Seth was silent longer than ever, this time. When he spoke it was to utter something which he instantly regretted: “I haven’t been able to gather from your old friends that you were altogether a bigot, yourself, on the subject of beer, when you were my age.”
Fortunately John did not get angry; Seth honestly admired and envied his elder brother’s good temper as he heard the reply:
“That’s neither here nor there. Perhaps I did a good many things that I want you to avoid. Besides, there was nothing in me. I am good enough as far as I go, but if I had worked on a daily paper till my teeth all fell out, I should never have got any higher than I was. With you it is different; you can go up to the head of the class if you are a mind to. But the beer saloon isn’t the way—and Tom Watts isn’t the guide.”
“He is the only friend I have got. What was I to do? It is easy enough to talk, John, about my knowing good people and all that, but how? That is the question? It isn’t fair to blame me as you do. All the men like Workman and Samboye—I suppose you mean them—hold themselves miles above me. Do you suppose I’ve ever seen the inside of their houses or of their club? Not I! You dump a young countryman in a strange city, new at his work, without knowing a solitary soul—and then you complain because he gets lonesome, and makes friends with the only people who show any disposition to be friendly with him. Do you call that fair play?”
“Well, there’s something in that,” John replied, meditatively. “Some time I’m going to write a leader on the organized indifference of modern city society to what becomes of young men who deserve its good offices and drift into beer saloons because they are not forthcoming. It would make the Banner immensely solid with orthodox people.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted me to go to the Young Men’s Christian Association, I suppose?”
“No-o, I don’t know that I would. I don’t know, after all, that you could have done much differently. But you’ve done enough of it, do you understand? You have served your time; you have taken your diploma. It is time now to quit. And I can put you on to a man, now, who will help you on the other tack. Do you see Ansdell, ahead there?”
“Yes;—is he the man who told you about Workman and me?”
John ignored the question. “Ansdell is one of the cleverest men going; he’s head and shoulders over anybody else there is in Tecumseh, or in this part of the State. For you to know him will be a college education in itself. He is more than a big lawyer, he is a student and thinker; more than that, he is a reformer; best of all, he is a man of the world, who has sown more wild oats than would fill Albert’s new bins, and there’s not an atom of nonsense about him. He knows about you. We’ve talked you over together. He understands my idea of what you ought to be, and he can help you more than any other man alive—and what is more he will.”
“It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?” Seth persisted.