“I have thought of going right slap into political life. I might have got into the Legislature, time and again; and I don’t doubt but I might find my way to Congress by spending something handsome. That might be as good a way to let off the steam as any. When a man gets into politics, he don’t seem to mind much else. He has got to drive right through. I don’t know how well it pays.”
“In the way of comfort, I’m afraid it don’t pay,” said Mr Snow.
“I expect not. I don’t more than half think it would pay me. Politics have got to be considerably mixed up in our country. I don’t believe I should ever get to see my way clear to go all lengths; and I don’t believe it would amount to anything if I could. Besides, if a man expects to get very far along in that road, he has got to take a fair start in good season. I learnt to read and cypher in the old log school-house at home, and my mother taught me the catechism on Sunday afternoons, and that is about all the book-learning I ever got. I shouldn’t hardly have an even chance with some of those college-bred chaps, though there are some things I know as well as the best of them, I reckon. Have you ever been out West?”
“I was there once a good many years ago. I had a great notion of going to settle there when I was a young man. I am glad I didn’t, though.”
“Money ain’t to be made there anything like as fast as it used to be,” said Mr Green. “But there is chance enough, if a man has a head for it. I have seen some cool business done there at one time and another.”
The chances in favour of Mr Snow’s “word in season” were becoming fewer, he saw plainly, as Mr Green wandered off from his dissatisfaction to the varied remembrances of his business-life; so, with a great effort, he said:
“Ain’t it just possible that your property and the spending of it don’t satisfy you because it is not in the nature of such things to give satisfaction?”
Mr Green turned and looked earnestly at him.
“Well, I have heard so, but I never believed it any more for hearing it said. The folks that say it oftenest don’t act as if they believed it themselves. They try as hard for it as any one else, if they are to be judged by their actions. It is all right to say they believe it, I suppose, because it is in the Bible, or something like it is.”
“And you believe it, not because it is in the Bible, but because you are learning, by your own experience, every day you live.”