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"And you have made it serve your turn, too?"<br>"No." Kent's voice was sharp and crisp.<br>"Isn't that what you got it for?"<br>"Yes."<br>"Then why don't you use it,<p></p><p>cheap jordan shoes</p><p></p>?"<br>"That was what Bucks wanted to know a little while ago when he came to my rooms to try to buy me off. I don't think I succeeded in making him understand why I couldn't traffic with it; and possibly you wouldn't understand."<br>"I guess I do. It's public property,<p></p><p>and you couldn't divert it into private channels. Is that the way it struck you?"<br>"It is the way it struck a friend of mine whose sense of ultimate right and wrong hasn't lost its fine edge in the world-mill,<p></p><p>cheap jordans</p><p></p>. I did not want to do it."<br>"Naturally," said the editor. "Giving it up means the loss of all you have been working for in the railroad game. I wish I could use it, just as it stands."<br>"Can't you?"<br>"I am afraid not--effectively. It would make an issue in a campaign; or, sprung on the eve of an election, it might down the ring conclusively. I think it would. But this is the off year, and the people won't rise to a political issue--couldn't make themselves felt if they should."<br>"I don't agree with you. You have your case all made out, with the evidence in sound legal form. What is to prevent your trying it?"<br>"The one thing that you ought to be lawyer enough to see at a glance. There is no court to try it in. With the Assembly in session we might do something: as it is, we can only yap at the heels of the ringsters, and our yapping won't help you in the railroad fight. What do you hear from Boston?"<br>"Nothing new. The stock is still flat on the market, with the stock-holders' pool holding a bare majority, and the Plantagould brokers buying in driblets wherever they can find a small holder who is willing to let go. It is only a question of time; and a very short time at that."<br>The editor wagged his head in sympathy.<br>"I wish I could help you, David. You've done a big thing for me--for the Argus; and all I have to hand you in return is a death sentence. MacFarlane is back."<br>"Here? In town?"<br>"Yes. And that isn't the worst of it. The governor sent for him."<br>"Have you any idea what is in the wind?" asked Kent, dry-lipped.<br>"I am afraid I have. My young men have been nosing around in the Trans-Western affair, and several things have developed. Matters are approaching a crisis. The cut-rate boom is about to collapse, and there is trouble brewing in the labor organizations. If Bucks doesn't get his henchmen out of it pretty soon, they will be involved in the smash--which will be bad for them and for him, politically."<br>"I developed most of that a good while ago," Kent cut in.<br>"Yes; I know. But there is more to follow. The stock-smashing plan was all right, but it is proving too slow. Now they are going to do something else."<br>"Can you give it a name?" asked Kent, nerving himself.<br>"I can. But first tell me one thing: as matters stand, could Guilford dispose of the road--sell it or lease it?"<br>"No; he would first have to be made permanent receiver and be given authority by the court."<br>"Ah! that explains Judge MacFarlane's return. Now what I am going to tell you is the deadest of secrets. It came to me from one of the Overland officials, and I'm not supposed to gossip. Did you know the Overland Short | "And you have made it serve your turn, too?"<br>"No." Kent's voice was sharp and crisp.<br>"Isn't that what you got it for?"<br>"Yes."<br>"Then why don't you use it,<p></p><p>cheap jordan shoes</p><p></p>?"<br>"That was what Bucks wanted to know a little while ago when he came to my rooms to try to buy me off. I don't think I succeeded in making him understand why I couldn't traffic with it; and possibly you wouldn't understand."<br>"I guess I do. It's public property,<p></p><p>and you couldn't divert it into private channels. Is that the way it struck you?"<br>"It is the way it struck a friend of mine whose sense of ultimate right and wrong hasn't lost its fine edge in the world-mill,<p></p><p>cheap jordans</p><p></p>. I did not want to do it."<br>"Naturally," said the editor. "Giving it up means the loss of all you have been working for in the railroad game. I wish I could use it, just as it stands."<br>"Can't you?"<br>"I am afraid not--effectively. It would make an issue in a campaign; or, sprung on the eve of an election, it might down the ring conclusively. I think it would. But this is the off year, and the people won't rise to a political issue--couldn't make themselves felt if they should."<br>"I don't agree with you. You have your case all made out, with the evidence in sound legal form. What is to prevent your trying it?"<br>"The one thing that you ought to be lawyer enough to see at a glance. There is no court to try it in. With the Assembly in session we might do something: as it is, we can only yap at the heels of the ringsters, and our yapping won't help you in the railroad fight. What do you hear from Boston?"<br>"Nothing new. The stock is still flat on the market, with the stock-holders' pool holding a bare majority, and the Plantagould brokers buying in driblets wherever they can find a small holder who is willing to let go. It is only a question of time; and a very short time at that."<br>The editor wagged his head in sympathy.<br>"I wish I could help you, David. You've done a big thing for me--for the Argus; and all I have to hand you in return is a death sentence. MacFarlane is back."<br>"Here? In town?"<br>"Yes. And that isn't the worst of it. The governor sent for him."<br>"Have you any idea what is in the wind?" asked Kent, dry-lipped.