I don't know,
myself, any other reason for regarding business men as solider than
novelists or artists or ministers, not to mention lawyers and doctors.
They are supposed to have long heads; but it appears that ninety-five
times out of a hundred they haven't. They are supposed to be very
reliable; but it is almost invariably a business man of some sort who gets
out to Canada while the state examiner is balancing his books, and it is
usually the longest headed business men who get plundered by him. No, it
is simply because business is our national ideal that the business man is
honored above all other men among us. In the aristocratic countries they
forward a public object under the patronage of the nobility and gentry; in
a plutocratic country they get the business men to indorse it. I suppose
that the average American citizen feels that they wouldn't indorse a thing
unless it was safe; and the average American citizen likes to be safe--he
is cautious. As a matter of fact, business men are always taking risks,
and business is a game of chance, in a certain degree. Have I made myself
intelligible?"
"Entirely so," said the Altrurian; and he seemed so thoroughly well
satisfied that he forbore asking any further question.
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