Those small accomplishments of his had
often moved me to a sort of pitying contempt, as if one saw a man of talent
devoting himself to engraving the Lord's Prayer on gold dollars. That
evening, however, as I saw how comfortable and contented he looked, with
not a care in the world, since he was to have a good dinner and a good
cigar afterward; as I saw how much genuine pleasure he was getting out of
selecting the dishes and giving the waiter minute directions for the chef,
I envied him.
What Langdon had once said came back to me: "We are under the tyranny of
to-morrow, and happiness is impossible." And I thought how true that was.
But, for the Sammys, high and low, there is no to-morrow. He was somehow
impressing me with a sense that he was my superior. His face was weak, and,
in a weak way, bad; but there was a certain fineness of quality in it,
a sort of hothouse look, as if he had been sheltered all his life, and
brought up on especially selected food. "Men like me," thought I with a
certain envy, "rise and fall. But his sort of men have got something that
can't be taken away, that enables them to carry off with grace, poverty or
the degradation of being spongers and beggars.
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