AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play
with him. Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to
his account, though his tastes in the matter of books, bindings,
rugs, swords, bronzes, lacquer, pictures, plate, statuary, horses,
conservatories, and agriculture were educated and catholic, the
public opinion of his country wanted to know why he did not go to
office daily, as his father had before him.
So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic
Anglomaniac, born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public
spirit. He wore an eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country
house, with a high gate that shut, instead of inviting America to
sit on his flower-beds; he ordered his clothes from England; and
the press of his abiding city cursed him, from his eye-glass to his
trousers, for two consecutive days.
When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the
tents of an invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference
to anybody. If he had money and leisure, England stood ready to
give him all that money and leisure could buy.
Pages:
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393