Which, accordingly, he did, encountering, some days later, Banneker in the reading-room at The Retreat.
“What are you up to; making trouble with that editorial screed of yours?” he growled at the younger man.
Banneker smiled. He accepted that growl from Poultney Masters, not because Masters was a great and formidable figure in the big world, but because beneath the snarl there was a quality of—no, not of friendliness, but of man-to-man approach.
“No. I’m trying to cure trouble, not make it.”
“Umph! Queer idea of curing. Here we are in the midst of good times, everywhere, and you talk about—what was the stuff?—oh, yes: ‘The grinning mask of prosperity, beneath which Want searches with haggard and threatening eyes for the crust denied.’ Fine stuff!”
“Not mine. I don’t write as beautifully as all that. It’s quoted from a letter. But I’ll take the responsibility, since I quoted it. There’s some truth in it, you know.”
“Not a hair’s-weight. If you fill the minds of the ignorant with that sort of thing, where shall we end?”
“If you fill the minds of the ignorant, they will no longer be ignorant.”
“Then they’ll be above their class and their work. Our whole trouble is in that; people thinking they’re too good for the sort of work they’re fitted for.”
“Aren’t they too good if they can think themselves into something better?”