He could talk by
the hour on the degeneracy of state and city politics and the evil deeds
of Congress, and was, generally speaking, a conservative, fastidious,
well-dressed, well-fed man, who had a winning way with women and a happy
faculty of looking wise and saying nothing rash in the presence of men.
Some of the younger generation were apt, with the lack of reverence
belonging to youth, to speak of him covertly as "a stuffed club," but no
echo of this epithet had ever reached the ear of his cousin, David
Price, in New Jersey. For him, as for most of the world within a radius
of two hundred miles, he was above criticism and a monument of social
power.
David Price, Miss Flossy's father, was the president of a small and
unprogressive but eminently solid bank. Respectable routine was his
motto, and he lived up to it, and, as a consequence, no more sound
institution of the kind existed in his neighborhood. He and his
directors were slow to adopt innovations of any kind; they put stumbling
blocks in the path of business convenience whenever they could; in
short, David Price in his humble way was a righteous, narrow, hide-bound
retarder of progress and worshipper of established local custom.
Therefore it was a constant source of surprise and worry to him that he
should have a progressive daughter.
Pages:
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160