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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Confidence-Man
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [eBook #21816]
+[Most recently updated: May 28, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: LN Yaddanapudi and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFIDENCE-MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFIDENCE-MAN:
+HIS MASQUERADE.
+
+BY
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+AUTHOR OF "PIAZZA TALES," "OMOO," "TYPEE," ETC., ETC.
+
+NEW YORK:
+DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY
+1857.
+
+
+Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+MILLER & HOLMAN,
+Printers and Stereotypers, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A mute goes aboard a boat on the Mississippi.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Showing that many men have many minds.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+In which a variety of characters appear.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Renewal of old acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The man with the weed makes it an even question whether he be a great
+sage or a great simpleton.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+At the outset of which certain passengers prove deaf to the call of
+charity.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A gentleman with gold sleeve-buttons.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A charitable lady.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Two business men transact a little business.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+In the cabin.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Only a page or so.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The story of the unfortunate man, from which may be gathered whether or
+no he has been justly so entitled.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The man with the traveling-cap evinces much humanity, and in a way which
+would seem to show him to be one of the most logical of optimists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+An old miser, upon suitable representations, is prevailed upon to
+venture an investment.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A sick man, after some impatience, is induced to become a patient.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Towards the end of which the Herb-Doctor proves himself a forgiver of
+injuries.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Inquest into the true character of the Herb-Doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A soldier of fortune.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Reappearance of one who may be remembered.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A hard case.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+In the polite spirit of the Tusculan disputations.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+In which the powerful effect of natural scenery is evinced in the case
+of the Missourian, who, in view of the region round about Cairo, has a
+return of his chilly fit.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A philanthropist undertakes to convert a misanthrope, but does not get
+beyond confuting him.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan makes an acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the views of
+one evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Some account of a man of questionable morality, but who, nevertheless,
+would seem entitled to the esteem of that eminent English moralist who
+said he liked a good hater.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Moot points touching the late Colonel John Moredock.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+The boon companions.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Opening with a poetical eulogy of the Press, and continuing with talk
+inspired by the same.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A metamorphosis more surprising than any in Ovid.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Showing that the age of music and magicians is not yet over.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan tells the story of the gentleman-madman.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan strikingly evinces the artlessness of his
+nature.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan is accosted by a mystic, whereupon ensues
+pretty much such talk as might be expected.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+The mystical master introduces the practical disciple.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+The disciple unbends, and consents to act a social part.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+The hypothetical friends.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+In which the story of China Aster is, at second-hand, told by one who,
+while not disapproving the moral, disclaims the spirit of the style.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+Ending with a rupture of the hypothesis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+Upon the heel of the last scene, the Cosmopolitan enters the barber's
+shop, a benediction on his lips.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+Very charming.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of
+the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention
+from those readers who do not skip it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan increases in seriousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
+
+
+At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac
+at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the
+city of St. Louis.
+
+His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur
+one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag,
+nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends.
+From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd,
+it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a
+stranger.
+
+In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite
+steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but
+unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but
+evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities,
+he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a
+placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of
+a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East;
+quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though
+wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what
+purported to be a careful description of his person followed.
+
+As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the
+announcement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was
+plain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of
+them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were
+enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these
+chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another
+chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular
+safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile
+chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the
+bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers
+Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky--creatures,
+with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for
+the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same
+regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause
+for unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think
+that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes
+increase.
+
+Pausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded in threading his
+way, as at last to plant himself just beside the placard, when,
+producing a small slate and tracing some words upon if, he held it up
+before him on a level with the placard, so that they who read the one
+might read the other. The words were these:--
+
+"Charity thinketh no evil."
+
+As, in gaining his place, some little perseverance, not to say
+persistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been unavoidable, it was
+not with the best relish that the crowd regarded his apparent intrusion;
+and upon a more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about
+him, but rather something quite the contrary--he being of an aspect so
+singularly innocent; an aspect too, which they took to be somehow
+inappropriate to the time and place, and inclining to the notion that
+his writing was of much the same sort: in short, taking him for some
+strange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself,
+but not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder--they made no scruple to
+jostle him aside; while one, less kind than the rest, or more of a wag,
+by an unobserved stroke, dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon
+his head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly turned, and
+writing anew upon the slate, again held it up:--
+
+"Charity suffereth long, and is kind."
