"No, he wouldn't; and that's the worst of it. Ten years ago if anybody
had said of Fred Rangely: 'Here's a fellow that has started out to do
good work, but has found that there's more money in sensationalism;
who despises the popular taste and caters to it; who writes things he
doesn't believe for the newspapers and spends the money in running
after society,' he would have pronounced such a fellow a cad. Now he
would say: 'Well, a man must live, you know; and the public will only
pay for what it wants.' It's lamentable."
"You put it rather worse than it is," her husband responded. "We are
all in the habit of judging men as if their degradation was deliberate,
which as a matter of fact I suppose it never is. Rangely hasn't coolly
accepted the choice between honesty and Philistinism. It's all come
gradually."
"Like learning to pick pockets," she interpolated.
"Besides," Herman continued, "we over-estimated in the beginning both
his character and his talent. He found he couldn't do what was expected
of him, and he was weak enough to do then what was most comfortable
instead of what seemed to him highest.
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