Whether this exterior appearance of Mackworth was sincere or affected in him I never could quite tell. I am almost inclined to believe it was not done for effect,—but out of an Assisian simplicity of heart, as a sign manual of Bourgeois integrity.
If it was an affectation, his personal attitude toward the people with whom he came into contact was not ... in his office everybody loved him, and worked for him with that easy efficiency that comes of good will and respect....
Unostentatiously and affectionately he went about helping people.
"We've got a wonderful town here ... very little vice, except that which always will be in every community because it is inherent in human nature ... we have a fine college of our own ... a fine electric plant ... everybody's lawn is well-kept ... nobody in this town need be out of a job ... for miles around us the land is rich in real wealth of waving corn and wheat....
Kansas will be the centre, the Athens, of our civilisation, one day....
We have a fine Harvey Eating House at our railway station, managed by a hustler ... you must have Ally take you there for dinner before you go back to Laurel."
The idealisation of small comfort ... in a case like Mackworth's, fairly unobjectionable ... but in most cases insufferably stodgy ... the dry-rot of art, literature, life ... leading to a smug conceit that in turn ends in that school of "two hills of corn where one cluster of violets grew before."
No wonder that the National Magazine, starting with a splendid flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere, "let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My Salary as Stenographer.'..."
Rather, far rather, the Rockefeller, that shrewd manipulator of businesses ... with all his parsimony in personal economics ... his diet of bread and milk ... and his giving away of millions to missions and scientific institutions....