“What the devil’s the matter with Falcontent?”
“Why can’t the fellow keep it to himself?”
“Sorry? Why, sure! But in this little old world a man must help himself. It don’t do Jim Falcontent any good to listen——”
“What the devil does he want to blatherskite his damned blasphemy around here for?”
Falcontent’s business? Falcontent used to be “some” salesman: he was “some” salesman no longer. And everybody knew it. Groot knew it—and waited with pious patience for the imminent end. Galesworth knew it—remarked it with melancholy: though Galesworth and his wife were waiting with what patience they could command for Falcontent’s more remunerative job of selling Groot & McCarthy’s shoes in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. And no wonder sales had fallen off! A buyer of shoes cannot with profitable precision look over a line of samples and at the same time indulge an argument rabidly directed against the existence of God. Nor will he attempt the perilous acrobatics involved. What has the existence of God to do with a line of shoes? Presently Falcontent himself came eye to eye with the catastrophe of his uselessness. “I’m just three months off from a Bowery lodging-house,” he reflected, “and but a few weeks longer from the bread-line and the gutter. That’s a devilish queer thing—to happen to me!” But he knew why; it was because he had with resentful conviction said in his own heart, “There is no God.” And he would go on saying it—that selfsame thing, over and over again.
Being an honest fellow, Falcontent went straightway to Groot for a friendly discussion of a distressful situation.
“Mr. Groot,” he began, “I guess I’m all in.”
“I guess so,” Groot admitted.
Falcontent started. “You think, then, that——”
“I said,” Groot drawled, “that I thought so, too. Isn’t that clear?”