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The Lever - A Novel by William Dana Orcutt
page 8 of 327 (02%)

"Why, a boy like Allen just ready to start off on a business career.
That's about the only disappointment father has ever experienced, not
having a son to succeed him. You know as I do how much it would mean to
him to 'found a house,' as he calls it. I've seen him looking at Pat and
me so many times with an expression in his eyes which I understood, and
it has hurt me all through that I couldn't have been the son he longed
for. The aggravating part of it all is that nothing interests me so
much as business. I must have inherited father's love for it. I adore
listening to him when he is discussing some great problem with Mr.
Covington. It seems to me the grandest thing in the world to be able to
influence people, and to create or expand industries and actually to
accomplish results."

Mrs. Gorham understood the girl's mood and knew that it was wiser to let
her run on without interruption.

"I don't feel the same about other things," Alice continued, pausing
from time to time as she became more introspective. "I'm fond of poetry,
of course, but I can't understand how any one can be satisfied to do
nothing else but write poems; I admire art, but with my admiration for
the artist's work there's a real pity for the man because he is debarred
from the world of action. If I were a man I would have to do something
which had a physical as well as an intellectual struggle in it, with a
reward at the end to be striven for which was not expressed alone in the
praise of the world--it would have to be power itself."

"I would rather be a damosel," Patricia put in.

"You are your father's own daughter, Alice," Mrs. Gorham said, as the
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