I was surprised, myself, to learn how many diverse
opportunities this town offers--enough to extend through three dances.
People may preside at banquets, I learned, and address political
meetings, and head subscription papers, and found public baths, and build
and endow colleges. And there are others who donate telescopes, or erect
model lodging-houses, or set up statues and fountains, or
give--Marshall," he said, suddenly, "do something for yourself and for
the town; nothing that you are doing here"--he waved his hand towards the
larger office outside--"is enough for a man of your means and standing."
Bingham was now speaking with increased confidence and with greater
seriousness. He felt himself entitled to say these things by reason of
their personal relations and by virtue of his own standing before the
public. He was twenty years younger than Marshall, but he was twenty
times as great a figure in the public eye. He had had no mean share in
those two fast and crowded years through which the city had striven
towards readiness for the coming of the world. Like the Christians
at Ephesus, he, too, had "fought with the wild beasts"--with time, with
the elements, with Labor, with National niggardliness, with a
hundred-headed management; and he had expanded and ripened in the
struggle. He saw the world with a wider vision; he inhaled the vast and
palpitating present with a deeper breath. He beheld, too, a triumphant
and wide-spreading future, and he felt with the utmost keenness the
opportunities that the town offered even to the older and departing
generation--crabbed and reluctant though it be.
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