Robert William Chambers

The Tracer of Lost Persons Illustrated Robert William Chambers

"I don't want to be pleasant: I want to jar you. Don't I care enough about you to breakfast with you? Then I've a right to be pleasantly unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual dissolution-a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity for being nobody in particular-which is the sort of man this nation needs. Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the avenue-a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?-the pompous obsequies of a dead intellect?-a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you in bankruptcy-I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single flat on seven dollars and a half a week-I'd almost rather see you every day at breakfast than have it come to that!