breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I
could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a
lawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory
trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their
raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had
never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were
the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and
mentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noble
savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had
such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of
an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding
for days.

The next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to his
mood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he
would discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get!
He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his
victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor,
fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus
in regard to merchants:

"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a
wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a
distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and
manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll
find that they know just the one little line with which they're
connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits"
(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little
something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's
all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little
business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else
connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his
friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few
thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few
thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to be
just like--the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on
the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go
there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows
something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even
if the club doe