+
+Illy pleased with his pertinacity, as they thought it, the crowd a
+second time thrust him aside, and not without epithets and some buffets,
+all of which were unresented. But, as if at last despairing of so
+difficult an adventure, wherein one, apparently a non-resistant, sought
+to impose his presence upon fighting characters, the stranger now moved
+slowly away, yet not before altering his writing to this:--
+
+"Charity endureth all things."
+
+Shield-like bearing his slate before him, amid stares and jeers he moved
+slowly up and down, at his turning points again changing his inscription
+to--
+
+"Charity believeth all things."
+
+and then--
+
+"Charity never faileth."
+
+The word charity, as originally traced, remained throughout uneffaced,
+not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date, otherwise left for
+convenience in blank.
+
+To some observers, the singularity, if not lunacy, of the stranger was
+heightened by his muteness, and, perhaps also, by the contrast to his
+proceedings afforded in the actions--quite in the wonted and sensible
+order of things--of the barber of the boat, whose quarters, under a
+smoking-saloon, and over against a bar-room, was next door but two to
+the captain's office. As if the long, wide, covered deck, hereabouts
+built up on both sides with shop-like windowed spaces, were some
+Constantinople arcade or bazaar, where more than one trade is plied,
+this river barber, aproned and slippered, but rather crusty-looking for
+the moment, it may be from being newly out of bed, was throwing open
+his premises for the day, and suitably arranging the exterior. With
+business-like dispatch, having rattled down his shutters, and at a
+palm-tree angle set out in the iron fixture his little ornamental pole,
+and this without overmuch tenderness for the elbows and toes of the
+crowd, he concluded his operations by bidding people stand still more
+aside, when, jumping on a stool, he hung over his door, on the customary
+nail, a gaudy sort of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed
+by himself, gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in readiness to
+shave, and also, for the public benefit, with two words not unfrequently
+seen ashore gracing other shops besides barbers':--
+
+"NO TRUST."
+
+An inscription which, though in a sense not less intrusive than the
+contrasted ones of the stranger, did not, as it seemed, provoke any
+corresponding derision or surprise, much less indignation; and still
+less, to all appearances, did it gain for the inscriber the repute of
+being a simpleton.
+
+Meanwhile, he with the slate continued moving slowly up and down, not
+without causing some stares to change into jeers, and some jeers into
+pushes, and some pushes into punches; when suddenly, in one of his
+turns, he was hailed from behind by two porters carrying a large trunk;
+but as the summons, though loud, was without effect, they accidentally
+or otherwise swung their burden against him, nearly overthrowing him;
+when, by a quick start, a peculiar inarticulate moan, and a pathetic
+telegraphing of his fingers, he involuntarily betrayed that he was not
+alone dumb, but also deaf.
+
+Presently, as if not wholly unaffected by his reception thus far, he
+went forward, seating himself in a retired spot on the forecastle, nigh
+the foot of a ladder there leading to a deck above, up and down which
+ladder some of the boatmen, in discharge of their duties, were
+occasionally going.
+
+From his betaking himself to this humble quarter, it was evident that,
+as a deck-passenger, the stranger, simple though he seemed, was not
+entirely ignorant of his place, though his taking a deck-passage might
+have been partly for convenience; as, from his having no luggage, it was
+probable that his destination was one of the small wayside landings
+within a few hours' sail. But, though he might not have a long way to
+go, yet he seemed already to have come from a very long distance.
+
+Though neither soiled nor slovenly, his cream-colored suit had a tossed
+look, almost linty, as if, traveling night and day from some far country
+beyond the prairies, he had long been without the solace of a bed. His
+aspect was at once gentle and jaded, and, from the moment of seating
+himself, increasing in tired abstraction and dreaminess. Gradually
+overtaken by slumber, his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like
+figure relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder's foot, lay
+motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly stealing down
+over night, with its white placidity startles the brown farmer peering
+out from his threshold at daybreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SHOWING THAT MANY MEN HAVE MANY MINDS.
+
+
+"Odd fish!"
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+"Who can he be?"
+
+"Casper Hauser."
