“Do you know Mr. De Peyster?” Inez asked, surprised.
“No,” replied Uncle Peabody, “I don’t need to after hearing Mr. Eustis’s summary. On general principles, every one has ‘a whole lot of stuff in him.’ The trouble is that people don’t give it a chance to come out.”
“Your confidence is evidently based upon your general optimism?” Armstrong remembered that Helen had mentioned this as a cardinal characteristic.
“Yes, but proved by a thousand and one experiments. Our present subject, who now becomes No. 1002, is apparently handicapped by the misfortune of inherited leisure. It is rarely that a man of possession reaches his fullest development without the spur of necessity. More frequently we see one extreme or the other—too much possession or too much necessity.”
“That is all very well as a theory, but does it really prove anything as regards De Peyster?” questioned Armstrong. “Personally I think optimism is a dangerous thing. This confidence that everything is coming out right is what makes criminals out of bank cashiers.”
“There is a vast difference between real and false optimism,” replied Uncle Peabody. “I knew a man once who called himself a cheerful pessimist, because every time he planted a seed it grew down instead of up. He came to expect this, so it did not worry him any. He was a real optimist, even though he did not know it.”
“What would be your prescription for a case like Mr. De Peyster’s?” queried Bertha Sinclair.
“A good wife, possessed of ambition, sympathy, and tact,” Uncle Peabody replied, promptly. “This, my dear Miss Sinclair, is your opportunity to assist me in proving my argument. Will you be my accomplice?”
“I? Why, I don’t even know Mr. De Peyster,” Bertha protested. “You must find some one else.”
“Very well,” sighed Mr. Cartwright. “You see how difficult it is for science to assert its laws.”