“Ralston!––what kind of business do you follow? Hope you aren’t a pen-pusher, because pen-pushing isn’t for you for some time to come. What you need is something out in the open. You seem to have played merry hell with your constitution. I’m skin and bone myself, but I’m not the fattening kind. I’m built for speed. Now your frame’s made for muscle and flesh, and you haven’t a pick of meat on your entire carcass.”
Phil smiled in an embarrassed kind of way.
“Don’t mind me,” continued Langford. “You’ll get on to my way after a bit. What’s your line of trade?”
“Well, to be honest,” said Phil, “I haven’t any. I came out here to try anything. I’m an M.A. of Toronto University; have substituted in school; can clear land if I get my own time to it; have a pretty fair knowledge of accounting; but haven’t done much of anything so far. I used to be a good athlete.”
It was Langford’s turn to smile.
“Another poor, hand-fed chicken out of the University incubator, who can do everything but what he is meant to do––lay eggs, golden ones. Say, Ralston, the world is full of us and we’re little or no damned good. We know too much, or think we do, to be contented with the pick and shovel game, and we don’t know enough––because we think we know it all already––to get down to the steady grind year in and year out, at some business that might ultimately bring us to an armchair job. So we go along with our noses to the ground snuffing for a convenient hole to crawl into.
“Oh, well!” he exploded, “who the devil wants to be tied up body and soul to some corporation all his life, for the sake of making a little money that somebody else is going to go to the dogs over after you have gone?”