No," he added, with the idea of a more general summing up, "nor
any excursions; nor any general market; nor any military; nor even any
morgue. And five francs for a cab. _Quelle ville_!"
To Truesdale the cafe was the great social foothold; it was here that he
was accustomed to meet on common ground the whole male section of
society. It was to the cafe that he would like to lead his young
water-colorist with the portfolio of views from rural Missouri, or his
last new poet with his thin little volume so finely flattened out between
the two millstones of journalism and literature--neither of which, alone,
could have ground him out his grist in livable quantities. In the absence
of the cafe he led two or three such to the house. It was like thrusting
a lighted candle into a jar of nitrogen. The candle went out at once. And
never came back. To David Marshall, art in all its forms was an
inexplicable thing; but more inexplicable still was the fact that any man
could be so feeble as to yield himself to such trivial matters in a town
where money and general success still stood ready to meet any live,
practical fellow half-way--a fellow, that was to say, who knew an
opportunity when he saw it. The desire of beauty was not an inborn
essential of the normal human being. Art was not an integral part of the
great frame of things; it was a mere surface decoration, and the artist
was but for the adornment of the rich man's triumph--in case the rich man
were, on his side, so feeble as to need to have his triumph adorned.
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