IV

A BOLD DASH AND A DISASTER

Mr. Feuerstein's evening was even more successful than his
afternoon. Brauner was still grumbling. Mr. Feuerstein could
not possibly be adjusted in his mind to his beloved ideals, his
religion of life--``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim.'' Still he was
yielding and Hilda saw the signs of it. She knew he was
practically won over and was secretly inclined to be proud that
his daughter had made this exalted conquest. All men regard that
which they do not know either with extravagant awe or with
extravagant contempt. While Brauner had the universal human
failing for attaching too much importance to the department of
human knowledge in which he was thoroughly at home, he had the
American admiration for learning, for literature, and instead of
spelling them with a very small ``l,'' as ``practical'' men
sometimes do with age and increasing vanity, he spelled them with
huge capitals, erecting them into a position out of all
proportion to their relative importance in the life of the human
animal.

Mr. Feuerstein had just enough knowledge to enable him to play
upon this weakness, this universal human susceptibility to the
poison of pretense. All doubt of success fled his mind, and he
was free to indulge his vanity and his contempt for these simple,
unpretending people. ``So vulgar!'' he said to himself, as he