"They live in a world of unrealities. They
like even vulgar people in books, but shrink from the simple, earthy folk
about them. That school teacher is so. Is she like me? Does she, while
loving books, love also the very smell of human life?"
In a way Telfer's attitude toward the kindly little school teacher became
Sam's attitude. Although they walked and talked together the course of
study she had planned for him he never took up and as he grew to know her
better, the books she read and the ideas she advanced appealed to him less
and less. He thought that she, as Telfer held, lived in a world of
illusion and unreality and said so. When she lent him books, he put them
in his pocket and did not read them. When he did read, he thought the
books reminded him of something that hurt him. They were in some way false
and pretentious. He thought they were like his father. One day he tried
reading aloud to Telfer from a book Mary Underwood had lent him.
The story was one of a poetic man with long, unclean fingernails who went
among people preaching the doctrine of beauty. It began with a scene on a
hillside in a rainstorm where the poetic man sat under a tent writing a
letter to his sweetheart.
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