked Richard gently.
“I mean that this great metropolitan community is suffering from a tyranny greater than that against which Hale and his contemporaries protested. I mean that we erect statues to-day to lovers of liberty, to martyrs in the cause of freedom, while we blindly and submissively bow our heads to a yoke more tyrannical than that which the House of Hanover held over our forefathers. I mean that Nathan Hale died in vain, unless his example shall inspire a generation yet to come to rise against an oppression more unjust, more pervasive, and more impregnable than any the world has ever seen.”
Richard Stoughton looked at his companion in amazement. Fenton’s face was flushed, a baleful light gleamed in his large, heavy eyes, and he seemed to be talking more to himself than to his companion. As they left the train at Twenty-third Street and strolled eastward, the elder of the two continued in a calmer tone,—
“You haven’t seen much of life, Stoughton. You will find it necessary to repair, as rapidly as possible, the intellectual ravages of a college education. The tendency of Yale life is to convince you at graduation that you know everything. The experience of a few years in metropolitan newspaper life will convince you that you know nothing.”
“And the last state of this man is happier than the first?” interrogated Richard lightly.
“Alas, my boy, I fear not. But perhaps that may be a local issue, a personal equation. I was more contented when I measured the circumference of knowledge by the diameter of my own experience than I am at present when I realize that what I know is so insignificant that it has no mathematical value at all. But my experience has no significance in connection with yours. The chances are that your career will be very different from mine. I certainly hope that it will be. At all events, you have the game to play, and the stakes are on the board. I drew to good cards, but somebody else won the pot. But what of it? There would be no fun in the game if everybody won and nobody lost.”
Fenton smiled as he stopped in front of a brilliantly lighted saloon, and held out his hand to Richard Stoughton.
“Good-night, my boy, and good luck. I’ll do what I can for you on the paper—and let me give you a word of advice, don’t believe all I say. Somehow—and of course I’m sorry for it—I’ve got just a little romance left in my composition, the ruins of a magnificent air-castle I once built. It is sufficient for me to take an interest in the structure you’re going to build on the firm foundation of youth, education, enthusiasm, and natural cleverness. I’ll do what I can to add a stone now and then to your castle, my boy. And so, good-night.”