“The mention of rent put Frank on his mettle. ‘That’s all right, dear,’ he said; ‘you pay when you can.’
“Each time that he spoke this familiar phrase, and sometimes it was as often as twenty times in a week, he felt overcome by the sadness of the situation. It was seldom, he knew, that any good would come of his sympathy, but it was the hopelessness, the endless hopelessness of the lives with which he had surrounded himself, that awoke his compassion. Frank Rammage’s attitude could hardly be called sentimental, for it went farther than mere feeling–he regarded the dishonest and depraved as almost sacred. As usual, however, the little scene had satisfied the mixture of bullying and masochism that lay on the surface of his strange, Dostoyevskian philanthropy. He felt quite jolly.”
Angus Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
