The Last Gentleman

Sir?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHere—I’m going to write down my number here in New York.” Meaning, he hoped: you didn’t mention a figure and when you want to, it is for you to call me.
    â€œSho now,” said Mr. Vaught absently, and shoved the slip of paper into the side pocket of his seersucker, a bad enough sign in itself.
    8 .
    He stayed only long enough to watch the presentation of the checks. Kitty was back and without Rita!
    Standing between Jamie and Kitty, Mr. Vaught crossed his arms, a check in each hand.
    â€œWhen was your last cigarette?” he asked Jamie.
    â€œThere was no last cigarette,” said Jamie, grinning and thrashing.
    â€œYour last drink?”
    â€œThere was no last drink.”
    â€œThen go buy yourself a drink.”
    â€œYes sir,” said Jamie, taking his check.
    â€œKitty?”
    â€œNo cigarette and no drink.”
    â€œThen go buy yourself one!”
    â€œI might,” said Kitty, laughing.
    â€œI mean it! They’re certified. You can cash it right down there at the bar on the corner.”
    â€œThank you, Poppy,” said Kitty, kissing him.
    The checks were passed around among family, nurses, and internes.
    Once again Kitty left and once again the engineer tried to follow her, but Jamie stopped him.
    â€œBill.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œCome here.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDid Poppy speak to you?” he whispered.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat did you say?”
    â€œWe didn’t get down to terms.”
    â€œThat’s Poppy. But what do you say in general?”
    â€œI say O.K., if I can be of use to you.”
    â€œWhere do you want to go?”
    â€œWhere do I want to go?”
    Jamie waved the check. “Name it.”
    â€œNo sir. You name it. And I think you’d better name a school.”
    â€œO.K.,” said Jamie immediately and cheerfully.
    9 .
    During the next week he set about putting his life in order. He ate and slept regularly, worked out every day, went down to Brooks Brothers like his father and grandfather before him and bought two ten-dollar pullover shirts with a tuck in the back and no pocket in the front, socks, ties, and underwear, and dressed like a proper Princetonian. At work he read business maxims in Living.
    The only way people are defeated by their problems isby refusing to face them.
    One day, some years ago, a now famous industrial counselor walked into the office of a small manufacturing concern. “How would you like to increase sales 200% the first year?” he asked the president. The latter of course tried to get rid of him. “O.K., I’m leaving,” said the counselor. “But first lend me your scratch pad.” He wrote a few lines and handed the pad to the executive. “Read this. Think about it. If you put it into practice, send me a check a year from now for what it was worth to you.” One year later the counselor received a check in the mail for $25,000.
    The counselor had written two sentences:
    (1) Make a list of your problems, numbering them in the order of priority.
    (2) Devote all your time, one day, one month, however long it takes, to disposing of one problem at a time. Then go to the next.
    Simple? Yes. But as a result this executive is now president of the world’s third largest corporation and draws a salary of $400,000 a year.
    It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments. Back to the South, finish his education, make use of his connections, be a business or professional man, marry him a wife and live him a life. What was wrong with that? No more pressing against girls, rassling around in elevators and automobiles and other similar monkey business such as gives you stone pains and God knew what else. What was wrong with a good little house in a pretty green suburb in Atlanta or Birmingham or Memphis and a pretty little wife in a brand-new kitchen with a red dress on at nine o’clock in the morning and a sweet good-morning kiss and the little ones off to school and a good old mammy to take care of them? The way to see Kitty is not not to see her but to see her.
    But it didn’t work. Kitty’s phone didn’t answer. Outside in the park the particles were ravening and singing. Inside he went careening around the dark Aztec