{"id":"01KG8AMA7M2FVX4ZMK4K389VPD","cid":"bafkreie4vnzkdq7hod2jvrnsyu76pi2tvw244oxecrmgsf5h6x3jzzzf5i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12008,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 31","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":11955,"text":"is America, Christian America, thank God; where, be it what it may,\r\none’s bank account is of no account whatever in an American’s estimate\r\nof a fellow American.’ Upon which the elders cast a quiet glance toward\r\nthe young gentleman, significant of their sense that he had been justly\r\nrebuked; and the rebuked wag, as conscious of the fact, assumed a\r\ncontrite demeanour into which, however, he contrived to infuse a twinkle\r\nof irony.\r\n\r\n‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner,’ volunteered another sexagenarian in an\r\narrested stage of development between the ear and the silk purse; ‘I was\r\nat Mrs. Jones’s dinner the other evening--and, by the way, there was\r\ntwenty-three million represented by the group, twenty-three million\r\ndollars, think of that, so I computed it--and between certain parties\r\nthere was some random talk about Major Gentian, to the effect that he\r\ndid well in resigning his place as a leading director of the Dime\r\nSavings Bank, considering that he had generally outlived his\r\nusefulness.’\r\n\r\n‘The Major ought to have an attendant,’ says a sunken-cheeked,\r\nheron-legged bachelor of uncertain years, a sort of man the natural\r\nproduct of the clubs and club-life, so at least the moralising enemies\r\nof clubs would doubtless maintain; ‘he ought to have an attendant, at\r\nany rate it will come to that before long. Tom Dutcher tells me that at\r\nNewport last season, instead of sedately sitting in white waistcoat and\r\narmchair on piazza talking stocks and dividends like most respectable\r\nold worthies of his kind, the Major more than ever before took to\r\nskylarking with those immature little specimens of humanity,\r\nobstreperous enough of themselves, Malthusian superfluities of the\r\nhousehold, the chastisement of intemperate wedlock, and the bane, as we\r\nall have experienced, of many summer resorts. But you know second\r\nchildhood has a natural affinity for the first.’\r\n\r\n‘To be sure!’ chimes in a young Crœsus of complexion pink and white,\r\nrecently returned from a four-in-hand coaching trip in Scotland. ‘To be\r\nsure! And how tediously, too, does he repeat in the smoking-room of the\r\n_Come-and-Goes_, where he occasionally resorts, his musty old romances\r\nof travel, and every version varies from the other. His memory is like\r\nwares at the auction--_going, going_, and anon it will be _gone_.’\r\n\r\n‘Yes,’ says yet another, ‘I was talking with him at the ‘Windsor’\r\nyesterday, and his sporadic ideas were like fishing smacks lost in a\r\nNewfoundland fog.’\r\n\r\n‘Very much so,’ solemnly remarks a clerical-looking citizen, a\r\npolitician high in municipal office; ‘very much so indeed. But have you\r\nobserved one little circumstance, gentlemen, and weighed its\r\nsignificance as a marked symptom--at least some of it--of that\r\nirreparable change that, alas, comes with years? Major Gentian, though a\r\nsoldier on the right side in the war, besides being of double\r\nRevolutionary descent--so I am told--nevertheless is far from being that\r\nsanguine New Yorker he used to be, and which in true patriotism we are\r\nall bound to be? What is this, I would like to know, but the natural\r\noptimist doting into the deplorable pessimist.’\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 31"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWBYEAWFNPZ7F62GDZWF","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMA7MP9VNX90AG7MHH3XF","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AMA7TEY3TT5X3T0AWMJRE","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:33.012Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:46.178Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}