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+"Uncommon countenance."
+
+"Green prophet from Utah."
+
+"Humbug!"
+
+"Singular innocence."
+
+"Means something."
+
+"Spirit-rapper."
+
+"Moon-calf."
+
+"Piteous."
+
+"Trying to enlist interest."
+
+"Beware of him."
+
+"Fast asleep here, and, doubtless, pick-pockets on board."
+
+"Kind of daylight Endymion."
+
+"Escaped convict, worn out with dodging."
+
+"Jacob dreaming at Luz."
+
+Such the epitaphic comments, conflictingly spoken or thought, of a
+miscellaneous company, who, assembled on the overlooking, cross-wise
+balcony at the forward end of the upper deck near by, had not witnessed
+preceding occurrences.
+
+Meantime, like some enchanted man in his grave, happily oblivious of all
+gossip, whether chiseled or chatted, the deaf and dumb stranger still
+tranquilly slept, while now the boat started on her voyage.
+
+The great ship-canal of Ving-King-Ching, in the Flowery Kingdom, seems
+the Mississippi in parts, where, amply flowing between low, vine-tangled
+banks, flat as tow-paths, it bears the huge toppling steamers, bedizened
+and lacquered within like imperial junks.
+
+Pierced along its great white bulk with two tiers of small
+embrasure-like windows, well above the waterline, the Fiddle, though,
+might at distance have been taken by strangers for some whitewashed fort
+on a floating isle.
+
+Merchants on 'change seem the passengers that buzz on her decks, while,
+from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Fine
+promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential
+passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes, and
+out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers in an escritoire, present
+like facilities for publicity or privacy. Auctioneer or coiner, with
+equal ease, might somewhere here drive his trade.
+
+Though her voyage of twelve hundred miles extends from apple to orange,
+from clime to clime, yet, like any small ferry-boat, to right and left,
+at every landing, the huge Fidèle still receives additional passengers
+in exchange for those that disembark; so that, though always full of
+strangers, she continually, in some degree, adds to, or replaces them
+with strangers still more strange; like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed from
+the Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters,
+but never with the same strange particles in every part.
+
+Though hitherto, as has been seen, the man in cream-colors had by no
+means passed unobserved, yet by stealing into retirement, and there
+going asleep and continuing so, he seemed to have courted oblivion, a
+boon not often withheld from so humble an applicant as he. Those staring
+crowds on the shore were now left far behind, seen dimly clustering like
+swallows on eaves; while the passengers' attention was soon drawn away
+to the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers on the Missouri
+shore, or the bluff-looking Missourians and towering Kentuckians among
+the throngs on the decks.
+
+By-and-by--two or three random stoppages having been made, and the last
+transient memory of the slumberer vanished, and he himself, not
+unlikely, waked up and landed ere now--the crowd, as is usual, began in
+all parts to break up from a concourse into various clusters or squads,
+which in some cases disintegrated again into quartettes, trios, and
+couples, or even solitaires; involuntarily submitting to that natural
+law which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in time to the
+member.
+
+As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing
+the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of
+variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men
+of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters;
+heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters,
+happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all
+these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern
+speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch,
+Danes; Santa Fé traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in
+cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and
+Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters; Quakers in full drab, and
+United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto,
+quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews;
+Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotalers
+and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists and
+clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests.
+In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all
+kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.
+
+As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood,
+maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals
+blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like
+picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned
+the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the
+Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and
+opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan
+and confident tide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN WHICH A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS APPEAR.
+
+
+In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive object, for a
+time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in tow-cloth attire and an old
+coal-sifter of a tamborine in his hand, who, owing to something wrong
+about his legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a
+Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest
+black face rubbing against the upper part of people's thighs as he made
+shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was, and raising a
+smile even from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his very
+deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily endured, raising
+mirth in some of that crowd, whose own purses, hearths, hearts, all
+their possessions, sound limbs included, could not make gay.
+
+"What is your name, old boy?" said a purple-faced drover, putting his
+large purple hand on the cripple's bushy wool, as if it were the curled
+forehead of a black steer.
+
+"Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar."
+
+"And who is your master, Guinea?"
+
+"Oh sar, I am der dog widout massa."
