These gentlemen have treated me with a
hospitality so generous that its memory will never fade from my mind.
I cannot bring our relations down to the level of bargain and sale,suh;
it would be vulgar."
The colonel was perfectly sincere. As for himself he would have put
every room in his own Carter Hall at their service for any purpose or
for any length of time, and have slept in the woodshed himself; and
he would as soon have demanded the value of the bottle of wine on his
own table as ask pay for such trivial courtesies.
Nor did he stop at the rent. The free use of stamps, envelopes, paper,
messenger service, and clerks were to him only evidences of a lordly
sort of hospitality which endeared the real proprietor of the office
all the more to him, because it recalled the lavish display of the
golden days of Carter Hall.
"Permit a guest to stamp his own letters, suh? Never! Our servants
attended to that."
Really he owed his host nothing. No office of its size in the Street
made so much money for its customers in a bull market.
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