Rich Man, Poor Man

caramels from a package

He was going to be seventeen years old soon and another year after that he could enlist.

All workers, in Dwyer’s view of labor, coughed their lungs out.

“Christ, can you imagine how many hours thousands of poor bastards in those mills of his in North Carolina have to put in at the machines, coughing their lungs out, so that he can have a swim every day?”

Thomas sipped at his whiskey, “That’s my brother,” he said. He could feel Mr. Goodhart glancing at him curiously, and could guess what he was thinking. “We’ve gone our different ways,” he said shortly. “He was the smart one of the family.”

“Most of the trouble in my life,” Thomas said, “came because of women. Weak and strong.”

He was amazed that somebody like Thomas had wound up the owner-skipper of a ship like the Clothilde in Antibes harbor, and was making a go of it. “Yanks,” Kimball said, shaking his head. “They’re fucking well capable of anything. No wonder you own the world.”

The young did everything so much better these days.

The new wing on the library, the expanded courses in sociology and foreign affairs, the introduction of a resident artist and the expansion of the Art School, the donation for two weeks a year of the theater at the Shopping Center to the Drama Department had all been his ideas. Remembering Boylan’s sneer, Rudolph was resolved that before he got through, nobody, not even a man like Boylan, could call Whitby an agricultural school.

“I want to be as tired as you. I don’t want to be one of those American women who lie around all day and then when their husbands come home, drag the poor beasts out every evening, because they’re bursting with unused vigor. The energy gap has ruined more marriages by half than adultery.”