I made no answer and the great commoner stirred his coffee a moment in silence.
'Vanity is the curse of cities,' he continued, 'and Flattery is its handmaiden. Vanity, flattery and Deceit are the three disgraces. I like a man to be what he is—out and out. If he's ashamed of himself it won't be long before his friends'll be ashamed of him. There's the trouble with this town. Many a fellow is pretending to be what he isn't. A man cannot be strong unless he is genuine.
One of his children—a little girl—came and stood close to him as he spoke. He put his big arm around her and that gentle, permanent smile of his broadened as he kissed her and patted her red cheek.
'Anything new in the South?' Mrs Greeley enquired.
'Worse and worse every day,' he said. 'Serious trouble coming! The Charleston dinner yesterday was a feast of treason and a flow of criminal rhetoric. The Union was the chief dish. Everybody slashed it with his knife and jabbed it with his fork. It was slaughtered, roasted, made into mincemeat and devoured. One orator spoke of “rolling back the tide of fanaticism that finds its root in the conscience of the people.” Their metaphors are as bad as their morals.
He laughed heartily at this example of fervid eloquence, and then we rose from the table. He had to go to the office that evening, and I came away soon after dinner. I had nothing to do and went home reflecting upon all the great man had said.
I began shortly to see the truth of what he had told me—men licking the hand of riches with the tongue of flattery, men so stricken with the itch of vanity that they grovelled for the touch of praise; men even who would do perjury for applause. I do not say that most of the men I saw were of that ilk, but enough to show the tendency of life in a great town.
I was filled with wonder at first by meeting so many who had been everywhere and seen everything, who had mastered all sciences and all philosophies and endured many perils on land and sea. I had met liars before—it was no Eden there in the north country—and some of them had attained a good degree of efficiency, but they lacked the candour and finish of the metropolitan school. I confess they were all too much for me at first. They borrowed my cash, they shared my confidence, they taxed my credulity, and I saw the truth at last.
'Tom's breaking down,' said a co-labourer on the staff one day. 'How is that?' I enquired.
'Served me a mean trick.'