“I’ll tell you what you are, Merritt,” said Greenbrier, laying one elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. “You are a concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I’ve seen you rope and tie a steer in 421⁄2. If you was to see one now you’d write to the Police Commissioner about it. And these flapdoodle drinks that you inoculate your system with—these little essences of cowslip with acorns in ’em, and paregoric flip—they ain’t anyways in assent with the cordiality of manhood. I hate to see you this way.”
“Well, Greenbrier,” said Merritt, with apology in his tone, “in a way you are right. Sometimes I do feel like I was being raised on the bottle. But, I tell you, New York is comfortable—comfortable. There’s something about it—the sights and the crowds, and the way it changes every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-mile-long stake rope around a man’s neck, with the other end fastened somewhere about Thirty-fourth Street. I don’t know what it is.”
“God knows,” said Greenbrier sadly, “and I know. The East has gobbled you up. You was venison, and
