He would simply have found his own place of fixed principle and abided there.

Then, too, he had a judicial mind which could combine the elements of counsels for and against his own cause.
"Now, look at here," he said, slowly, "I ain't goin' to say I don't think we ain't in a hard place, and that there's somethin' wrong that's to blame for it, but I dunno but you go most too far, Nahum; or, rather, I dunno as you go far enough.

I dunno but we've got to dig down past the poor and the rich, farther into the everlastin' foundations of things to get at what's the trouble." Jim Tenny, standing in the parlor doorway, with an arm around Eva's waist, broke in suddenly with a defiant laugh.

"I don't care nothin' about the everlastin' foundations of things, and I don't care a darn about the rich and the poor," he proclaimed.

"I'm willin' to leave that to lecturers and dynamiters, and let 'em settle it if they can.
I don't grudge the rich nothin', and I ain't goin' to call the Almighty to account for givin' somebody else the biggest piece of pie; mebbe it would give me the stomach-ache.