the Surtaine mansion, he felt in the whole scheme of the thing a vague
offense. The air which he had breathed in those spacious halls of trade
had left a faintly malodorous reminiscence in his nostrils.

One feature of his visit returned insistently to his mind: the contrast
between the semi-contemptuous carelessness exhibited by his father
toward the processes of compounding the cure and the minute and
insistent attention given to the methods of expounding it. Was the
advertising really of so much more import than the medicine itself? If
so, wasn't the whole affair a matter of selling shadow rather than
substance?

But it is not in human nature to view with too stern a scrutiny a
business which furnishes one's easeful self with all the requisites of
luxury, and that by processes of almost magic simplicity. Hal reflected
that all big businesses doubtless had their discomforting phases. He had
once heard a lecturing philosopher express a doubt as to whether it were
possible to defend, ethically, that prevalent modern phenomenon, the
millionaire, in any of his manifestations. By the counsel of perfection
this might well be true. But who was he to judge his father by such
rigorous standards? Of the medical aspect of the question he could form
no clear judgment. To him the patent medicine trade was simply a part of
the world's business, like railroading, banking, or any other form of
merchandising. His own precocious commercial experience, when, as a boy,
he had played his little part in the barter and trade, had blinded him
on that side. Nevertheless, his mind was not impregnably fortified. Old
Lame-Boy, bearer of dollars to the bank, loomed up, a disturbing figure.

Then, from a recess in his memory, there popped out the word "genteel."
His father had characterized the Certina business as being, possibly,