"Moreover," said young Mr. Byrd, "I'll increase it to seven hundred and
fifty dollars if your friend Winter will publicly denounce me as a
boocaneer. It'll help me in my business to be lined up with Rockefeller
and all those Ikes."
But this gift never materialized at all, for the reason that Stewart
Byrd kindly but firmly refused to give anything. A rich vein of
horse-sense underlay Byrd's philanthropic enthusiasms; and even the
necessity for the continued existence of old Blaines College appeared to
be by no means clear in his mind.
"If you had a free hand, Gardiner," said he, "that would be one thing,
but you haven't. I've had my eye on Blaines for a long time, and frankly
I don't think it is entitled to any assistance. You have an inferior
plant and a lot of inferior men; a small college governed by small ideas
and ridden by a close corporation of small trustees--"
"But heavens, man!" protested West, "your argument makes a perfect
circle. You won't help Blaines because it's poorly equipped, and Blaines
is poorly equipped because the yellow-rich--that's you--won't help it.
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