superiority upon car-makers, tailors, and books of etiquette. The morality of his period has worked upon my hero from without inward, but has not penetrated far. At the center, where the master should sit, there is a space without form and void. He has nothing, morally speaking, of his own. The time-spirit has clothed him in specious appearances. He travels upon credit which was accumulated in other days, when the Gibson chin was the outward sign of an inward determination. He is, therefore, in the figurative, and probably also in the literal, sense, "living beyond his means."
I will hazard a guess that at college he studied a "line," "worked off" his French, and attained in his studies a passing mark, which is now generally known as a "gentleman's grade." At the same time he lived softly in a palatial fraternity house contributed by over indulgent alumni, who themselves paid for their barracks accommodations in the old dormitory by tending furnaces, and the like. He had had his father's car at his disposal since his early 'teens. Naturally when he went to college, he required it still for transit from fraternity house to class room and for dances and week-end parties. Of course, if one has a good car, one must live up to one's car.
