"But Babylon itself was built of mud bricks," Bingham would rejoin. "And
the noblest mountain in the world, when you come right down to details,
is only a heap of dirt and rocks strewn over with sticks and stones. But
if you will just step back far enough to get the proper point of
view--well, you know what the painters can do with such things as these."
"I can't step back, Bingham. I started here; I've stayed here; I belong
here. I'm living right _on_ your mountain, and its sticks and stones are
all about me. Don't ask me to see them for anything else; don't ask me to
call them anything else."
Then he would say to Bingham what he said later to Susan Bates when she
came with Jane to view the wainscotings and the panelled ceilings of the
long succession of rooms: that the man who met all the legal exactions of
the community and all the needs and requirements of his own flesh and
blood was doing quite enough for the preservation of his own credit. And
when Theodore Brower cautiously suggested that the bitterness of certain
experiences might be turned to sweetness by the institution of a bureau
of justice for the poor and unfriended, the sensitive old man shrank back
as if from contact with a nettle. Indeed, it is probable that so
unconventional and untravelled a road to philanthropic renown would have
proven uninviting to his feet at any time. And Jane, who, after the
failure of her own idea, had transferred her support to the idea of
Brower, now made a second transfer and came to the support of the idea
of Susan Bates.
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