Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“What are you laughing at?”

“These intellectual people——”

“Do you know what it means?”

The little man’s eyes twitched nervously.

“Why, it usually means——”

“It always means brainy and well-educated,” interrupted Amory. “It means having an active knowledge of the race’s experience.” Amory decided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. “The young man,” he indicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as one says bell-boy, with no implication of youth, “has the usual muddled connotation of all popular words.”

“You object to the fact that capital controls printing?” said the big man, fixing him with his goggles.

“Yes—and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed to me that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted in overworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it.”

“Here now,” said the big man, “you’ll have to admit that the laboring man is certainly highly paid—five and six hour days—it’s ridiculous. You can’t buy an honest day’s work from a man in the trades-unions.”