Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

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He cared not so much for love at first as he did for material success: the straw figures of women in boys' books, something with hair, dancing eyes, and virtuous opinions, impeccably good and vacant, satisfied him completely: they were the guerdon of heroism, something to be freed from villainy on the nick by a blow or a shot, and to be enjoyed along with a fat income.

At the library he ravaged the shelves of boys' books, going unweariedly through all the infinite monotony of the Algers—Pluck and Luck, Sink or Swim, Grit, Jack's Ward, Jed the Poor-house Boy—and dozens more. He gloated over the fat money-getting of these books (a motif in boys' books that has never been sufficiently recognised); all of the devices of fortune, the loose rail, the signalled train, the rich reward for heroism; or the full wallet found and restored to its owner; or the value of the supposedly worthless bonds; or the discovery of a rich patron in the city, sunk so deeply into his desires that he was never after able to quench them.