{"product_id":"2940012082329","title":"THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED","description":"CHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eANTHONY PATCH\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone\u003cbr\u003esince irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at\u003cbr\u003eleast, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the\u003cbr\u003eultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual \"There!\"--yet\u003cbr\u003eat the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the\u003cbr\u003econscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he\u003cbr\u003eis not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness\u003cbr\u003eglistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these\u003cbr\u003eoccasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself\u003cbr\u003erather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted\u003cbr\u003eto his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else\u003cbr\u003ehe knows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very\u003cbr\u003eattractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he\u003cbr\u003econsidered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that\u003cbr\u003ethe elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars\u003cbr\u003ein a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and\u003cbr\u003eimmortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony\u003cbr\u003ePatch--not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality,\u003cbr\u003eopinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward--a man who\u003cbr\u003ewas aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the\u003cbr\u003esophistry of courage and yet was brave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the\u003cbr\u003egrandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line\u003cbr\u003eover the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and\u003cbr\u003eBostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded\u003cbr\u003esheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as \"Cross Patch,\" left his\u003cbr\u003efather's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry\u003cbr\u003eregiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street,\u003cbr\u003eand amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself\u003cbr\u003esome seventy-five million dollars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was\u003cbr\u003ethen that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to\u003cbr\u003econsecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the\u003cbr\u003eworld. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent\u003cbr\u003eefforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he\u003cbr\u003elevelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor,\u003cbr\u003eliterature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47167667568880,"sku":"2940012082329","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012082329_p0.jpg?v=1763552472","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012082329","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}