The Dominant Dollar

“I’m tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it” ( Page 66 ) 64 “Steve!” The girl was on her feet. “I never dreamed, never—You poor boy!” ( Page 153 ) 156 “You mean to suggest that Elice,” he began, “that Elice—You dare to suggest that to me?” ( Page 107 ) 278 Transcriber’s Notes: Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed, along with the author's punctuation style, except as noted in the text with a dotted line under the correction. Hover the mouse over the word and the original text will appear . Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without note. The following words have been found in both hyphenated and unhyphenated form in the original text: top-coat (topcoat), up-stairs (upstairs), near-by (nearby), house-warming (housewarming). Their original hyphenation has been preserved. 9 The Dominant Dollar A PROPHECY “You’re cold-blooded as a fish, Roberts, colder. You’re—There is no adequate simile.” The man addressed said nothing. “You degrade every consideration in life, emotional and other, to a dollar-and-cents basis. Sentiment, ambition, common judgment of right and wrong, all gravitate to the same level. You have a single standard of measurement that you apply to all alike, which alike condemns or justifies. Summer and Winter, morning, noon, and night—it’s the same. Your little yardstick is always in evidence, measuring, measuring—You, confound you, drive me to distraction with your eternal ‘does it pay.’” Still the other man said nothing. “I know,” apologetically, “I’m rubbing it in pretty hard, Darley, but I can’t help it. You 10 exasperate me beyond my boiling point at times and I simply can’t avoid bubbling over. I believe if by any possibility you were ever to have a romance in your life, and it came on slowly enough so you could analyze a bit in advance, you’d still get out your tape line and tally up to the old mark: would it pay!” This time the other smiled, a smile of tolerant amusement. “And why shouldn’t I? Being merely the fish you suggest, it seems to me that that’s the one time in a human being’s life when, more than another, deliberation is in order. The wider the creek the longer the wise man will linger on the margin to estimate the temperature…