"Our
young friend from the desert! How do we find New York?"
From Banneker's reply, there grew out a pleasantly purposeless
conversation, which afforded the newcomer opportunity to decide that he
did not like this Mr. Vanney, sleek, smiling, gentle, and courteous, as
well as he had the brusque old tyrant of the wreck. That green-whiskered
autocrat had been at least natural, direct, and unselfish in his grim
emergency work. This manifestation seemed wary, cautious, on its guard
to defend itself against some probable tax upon its good nature. All
this unconscious, instinctive reckoning of the other man's
characteristics gave to the young fellow an effect of poise, of
judicious balance and quiet confidence. It was one of Banneker's
elements of strength, which subsequently won for him his unique place,
that he was always too much interested in estimating the man to whom he
was talking, to consider even what the other might think of him. It was
at once a form of egoism, and the total negation of egotism. It made him
the least self-conscious of human beings. And old Horace Vanney,
pompous, vain, the most self-conscious of his genus, felt, though he
could not analyze, the charm of it.
A chance word indicated that Banneker was already "placed.
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