Soon all the others were talking wine, tobacco and Botticelli as well as
they could, though most of them knew more about coal, cotton or creosote
than the subjects they were affecting to discuss.

This, then, was success! To flounder helplessly in a mire of
artificiality and deception to Tales of Hoffmann!

If I were asked what was the object of our going to such a dinner I
could only answer that it was in order to be invited to others of the
same kind. Is it for this we labor and worry--that we scheme and
conspire--that we debase ourselves and lose our self-respect? Is there
no wine good enough for my host? Will God let such arrogance be without
a blast of fire from heaven?

* * * * *

There was a time not so very long ago when this same man was thankful
enough for a slice of meat and a chunk of bread carried in a tin
pail--content with the comfort of an old brier pipe filled with cut plug
and smoked in a sunny corner of the factory yard. "Sunny corners of the
walls of Smyrna!"

It is a fine thing to assert that here in America we have "out of a
democracy of opportunity" created "an aristocracy of achievement." The
phrase is stimulating and perhaps truly expresses the spirit of our
energetic and ambitious country; but an aristocracy of achievement is
truly noble only when the achievements themselves are fine. What are the
achievements that win our applause, for which we bestow our decorations
in America? Do we honor most the men who truly serve their generation
and their country? Or do we fawn, rather, on those who merely serve