Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [130]
I closed the evening by getting out a note I had just had from Professor Rossiter Raymond, who had left us a little while before, after a mine inspection. He had enjoyed himself by our fire, but had caught a tremendous cold as soon as he left the mountains. He sent this humorous little roofer to express his sentiments.
Let princes cough and sneeze
In their palaces of ease
Let colds and influenzas plague the rich;
But give to me instead
A well-ventilated head
In a little log cabin on a ditch.
Don’t you think we have pleasant times? The only single hard thing is that Oliver has to be so much away inspecting mines that, as they say here, are too poor to pay, too rich to quit. He envies the Survey men, who can ride off in the morning with a sandwich and a geological hammer and spend the whole day hunting fossils, or just looking at magnified mountains through a theodolite.
5
“Let me pose you a question,” said Helen Hunt Jackson. “It has nothing to do with the Indian. I know how Americans respond when their interests conflict with the Indian’s rights. They respond dishonorably. But I would like to know something else. How does a government scientist act when he finds himself in possession of information worth millions to some capitalist, when all his closest friends are mining experts in search of precisely that sort of information?”
Filling the rocker but not rocking, she sat with arms folded across her stomach, her shoes hanging like sash weights two inches off the floor. Imperturbably she met the smiles, murmurs, and cries of mock dismay–when she chose to, she could make every eye in the room turn her way, every mouth stop talking. All but Mr. Jackson, who looked at the ceiling and clapped a hand to his brow.
Clarence King raised his plump, animated face and laughed. “I hope you’re not suggesting that any of us would have trouble telling the public interest from our own.”
“I suggest nothing,” said Mrs. Jackson comfortably. “I ask a question that occurs to me. Here sit you geologists charged with surveying the resources of the Public Domain, and here sit your friends whose whole business it is to get hold of such information, preferably before it’s published. It seems to me to offer a nice ethical problem.”
“Now,” said her husband, “you see the consequences of letting women in where men are transacting business. She’ll bring on a congressional investigation.”
“Tell me, Mr. King,” said Mrs. Jackson. “You’re the head of this great new bureau. Have you never been tempted to drop a word and make a friend’s fortune?”
Hoots of pained protest. King, spreading his hands, said, “Should you be asking me? All I have is authority. I defer to Emmons, who has information.”
“There speaks a man who has been questioned by many Congressmen,” said Conrad Prager.
“If Emmons refuses to answer, I can order him to,” King said.
“Why should I refuse?” said Emmons. From the right-hand horn of their conversational crescent he turned his chinless, amused face to the middle, where Mrs. Jackson sat like Buddha in a bustle. “What’s information for, except to inform? What higher bond is there than friendship? What virtue outranks loyalty? Of course I drop confidential words. There isn’t a man here who isn’t richer for my friendship. I’m a good man to know.”
Protests, cries of “Judas!” W. S. Ward, the wag, pretended to take from his wallet and burn in