Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/198

 a drudge. How much, in fact, we pay for a name. And yet, a good name is a partnership between the individual and society. Nay, it is too often a Trust whose stock is watered with gumption and gullibility. The business man, the opera singer, the moving-picture actor, who start by making a high bid for our confidence or admiration and succeed in getting it, invariably end by boasting in electric superlatives on the house-tops of the city—they convert our confidence into cash. And in the end, we find ourselves paying more for the clap-trap and flamboyancy than the real object they herald—more for the 'blurb' than the song.

It is not so bad in the Orient, where a name is not a substantial element in values. A Persian rug, for instance, is a Persian rug and not one made by the great Mirza of Shiraz. But the Orientals, as I said, are fast acquiring the trick of sophistication. And what is worse, they are inclined now and then to make truth-speaking an overture, at least, to their dealings. But