"Graft? Nonsense! Merely an exchange of courtesies… There are others, too. You'll get wise to them in time."
But Dave was by no means satisfied with Carson's philosophy. He went to his editor with the five dollar bill and the police court incident. "What shall I do about it?" he demanded.
He fancied there was a note of impatience in the editor's reply. "Give the money to the Salvation Army," he said, "and forget about the rest. Isn't it Kipling who says 'There comes a night when the best gets tight,' and so on? We could tell the story, but what good would it do? And let me tell you, Elden, there are mighty few, men or women, who have gone half way through life without something they'd like to forget. Why not let them forget it? You're young yet, and perhaps you don't see it that way, but you'll be older. There's a verse by somebody runs like this:
"Don't take the defensive by saying
"I told only just what was true,"
For there's more at that game might be playing
If the truth were all told about you."
"That may be bad poetry, but it's good journalistic ethics."
But after Dave had gone the editor called his business manager. "I guess we'll have to raise Elden to thirty dollars a week," said he. "He's so honest he embarrasses me, and I guess I need that kind of embarrassment, or I wouldn't be embarrassed."
CHAPTER NINE
While the gradually deepening current of Dave's life flowed through the channels of coal heaver, freight hustler, shipping clerk, and reporter, its waters were sweetened by the intimate relationship which developed between him and the members of the Duncan household. He continued his studies under Mr. Duncan's directions; two, three, or even four nights in the week found him at work in the comfortable den, or, during the warm weather, on the screened porch that overlooked the family garden. His duties as reporter frequently called for attendance at public meetings devoted to all conceivable purposes, and he was at first disposed to feel unkindly toward these interruptions in his regular studies. He raised the point with Mr. Duncan.
"One thing I have been trying to drill into you," said his tutor, "is that education is not a thing of books or studies or formulae of any kind. It is the whole world; particularly the world of thought, feeling, and expression. It is not a flower in the garden of life; it is the garden itself, with its flowers, and its perfumes, and its sunshine and rain. Yes, and its weeds, and droughts, and insects and worms. There is a phase of education in the public meeting, whether its purpose be to discuss the municipal tax rate or the flora of the Rockies. You can't afford to miss any subject; but still less can you afford to miss the audiences that are interested in any subject. They are deeper than any book. There are all kinds of audiences. There is the violent audience, and the mysterious audience, and the sentimental audience, and the destructive audience, and the whimsical audience, and the hysterical audience,—and every other kind. And the funny thing is that they are all made up of much the same people. Take a sentimental audience, for instance; a few passes, and you have an hysterical audience. It is a difference of moods. We don't think enough about moods. We are all subject to moods, and yet we judge a new acquaintance by the mood he happens to be in—and the mood we happen to be in—at the time of making the acquaintanceship. Another day, in other moods, he would make a quite different impression—if the impression already made could be effaced. I have a theory that the world's sorrow is largely a matter of moods. I don't deny the sorrow, nor the need for sorrow, nor the reality of it, but I do believe there is a mood of happiness which even the deepest sorrows cannot suppress. And the more you study people the more you will understand moods, and, perhaps, be master of your own. And the man who can, by force of his own will, determine the mood in which he will live, is master of the world."