Читать книгу The Lonely Warrior онлайн

10 страница из 69

And if one asks how it came about that, with this characteristic, he was content to live in the city of Vernon, which had two hundred thousand inhabitants, was situated in Illinois, was not very beautiful, and certainly had no touch of the exotic about it, the answer is that he was not—with this part of him. The part was not by any means the whole. With a great deal of the rest of him Stacey very much liked living in Vernon. He liked many Vernon people, he liked the physical comforts of his existence, and he did not dislike being a member of one of the city’s most prominent families. He had a great capacity for liking both people and things. He could perceive bad in them, but quite instinctively his mind singled out and dwelt on the good. Moreover, it should at once be said for Vernon that it differed from the average middle-western city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Being close to Chicago it was metropolitan in feeling; plays came to it and music; its citizens—the ones Stacey knew—were sophisticated, well informed, almost too up-to-date; the houses that they built—often with Stacey’s help—were modern and handsome. The provincial spirit had long since vanished from Vernon.