+
+"A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I'm sorry for that, Guinea. Dogs
+without masters fare hard."
+
+"So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What
+ge'mman want to own dese here legs?"
+
+"But where do you live?"
+
+"All 'long shore, sar; dough now. I'se going to see brodder at der
+landing; but chiefly I libs in dey city."
+
+"St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of nights?"
+
+"On der floor of der good baker's oven, sar."
+
+"In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should like to know, bakes such
+black bread in his oven, alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is
+that too charitable baker, pray?"
+
+"Dar he be," with a broad grin lifting his tambourine high over his
+head.
+
+"The sun is the baker, eh?"
+
+"Yes sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones for dis ole darkie
+when he sleeps out on der pabements o' nights."
+
+"But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when
+the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old
+boy?"
+
+"Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh sar, oh!
+don't speak ob der winter," he added, with a reminiscent shiver,
+shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black
+sheep nudging itself a cozy berth in the heart of the white flock.
+
+Thus far not very many pennies had been given him, and, used at last to
+his strange looks, the less polite passengers of those in that part of
+the boat began to get their fill of him as a curious object; when
+suddenly the negro more than revived their first interest by an
+expedient which, whether by chance or design, was a singular temptation
+at once to _diversion_ and charity, though, even more than his crippled
+limbs, it put him on a canine footing. In short, as in appearance he
+seemed a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to be treated.
+Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing
+back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples
+at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a
+bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple's mouth being at
+once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a
+cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject of alms-giving is
+trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under
+the trial, must be still more so; but whatever his secret emotions, he
+swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this side the
+oesophagus. And nearly always he grinned, and only once or twice did
+he wince, which was when certain coins, tossed by more playful almoners,
+came inconveniently nigh to his teeth, an accident whose unwelcomeness
+was not unedged by the circumstance that the pennies thus thrown proved
+buttons.
+
+While this game of charity was yet at its height, a limping,
+gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person--it may be some discharged custom-house
+officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had
+concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself
+miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting everything and
+everybody--this shallow unfortunate, after sundry sorry observations of
+the negro, began to croak out something about his deformity being a
+sham, got up for financial purposes, which immediately threw a damp upon
+the frolic benignities of the pitch-penny players.
+
+But that these suspicions came from one who himself on a wooden leg went
+halt, this did not appear to strike anybody present. That cripples,
+above all men should be companionable, or, at least, refrain from
+picking a fellow-limper to pieces, in short, should have a little
+sympathy in common misfortune, seemed not to occur to the company.
+
+Meantime, the negro's countenance, before marked with even more than
+patient good-nature, drooped into a heavy-hearted expression, full of
+the most painful distress. So far abased beneath its proper physical
+level, that Newfoundland-dog face turned in passively hopeless appeal,
+as if instinct told it that the right or the wrong might not have
+overmuch to do with whatever wayward mood superior intelligences might
+yield to.
+
+But instinct, though knowing, is yet a teacher set below reason, which
+itself says, in the grave words of Lysander in the comedy, after Puck
+has made a sage of him with his spell:--
+
+"The will of man is by his reason swayed."
+
+So that, suddenly change as people may, in their dispositions, it is not
+always waywardness, but improved judgment, which, as in Lysander's case,
+or the present, operates with them.
+
+Yes, they began to scrutinize the negro curiously enough; when,
+emboldened by this evidence of the efficacy of his words, the
+wooden-legged man hobbled up to the negro, and, with the air of a
+beadle, would, to prove his alleged imposture on the spot, have stripped
+him and then driven him away, but was prevented by the crowd's clamor,
+now taking part with the poor fellow, against one who had just before
+turned nearly all minds the other way. So he with the wooden leg was
+forced to retire; when the rest, finding themselves left sole judges in
+the case, could not resist the opportunity of acting the part: not
+because it is a human weakness to take pleasure in sitting in judgment
+upon one in a box, as surely this unfortunate negro now was, but that it
+strangely sharpens human perceptions, when, instead of standing by and
+having their fellow-feelings touched by the sight of an alleged culprit
+severely handled by some one justiciary, a crowd suddenly come to be all
+justiciaries in the same case themselves; as in Arkansas once, a man
+proved guilty, by law, of murder, but whose condemnation was deemed
+unjust by the people, so that they rescued him to try him themselves;
+whereupon, they, as it turned out, found him even guiltier than the
+court had done, and forthwith proceeded to execution; so that the
+gallows presented the truly warning spectacle of a man hanged by his
+friends.
