He is unreasonably suspicious of anything that
threatens change. "When I'm comfortable all's well in the world; change
might bring discomfort to me." And he flatters himself that he is a
"conservative."
Howard had had a long training at the correct standpoint and in right
thinking. But the influences were there, were at work, were destroying his
devotion to a social and political ideal wholly alien to the life he was
now living under the leading of his wife. He did not blame her, indeed he
could not justly have blamed her, for his falling away from what he knew
were correct principles for him. While she had brought him into this
environment, while at first it was in large part for her that he gave so
much time and thought to the accumulation of wealth, soon love of luxury,
dependence upon a train of servants, fondness for the great extravagances
to which New York tempts the rich and those living near the rich, became
stronger in him than it was in her. And through the inevitable reaction of
environment upon the man, the central point in his valuation of men and
women tended to shift from the fundamentals, mind and character, to the
surface qualities--dress and style and manners and refinement, and even
dress.
This process of demoralisation was well advanced when they moved from the
apartment.
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