<br>"I am afraid I have. My young men have been nosing around in the Trans-Western affair, and several things have developed. Matters are approaching a crisis. The cut-rate boom is about to collapse, and there is trouble brewing in the labor organizations. If Bucks doesn't get his henchmen out of it pretty soon, they will be involved in the smash--which will be bad for them and for him, politically."<br>"I developed most of that a good while ago," Kent cut in.<br>"Yes; I know. But there is more to follow. The stock-smashing plan was all right, but it is proving too slow. Now they are going to do something else."<br>"Can you give it a name?" asked Kent, nerving himself.<br>"I can. But first tell me one thing: as matters stand, could Guilford dispose of the road--sell it or lease it?"<br>"No; he would first have to be made permanent receiver and be given authority by the court."<br>"Ah! that explains Judge MacFarlane's return. Now what I am going to tell you is the deadest of secrets. It came to me from one of the Overland officials, and I'm not supposed to gossip. Did you know the Overland Short | ||
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| + | chosen literature as the occupation of his life; with money and success as his only aim he would surely have become a stockbroker or a moneylender. In the second place, Edwin Reardon's dire failure, with his rapid descent into extreme poverty, is clearly traceable not so much to a truly artistic temperament in conflict with the commercial spirit, as to mental and moral weakness, which could not but have a baneful influence upon his work.'<br>[Footnote 13: F. Dolman in National Review, vol. xxx.; cf. ibid., vol. xliv.]<br>This criticism does not seem to me a just one at all, and I dissent from it completely. In the first place, the book is not nearly so depressing as The Nether World, and is much farther removed from the strain of French and Russian pessimism which had begun to engage the author's study when he was writing Thyrza. There are dozens of examples to prove that Milvain's success is a perfectly normal process, and the reason for his selecting the journalistic career is the obvious one that he has no money to begin stock-broking, still less money-lending. In the third place, the mental and moral shortcomings of Reardon are by no means dissembled by the author. He is, as the careful student of the novels will perceive, a greatly strengthened and improved rifacimento of Kingcote, while Amy Reardon is a better observed Isabel, regarded from a slightly different point of view. Jasper Milvain is, to my thinking, a perfectly fair portrait of an ambitious publicist or journalist of the day--destined by determination, skill, energy, and social ambition to become an editor of a successful journal or review, and to lead the life of central London. Possessing a keen and active mind, expression on paper is his handle; he has no love of letters as letters at all. But his outlook upon the situation is just enough. Reardon has barely any outlook at all. He is a man with a delicate but shallow vein of literary capacity, who never did more than tremble upon the verge of success, and hardly, if at all, went beyond promise. He was unlucky in marrying Amy, a rather heartless woman, whose ambition was far in excess of her insight, for economic position Reardon had none. He writes books to please a small group. The books fail to please. Jasper in the main is right--there is only a precarious place for any creative litterateur between the genius and the swarm of ephemera or journalists. A man writes either to please the hour or to produce something to last, relatively a long time,<p></p><p>cheap jordans free shipping</p><p></p>, several generations--what we call 'permanent.' The intermediate position is necessarily insecure. It is not really wanted. What is lost by society when one of these mediocre masterpieces is overlooked? A sensation, a single ray in a sunset,<p></p><p>missed by a small literary coterie! The circle is perhaps eclectic. It may seem hard that good work is overwhelmed in the cataract of production, while relatively bad, garish work is rewarded. But so it must be. 'The growing flood of literature swamps every thing but works of primary genius.' Good taste is valuable, especially when it takes the form of good criticism. The best critics of contemporary books (and these are by no means identical with the best critics of the past and its work) are those who settle intuitively upon the writing that is going to appeal more largely to a future generation, when the attraction of novelty and topicality has subsided. The same work is done by great men. They anticipate lines of action; philosophers generally follow (Machiavelli's theories the practice of Louis XI., Nietzsche's that of Napoleon I.). The critic recognises the tentative steps of genius in letters. The work of fine delicacy and reserve, the work that follows, lacking the real originality, is liable to neglect, and may become the victim of ill-luck, unfair influence, or other extraneous factors. Yet on the whole, so numerous are the publics of to-day, there never, perhaps, was a time when supreme genius or even supreme talent was so sure of recognition. Those who rail against these conditions, as Gissing seems here to have done, are actuated consciously or unconsciously by a personal or sectional disappointment. It is akin to the crocodile lament of the publisher that good modern literature is neglected by the public, or the impressionist's lament about the great unpaid greatness of the great unknown--the exclusively literary view of literary rewards. Literature must be governed by over-mastering impulse or directed at profit.<br>But New Grub Street is rich in memorable characters and situations to an extent unusual in Gissing; Biffen in his garret--a piece of <ul> | ||
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