Lady of Sorrows had been born and bred for business; with hands that bore ink stains like badges of honour and paper cuts like war medals. In that mind of hers, not only SCRIPTURE filled pretty head; seeping into the confines of thoughts and spilling out of lips in a well-practised song. How dutiful, how DIVINE. Yet between those lines of gospel and the phrase LOVE THE PROPHET lay laws and practice, ethics and management; a mind that was a veritable calculator in its purest form. She did not belong in the pew or at the pulpit, head bowed with reverence and forgiveness on her tongue: A. Comstock belonged behind a desk with infinite stacks of files surrounding her, prowling around with the LIONS of industry. Fink, Harper: she had grown up alongside men like them. Brothers, fathers, cousins; all businessmen had common blood.
With gentle beam did she regard the other, bright eyes flicking over tailored suit (man was a well-oiled robot with a HOLLOW heart!). This was one to watch; he’d give old Jeremiah Fink a run for his money. How quaint, how rare! No market could be dominated by one: t’was not AMERICAN. Harper, she had decided, was an amiable sort; a businessman as well as a philosopher. Faith was no candle; they blew out, melted. Marx had once said that religion was the OPIATE of the masses, and perhaps it was true. It could not be broken down, could not vanish so long as one believed in it. Money had been her God, once upon a time. How quickly things changed.
“Ideas can never truly be destroyed, I find. They follow through the ages, always present in mankind. Do we not need SOMETHING to look to in times of hardship? Something greater than us all? Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; so say the Hebrews. This city, my good sir, is made of the stuff.”