e right--the aristocratic clubman,
G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones--came out to his waiting motor-car,
wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance
sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation.
"Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing!" commented the ex-Soap King.
"The Eden Musee'll get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he don't watch
out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and
see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher."
And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door
of his library and shouted "Mike!" in the same voice that had once
chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies.
"Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in here
before he leaves the house."
When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his
newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth,
ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and
rattled the keys in his pocket with the other.
"Richard," said Anthony Rockwall, "what do you pay for the soap that
you use?"
Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He
had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of
unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party.
"Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad."
"And your clothes?"
"I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule."
"You're a gentleman," said Anthony, decidedly. "I've heard of these
young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred
mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em,
and yet you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old
Eureka--not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever
you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and
labels. But 50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your
generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. They
say it takes three generations to make one. They're off. Money'll do it
as slick as soap grease. It's made you one. By hokey! it's almost made
one of me. I'm nearly as impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as
these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can't sleep of
nights because I bought in between 'em."
"There are some things that money can't accomplish," remarked young
Rockwall, rather gloomily.
"Now, don't say that," said old Anthony, shocked. "I bet my mo
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