e presence of hereditary majesties, he would most
resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he would, and his instinct is
correct aesthetically as well as morally. It's a stiff knee he wears, and
you can't help smiling at the thought of the two long members of his leg,
tightly cased in striped trousers, arranging themselves in an obsequious
right angle. Erect and stiff, chest out, chin whiskers to front, eyes
blinking independently, my uncle is superb. Or when he raises his hat with
a large, outward gesture of his arm, bowing slightly from the shoulders, in
affable salutation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his jaws display
big nervous knots, his eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some
palpable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous act of cruelty or
oppression.

The mood of rage is, to be sure, infrequent with him, and he prides himself
in a self-control that forbids him to act upon it. Therefore, certain cocky
foreign fellows, upholders of the duty of fighting at the drop of the hat,
have charged that our uncle would place peace above honor. And some of us,
his nephews, are not exactly easy under the charge. It seems to reflect on
us. But most of us really know better. Our uncle hates trouble, and prefers
argument to fists. But nobody had better presume too much upon his distaste
for violence.

Pugnacity, declares my uncle, is a form of sentimentalism, and all
sentimentalism is despicable. This is a practical world. Determine the
value of what you are after and count the cost. And wherever you can,
reduce all items to dollars and cents. "Aha!" cry the hostile critics of
our house, "what a gross materialist!" And some, even of the nephews of the
blood, repeat the taunt behind our good uncle's back. At first I too
thought there might be something in it. But I was forced to a different
view by dint of reflection on the notorious fact that my uncle is far
readier in a good cause to "shell out" his dollars and cents than any of
his idealistic critics. Reduction of a problem to dollars and cents, I have
come to see, is just his means of arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants
to do a good business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in the
benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he thinks, ought to be as solvent
as the world's. A naive view? To be sure, but not one that argues a base
soul.

This insistence of my uncle on definiteness, on the financial solvency of
every enterprise, do