Mark André ’s Reviews > Pillars of Society > Status Update

Lona: Old friendship does not rust.

... tonight we begin a new era. The old era--with its affectation, its hypocrisy and its emptiness, its pretence of virtue and its miserable fear of public opinion--shall be for us like a museum, open for purposes of instruction; ...

Voices: Oh!--No, no!--Yes, yes!

On this occasion we offer our homage especially to the clear-sighted, indefatigable, unselfish--nay, self-sacrificing citizen who has taken the initiative in an undertaking which, we are assured on all sides, will give a powerful impetus to the temporal prosperity and welfare of our community.

Dina: Yes, I will be your wife.

Johan: Dina!

Dina: But first of all I want to work--to make something of myself--as
you have done. I am not going to be merely a thing that is taken.

Lona: Quite right--that is the way.

Ah, what we suffer under the tyranny of habit and custom!

Rummel: It means that the proudest moment of your life has come. A
procession of his fellow citizens is coming to do honour to the first
man of the town.

Bernick: What!

Rummel: In procession--with banners and a band! We ought to have had
torches too; but we did not like to risk that in this stormy weather.
There will be illuminations--and that always sounds well in the
newspapers.

Hilmar: Is it? Why do you suppose these mercenary-minded creatures were so willing to go into the undertaking with you? Don't you suppose they are have scented profit for themselves--

Lona: "The gift of Karsten Bernick," as it says over the gateway. You
seem to be responsible for the whole place here.

(Where have I heard that before?)

Hilmar: Anyhow, I have spent a sleepless night because of them. [ ... ]
Why couldn't he disappear for good and all? It really is insufferable
how hard some people are to kill.

Mrs. Bernick: My dear Hilmar, what are you saying.

Hilmar: Oh, nothing. But here this fellow escapes with a whole skin
from railway accidents and fights with California grizzlies and
Blackfoot Indians--has not even been scalped--. Ugh!