noon
`` No doubt the things they tell of do happen . Money , and not the ability and the instinct to make money , is at fault . And what of the cruder excesses of poverty , the drunken men who beat and starve their families , the grim silences of the crowded , unsanitary houses of the poor , the inefficient , and the defeated ? Go sit around the lounging room of the most vapid rich man 's city club as I have done , and then sit among the workers of a factory at the noon hour . Virtue , you will find , is no fonder of poverty than you and I , and the man who has merely learned to be industrious , and who has not acquired that eager hunger and shrewdness that enables him to get on , may build up a strong dexterous body while his mind is diseased and decaying . '' Grasping his cane and beginning to be carried away by the wind of his eloquence Telfer forgot Eleanor and talked for his love of talking . `` The mind that has in it the love of the beautiful , that stuff that makes our poets , artists , musicians , and actors , needs this turn for shrewd money getting or it will destroy itself , '' he declared .