ing of man's smoldering, natural passions into an artificial, pinchbeck, thin-blooded puritanism. It spelled the mumming of the thinking mind—the mind that was trying to think—into the speciosities of childish fairy-tales. It was a sniveling reminder of pap-fed infancy.
The only thing worth while in life was success—which is selfishness. Selfishness sprawling stark-contoured and unashamed, sublimely unself-conscious, serenely brutal—a five-plied Nietzscheism on a modern business basis which acknowledges neither codified laws nor principles.
It had been the measure and route of his life, and—he whipped out the thought like something shameful and nasty, like a nauseating drug which his mind refused to swallow—it had cheated him.
Yes, by God! It had cheated him, cheated him!
For, first, it had given him gold and power and the envy of men, which was sweet.
Then, as a jest of Fate's own black brewing, it had taken everything away from him overnight, in one huge financial crash, and had made of him what he was to-night: gray, middle-aged, bitter, joyless—and a pauper. It had brought him here, to Tompkins Square, and had chucked him, like a worn-out,
