"I never do business in that way. Bring out your boat and put a price on it."
"Come, Neckart," said the captain, rising hastily, "we will walk up the beach a bit.—I'll see you about the boat presently, Sutphen.—You don't know these fellows, Bruce," when they had passed out of hearing and found a seat in the thin salt grass. "They are not used to being dealt with in such a prompt, drill-major fashion."
"I deal with all men alike. Order and promptness have been necessary to me in every step of my way. I must have them from others. I pay to a penny, and I exact to a penny. It is not the money I want: it is discipline in the people about me. They must move as if they were drilled if they move to further my ends."
The captain took his cigar out of his mouth and turned blankly on him: "'Further your ends?' But, Bruce?—"
Neckart laughed: "Oh, no doubt they were created with some other object in view than to serve my purposes. But that is the cognizance which I take of them. Really, captain, if you were in public life, and saw with what eagerness masses of men follow feeble leaders who know the trick of piping to them, and how willing they are to be manipulated, you would soon come to look upon the American public simply as a machine ready for your own use when you had the skill to work it."
The captain's cigar went out in his fingers as he sat staring with dull perplexity at Neckart. There was a certain nobility in the carriage of the powerful figure and black shaggy head, an occasional fire in the deep-set eyes, a humor in the fine smile, which argued a different order of man from this scheming, selfish politician.
"I can't place you at all, Bruce. Now, I should have thought you would have been a reformer—worked for humanity—that line, you know. You were a sensitive lad, like a girl."
"I am quite too warm-hearted a fellow to be a philanthropist," laughed Neckart. "The philanthropists I know work for principles, liberty, education and the like: they don't care a damn for the individual Tom and Jerry. The chances are, that your reformer is a cold-blooded tyrant at home: he makes a god of his one idea: his god makes him nervous, ill-conditioned—the last man in the world to choose for a friend or a husband."
"You amaze me! I should have said that they were the wisest and purest of men. Next to clergymen, of course. I don't go to church myself, but I respect the cloth. But speaking of yourself, Bruce, you were a most affectionate little fellow. Do you remember how you referred every new idea to your mother? I recollect you told me once that you read your lessons in your school classics to her to amuse her. You must have cleaned the translation sometimes to make it fit for her ear."
"Yes."