"God meant no man to be a self-conscious ass," said Peter more mildly.
"The club pays you a high compliment, and you have the nerve to reply
that you don't take charity. I suppose if Congress voted you a medal for
writing the funniest joke in America, you'd have it assayed and remit
the cash. Chuck it, will you? Once in a year we find a man we want, and
then we go ahead and take him. We don't think much of money here but--as
I say, how much?"

The "but" implied that Horning did, and hurt as it was meant to. He came
into the club, took cheerfully what they offered him that way, and felt
grateful ever afterwards that Maginnis had steered him to the light.

The big man, Maginnis himself, sat on at the piano, his great fingers
rambling deftly over the keys. He was playing Brahms now and doing it
magnificently. He was fifteen stone, all bone and muscle, and looked
thirty pounds heavier, because you imagined, mistakenly, that he carried
a little fat. He was the richest man in the club, at least so far as
prospects went, but he wore ready-made clothes, and one inferred,
correctly, that a suit of them lasted him a long time. He looked capable
of everything, but the fact was that he had done nothing. But for his
money and a past consisting of thirty years of idleness, he might have
been the happiest dog alive.

"The best government," said one of the three men who were not listening
to the piano, "is simply the surest method for putting public opinion
into power."

The sentence drifted over the player's shoulder and Brahms ended with a
crash.