Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 75

is a spade!" "But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young lady," said the Colonel, with unabated gallantry; "and when yo mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds. But I respect worsteds even under the name of yarn: our ladies--my own mothah and sistahs--had to knit the socks we wore--all we could get in the woe." "Yes, and aftah the woe," his daughter put in. "The knitting has not stopped yet in some places. Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. Beaton?" Beaton explained just how much. "Well, sir," said the Colonel, "then you have seen a country making gigantic struggles to retrieve its losses, sir. The South is advancing with enormous strides, sir." "Too fast for some of us to keep up," said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside. "The pace in Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had to drop oat into a slow place like New York." "The progress in the South is material now," said the Colonel; "and those of us whose interests are in another direction find ourselves--isolated --isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still in the Noth, sir; the great cities draw the mental activity of the country to them, sir. Necessarily New York is the metropolis." "Oh, everything comes here," said Beaton, impatient of the elders ponderosity. Another sort of man would have sympathized with the Southerners willingness to talk of himself, and led him on to speak of his plans and ideals. But the sort of man that Beaton was could not do this; he put up the dummy into the wrapper he had let drop on the floor beside him, and tied it round with string while Colonel Woodburn was talking. He got to his feet with the words he spoke and offered Mrs. Leighton his hand. "Must you go?" she asked, in surprise. "I am on my way to a reception," he said. She had noticed that he was in evening dress; and now she felt the vague hurt that people invited nowhere feel in the presence of those who are going somewhere. She did not feel it for herself, but for her daughter; and she knew Alma would not have let her feel it if she could have prevented it. But Alma had left the room for a moment, and she tacitly indulged this sense of injury in her behalf. "Please say good-night to Miss Leighton for me," Beaton continued. He bowed to Miss Woodburn, "Goodnight, Miss Woodburn," and to her father, bluntly, "Goodnight." "Good-night, sir," said the Colonel, with a sort of severe suavity. "Oh, isnt he choming!" Miss Woodburn whispered to Mrs. Leighton when Beaton left the room. Alma spoke to him in the hall without. "You knew that was my design, Mr. Beaton. Why did you bring it?" "Why?" He looked at her in gloomy hesitation. Then he said: "You know why. I wished to talk it over with you, to serve you, please you, get back your good opinion. But Ive done neither the one nor the other; Ive made a mess of the whole thing." Alma interrupted him. "Has it been accepted?" "It will be accepted, if you will let it." "Let it?" she laughed. "I shall be delighted." She saw him swayed a little toward her. "Its a matter of business, isnt it?" "Purely. Good-night." When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs. Leighton: "I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very difficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have the feelings of a gentleman. How can a business man, whose prosperity, whose earthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If we could have had time to perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. But the virus of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of a divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp of every success. What does not sell is a failure; and what sells succeeds." "The hobby is oat, mah deah," said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside to Alma. "Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn?" Alma asked. "Surely not, my dear young lady." "But hes been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money as anybody," said his daughter. "The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society," the Colonel

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