New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
He got all the news from Cornelia, who politely tried not to gloat over
his disappointment. She professed to see no reason for finding fault
with Janet’s easy submission to the force of an irresistible attraction.
As it was fairly plain that Robert would have preferred to be alone,
Cornelia perversely lost no time in proposing that he carry out his
original intention of visiting the Japanese Industrial Exhibition, she,
of course, to take Janet’s place as his companion.
She had another reason for inviting herself out with Robert. This
reason was the Harlem Gorilla. He, though almost superstitiously
devoted to her, sometimes had to be "managed," in accordance with
Cornelia’s view that love makes the most constant of men uncertain, coy,
and hard to please. Luckily, the treatment that Harry Kelly’s case
required was not a subtle one, and so it was Cornelia’s practice to
alternate a little encouraging discouragement, with a little
discouraging encouragement. On this occasion, by accompanying Robert
who didn’t want her, and deserting Kelly who wanted her very much, she
neatly killed two birds with the same stone.
On the way to the exhibition, Robert gave Cornelia an account of his
latest occupation. He had been made organizing secretary of a body
called the League of Guildsmen. Was this a fanciful name for another set
of Outlaws? No, the Guildsmen were servers of the community, the
Outlaws were spongers on it.
"You have golden opinions of us," said Cornelia, theatrically. "I marvel
that you soil your garments by staying in our midst."
"It’s nothing to marvel at, Cornelia. I had to learn what Kips Bay and
its slum population were at first hand before I could desire in earnest
to destroy them, root and branch. Familiarity, which sometimes breeds
contempt, often breeds homicidal mania. Do you recollect how Caesar
spent a short vacation among a band of desperate pirates and how the
experience filled him with a conviction that it was his duty to
exterminate them? Well, I am filled with the same conviction about Kips
Bay."
"What a passion you have for reforming everybody and everything, Cato!
I am sure it is a very noble passion, though it does include poor me in
its program of extermination. Still, I wonder whether reform, like
charity, oughtn’t to begin at home?"
"I used to think so," replied Robert, unmoved by her sarcasm. "In my
schooldays, my elders obliged me to hack my way through obsolete French
tragedies or the differential calculus instead of allowing me to gain a
working knowledge of current English plays or of modern political
economy. And when I made a fearful hash of their instruction, they
voted me a miserable failure. Whereupon, I determined to reform myself
in order that I might reform the world. I am wiser now. I know that I
must reform the world before I can hope to reform myself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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