They know the difference in wines simply because of the price, and they order that which sounds the best, so for that reason a stream of the juice of the grape floods a bunch of uneducated palates and floats high-priced food that would kill a man with an ordinary digestive apparatus.
Not one in a hundred of these men were to the manor born; their lives were cast in stony places and what they are they made themselves by sheer force of will, or else they accepted the golden wreath of opportunity and knew which road to take when they came to the forks.
At a table near the wall is a man who twenty years ago was a bootblack of the city’s streets.
From river to river there was no spot on which he could put his finger and say:
“This is my home.”
He grew up like a blade of grass sprouting between stones, and he fought tooth and nail for his life. He knew what kicks and cuffs were, and if his memory isn’t bad he knows yet.
He blacked the boots of a man with florid face, a heavy gold chain across his vest, and a mammoth stone blazing like a headlight in his scarf, and because this boy was bright of eye and keen of wit his customer, whose business was politics, took a fancy to him. Had this little nomad been born with a gold spoon in his mouth he could not have fared better, nor could his prospects have been more alluring, for a politician, you know, is a man who, when he goes to bed at night, hangs his trousers on the bedpost, and when he wakes up in the morning the pockets are full of money. At least, that is my idea, and if I am wrong just let some of the leading politicians of to-day contradict me, and tell me truly how they got theirs.
While this man is eating his lobster a la Newburg, and sipping the wine that cost him $5 a bottle, I’ll go on with the story.
For about two weeks he blacked his patron’s shoes, and then one fateful morning the man with the bull neck said sharply:
“Chuck that box away, son, and come along with me.”