Tracy, don't put this kind of a strain on me.

Lately I'm not as strong as I was." "Well, I wasn't meaning to put--a strain on you, Barrow, I was only meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way--" "There--I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you.

And besides, I can settle what you would do.

Are you any different from me ?" "Well--no." "Are you any better than me ?" "O,--er--why, certainly not." "Are you as good?
Come!" "Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--" "Suddenly?
What is there sudden about it?
It isn't a difficult question is it?
Or doubtful?
Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate -- come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you to do it!" Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for that last remark.

Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up briskly and said: "But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your principles, if they are principles.