"Take it of course," says Gringo, "take anything that offers, why not?"
"But they want me to make it an opposition paper."
"Well, make it that. That party is going to succeed, it's going to elect
the next president."
"I don't believe it," said Philip, stoutly, "its wrong in principle, and
it ought not to succeed, but I don't see how I can go for a thing I don't
believe in."
"O, very well," said Gringo, turning away with a shade of contempt,
"you'll find if you are going into literature and newspaper work that you
can't afford a conscience like that."
But Philip did afford it, and he wrote, thanking his friends, and
declining because he said the political scheme would fail, and ought to
fail. And he went back to his books and to his waiting for an opening
large enough for his dignified entrance into the literary world.
It was in this time of rather impatient waiting that Philip was one
morning walking down Broadway with Henry Brierly. He frequently
accompanied Henry part way down town to what the latter called his office
in Broad Street, to which he went, or pretended to go, with regularity
every day. It was evident to the most casual acquaintance that he was a
man of affairs, and that his time was engrossed in the largest sort of
operations, about which there was a mysterious air. His liability to be
suddenly summoned to Washington, or Boston or Montreal or even to
Liverpool was always imminent.
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