"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, "sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit gambling--what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I don't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. What happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide out behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have the benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they need his help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's impossible. "As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well please, and stay sick or die!" He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the target for their rather censorious eyes.