He liked Arthur, but estimated him by his accent and his dress, and so thought him probably handicapped out of the running by those years of training for a career of polite uselessness.

"That East!" he said to himself, looking pityingly at the big, stalwart youth in the elaborate fopperies of fashionable mourning.

"That _damned_ East! We send it most of our money and our best young men; and what do we get from it in return?
Why, sneers and snob-ideas." However, he tried to change his expression to one less discouraging; but his face could not wholly conceal his forebodings.
"It's lucky for the boy," he reflected, "that Hiram left him a good home as long as his mother's alive.

After she's gone--and the five thousand, if I get it back--I suppose he'll drop down and down, and end by clerking it somewhere." With a survey of Arthur's fashionable attire, "I should say he might do fairly well in a gent's furnishing store in one of those damn cities." The old man was not unfeeling--far from it; he had simply been educated by long years of experience out of any disposition to exaggerate the unimportant in the facts of life.

"He'll be better off and more useful as a clerk than he would be as a pattern of damnfoolishness and snobbishness.