People who
talked with young Dwight might not find him resourceful in conversation but
they were deeply impressed with his manners and principles. The younger
men, with the exception of Bob Cheever, who respected his capacity for
work, did not take to him; principally, no doubt, he reflected with some
bitterness, because he was not "their sort."
He never admitted to himself that he was a snob, for something deep and
still unfaced in his consciousness, bade him see as little fault in himself
as possible, forbade him to admit the contingency of a failure, impelled
him to call such weaknesses as the fortunate condemned by some one of those
interchangeable terms with which the lexicons are so generous.
But if he would not face the word snob he told himself proudly that he was
ambitious; and why should he not aspire to the best society? Was he not
entitled to it by birth? His family may not have been prominent to excess
in Utica, but it was indisputably "old." However, he assured himself that
the chief reason for his determination to mingle with the social elect
of San Francisco was not so much a tribute to his ancestors, or even the
insistence of youth for the decent pleasures of that brief period, but
because of the opportunities to make those friends indispensable to
every young man forced to cut his own way through life. Even if his good
conscience had compelled him to admit that he was a snob he would have
reminded it there was no harm in snobbery anyway.
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