Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/288

 I take no stock in this drivelling cant about "daring to do right, despite the laughter and ridicule of the world," and all that long-faced tommy-rot, promulgated mostly by emasculated individuals who know very little about the world and don't dare do wrong. The world is not so bad—in its admirations, I mean, whatever may be said of its practices.

It so happens that I have had to run up against a good many different kinds of people since I landed on this much-maligned and very interesting world, but I have yet to find any of them setting a higher value on a man for selling himself out cheap. I have yet to meet the Sunday-school-book kind who like a man better for not "daring to say No." The difficulty is not in saying No, but in doing it. Nobody will object to your saying it unless you whine it with a timid, shame-faced bleat, or else bray it out with blatant self-righteousness. In either of these cases you will deserve to be laughed at because you will be funny. When I said "nobody" just now I meant