He made no complaint and found no fault with his time; he
was no worse off than the Indians or the buffalo who had been
ejected from their heritage by his own people; but he vehemently
insisted that he was not himself at fault. The defeat was not due
to him, nor yet to any superiority of his rivals. He had been
unfairly forced out of the track, and must get back into it as
best he could.
One comfort he could enjoy to the full. Little as he might be
fitted for the work that was before him, he had only to look at
his father and Motley to see figures less fitted for it than he.
All were equally survivals from the forties -- bric-a-brac from
the time of Louis Philippe; stylists; doctrinaires; ornaments
that had been more or less suited to the colonial architecture,
but which never had much value in Desbrosses Street or Fifth
Avenue. They could scarcely have earned five dollars a day in any
modern industry. The men who commanded high pay were as a rule
not ornamental. Even Commodore Vanderbilt and Jay Gould lacked
social charm. Doubtless the country needed ornament -- needed it
very badly indeed -- but it needed energy still more, and capital
most of all, for its supply was ridiculously out of proportion to
its wants. On the new scale of power, merely to make the
continent habitable for civilized people would require an
immediate outlay that would have bankrupted the world.
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