IX
It may be remembered that Truesdale, in making an estimate of the
resources of his native town upon the occasion of his return to it, had
scheduled the five-o'clock tea as the last resource of all. If we find
him present, then, at such a function, we may imagine him to have found
the possibilities of local entertainment much slighter than he had
figured, and time already hanging somewhat heavily on his hands.
Nor need we make any allowance for the fact that the debutante was his
sister, and the scene of her coming-out his own mother's house. The
catholic tolerance of his sympathies was such as to make his interest in
his relatives, as relatives, no greater than his interest in other people
whose general qualities would be likely to receive equal recognition from
the world at large; and his outlook was so broad as to make his father's
house but one of many houses, and to subject happenings in it to the same
criterion as would be used to judge and rate the happenings in any other
house throughout Christendom. Truesdale considered himself as admirably
and flawlessly a cosmopolite.
Yes, he had done his sister's tea, but not until he had done almost
everything else. He went to the few good concerts that offered, he made a
fortnightly visit to the art stores, and he patronized (so far as he
could endure them) the theatres--the chief and final resource of the
town. But the concerts were a factor far from constant; and the theatres
offered scarcely once a month a play that a person of taste and
intelligence cared to sit through.
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