Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
Perhaps this second cousin of his was to get a good slice of the
property after all, though his uncle had never displayed any great
fondness for Everett. Yet the lawyer had always done the best that was
expected of him. He had entered a Chicago law office from the high
school in Michigan, preferring to skip the intermediate years of
college training which Powers Jackson had offered him, and he never
ceased referring to his success in his profession as partly due to the
fact he had "fooled no time away at college." So far as his business
went, which was to patch together crazy corporations, he had no
immediate use for a liberal education. He had no tastes whatsoever
outside of this business and a certain quiet interest in politics. His
dull white features, sharpened to a vulpine point at the nose and chin,
betrayed his temperament. He was a silent, cool-blooded, unpassionate
American man of affairs, and it would be safe to say that he would die
rich. Thus far he had not had enough emotion, apparently, to get
married. No! his cousin reflected, Everett was not a man after Powers
Jackson's heart! The old man was not cold, passionless....
Those two men opposite him knew what was the fact in this matter so
momentous to him. They smoked, wrapped in their own thoughts.
"I wonder who was the joker who put up that monstrous Greek temple out
there in the cemetery?" Jackson finally observed, in a nervous desire
to say something.
"You mean the family mausoleum?" Everett asked severely, removing his
cigar from his lips and spitting carefully out of the half-opened
window. "That was done by a fellow named Roly, and it was considered a
very fine piece of work. It was built the time aunt Frankie died."
"It's a spooky sort of place to put a man into!"
"I think the funeral was what your uncle would have liked," Hollister
remarked, as if to correct this irrelevant talk. "He hated to be
eccentric, and yet he despised pretentious ceremonies. Everything was
simple and dignified. The parson was good, too, in what he said. And
the old men turned out in great numbers. I was glad of that! But I
was surprised. It's nearly two years since he gave up the Works, and
memories are short between master and man."
"That's a fact. But he knew every man Jack about the place in the old
days," Everett observed, removing his silk hat as if it were an
ornamental incumbrance.
"Yes," said Hollister, taking up the theme. "I remember how he would
come into the front office on pay days, and stand behind the grating
while the men were signing off. He could call every one by a first
name. It was Pete and Dave and Jerry and Steve,--there wasn't so much
of that European garbage, then,--these Hungarians and Slavs."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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