As to how one happened to be born--whether
a sucker or a robber--was a gamble to begin with; Luck dealt out
the cards, and the little babies picked up the hands allotted them.
Protest was vain. Those were their cards and they had to play
them, willy-nilly, hunchbacked or straight backed, crippled or
clean-limbed, addle-pated or clear-headed. There was no fairness
in it. The cards most picked up put them into the sucker class;
the cards of a few enabled them to become robbers. The playing
of the cards was life--the crowd of players, society.
The table was the earth, and the earth, in lumps and chunks, from
loaves of bread to big red motor-cars, was the stake. And in the
end, lucky and unlucky, they were all a long time dead.
It was hard on the stupid lowly, for they were coppered to lose
from the start; but the more he saw of the others, the apparent
winners, the less it seemed to him that they had anything to brag
about. They, too, were a long time dead, and their living did
not amount to much. It was a wild animal fight; the strong
trampled the weak, and the strong, he had already discovered,--men
like Dowsett, and Letton, and Guggenhammer,--were not necessarily
the best.
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