Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

33. CHAPTER XXXIII (continued)

"Wait, wait, wait now! Hold up! You're assuming that your Erik will make good. As a matter of fact, at my age he'll be running a one-man tailor shop in some burg about the size of Schoenstrom."

"He will not!"

"That's what he's headed for now all right, and he's twenty-five or -six and---- What's he done to make you think he'll ever be anything but a pants-presser?"

"He has sensitiveness and talent----"

"Wait now! What has he actually done in the art line? Has he done one first-class picture or--sketch, d' you call it? Or one poem, or played the piano, or anything except gas about what he's going to do?"

She looked thoughtful.

"Then it's a hundred to one shot that he never will. Way I understand it, even these fellows that do something pretty good at home and get to go to art school, there ain't more than one out of ten of 'em, maybe one out of a hundred, that ever get above grinding out a bum living--about as artistic as plumbing. And when it comes down to this tailor, why, can't you see--you that take on so about psychology--can't you see that it's just by contrast with folks like Doc McGanum or Lym Cass that this fellow seems artistic? Suppose you'd met up with him first in one of these reg'lar New York studios! You wouldn't notice him any more 'n a rabbit!"

She huddled over folded hands like a temple virgin shivering on her knees before the thin warmth of a brazier. She could not answer.