Atlas Shrugged – Day 015 – pp. 144-153
Of course all that is lost on Jim who is a capitalist when it suits him and a “progressive” the rest.
Now Rand shifts gears once again to Dagny who is in some bit of awe of Henry Rearden. Perhaps since the d’Anconia thing didn’t work out…
But who’s this approaching Hank now?
Francisco!
After gracefully softening Rearden’s defenses, Francisco cuts to the chase.
“I am calling your attention to the nature of those for whom you are working.”
Hank takes offense at the idea he works for anybody but himself. Frisco, however, is referring to the freeloading rabble presently filling up on his appetizers.
“Why are you willing to carry them?”
“Because they’re a bunch of miserable children who struggle to remain alive, desperately and very badly, while I — I don’t even notice the burden.”
They know Hank works for them, but they don’t know that he knows. (that they know….?) Anyway it’s their mission to keep him in the dark. According to Francisco, they’re holding a terrible weapon against him.
And his evidence of this?
“In the unforgivable fact that you’re as unhappy as you are.”
Bingo.
Shift gears…
An elderly woman in the crowd is telling a small crowd she wasn’t able to sleep the night before. There were guns going off all night in the harbor. According to her it was the Coast Guard after the notorious pirate Ragnar Danneskjold.
So everyone chimes in with some version of a Ragnar Danneskjold story. Where he’s been spotted, his feats of derring-do…
Which leads to a story about John Galt.
Apparently not merely a popular rhetorical device, John Galt actually existed (in this story at least.) Apparently he discovered the lost city of Atlantis while sailing across the ocean. And upon discovering it, he sank his ship and went down with his entire crew…