But, if I could judge from myself, he
must have left them all sensible of their effort; and this was not
pleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I had openly disagreed
with him on every point of ethics and economics, I was still responsible
for him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced a
blatant American Democrat into Tory society; or, rather, as if a
Southerner of the olden time had harbored a Northern Abolitionist and
permitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbors.
People would tolerate him as my guest for a time, but there must be an end
of their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments and the explicit
vulgarity of his ideals, and when the end came I must be attainted with
him.
I did not like the notion of this, and I meant to escape it if I could. I
confess that I would have willingly disowned him, as I had already
disavowed his opinions, but there was no way of doing it short of telling
him to go away, and I was not ready to do that. Something in the man, I do
not know what, mysteriously appealed to me. He was not contemptibly
puerile without being lovably childlike, and I could only make up my mind
to be more and more frank with him and to try and shield him, as well as
myself, from the effects I dreaded.
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