+
+But not to such extremities, or anything like them, did the present
+crowd come; they, for the time, being content with putting the negro
+fairly and discreetly to the question; among other things, asking him,
+had he any documentary proof, any plain paper about him, attesting that
+his case was not a spurious one.
+
+"No, no, dis poor ole darkie haint none o' dem waloable papers," he
+wailed.
+
+"But is there not some one who can speak a good word for you?" here said
+a person newly arrived from another part of the boat, a young Episcopal
+clergyman, in a long, straight-bodied black coat; small in stature, but
+manly; with a clear face and blue eye; innocence, tenderness, and good
+sense triumvirate in his air.
+
+"Oh yes, oh yes, ge'mmen," he eagerly answered, as if his memory, before
+suddenly frozen up by cold charity, as suddenly thawed back into
+fluidity at the first kindly word. "Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here a
+werry nice, good ge'mman wid a weed, and a ge'mman in a gray coat and
+white tie, what knows all about me; and a ge'mman wid a big book, too;
+and a yarb-doctor; and a ge'mman in a yaller west; and a ge'mman wid a
+brass plate; and a ge'mman in a wiolet robe; and a ge'mman as is a
+sodjer; and ever so many good, kind, honest ge'mmen more aboard what
+knows me and will speak for me, God bress 'em; yes, and what knows me as
+well as dis poor old darkie knows hisself, God bress him! Oh, find 'em,
+find 'em," he earnestly added, "and let 'em come quick, and show you
+all, ge'mmen, dat dis poor ole darkie is werry well wordy of all you
+kind ge'mmen's kind confidence."
+
+"But how are we to find all these people in this great crowd?" was the
+question of a bystander, umbrella in hand; a middle-aged person, a
+country merchant apparently, whose natural good-feeling had been made at
+least cautious by the unnatural ill-feeling of the discharged
+custom-house officer.
+
+"Where are we to find them?" half-rebukefully echoed the young Episcopal
+clergymen. "I will go find one to begin with," he quickly added, and,
+with kind haste suiting the action to the word, away he went.
+
+"Wild goose chase!" croaked he with the wooden leg, now again drawing
+nigh. "Don't believe there's a soul of them aboard. Did ever beggar have
+such heaps of fine friends? He can walk fast enough when he tries, a
+good deal faster than I; but he can lie yet faster. He's some white
+operator, betwisted and painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are
+all humbugs."
+
+"Have you no charity, friend?" here in self-subdued tones, singularly
+contrasted with his unsubdued person, said a Methodist minister,
+advancing; a tall, muscular, martial-looking man, a Tennessean by birth,
+who in the Mexican war had been volunteer chaplain to a volunteer
+rifle-regiment.
+
+"Charity is one thing, and truth is another," rejoined he with the
+wooden leg: "he's a rascal, I say."
+
+"But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction as one can upon
+the poor fellow?" said the soldierlike Methodist, with increased
+difficulty maintaining a pacific demeanor towards one whose own asperity
+seemed so little to entitle him to it: "he looks honest, don't he?"
+
+"Looks are one thing, and facts are another," snapped out the other
+perversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction can you put
+upon a rascal, but that a rascal he is?"
+
+"Be not such a Canada thistle," urged the Methodist, with something less
+of patience than before. "Charity, man, charity."
+
+"To where it belongs with your charity! to heaven with it!" again
+snapped out the other, diabolically; "here on earth, true charity dotes,
+and false charity plots. Who betrays a fool with a kiss, the charitable
+fool has the charity to believe is in love with him, and the charitable
+knave on the stand gives charitable testimony for his comrade in the
+box."
+
+"Surely, friend," returned the noble Methodist, with much ado
+restraining his still waxing indignation--"surely, to say the least, you
+forget yourself. Apply it home," he continued, with exterior calmness
+tremulous with inkept emotion. "Suppose, now, I should exercise no
+charity in judging your own character by the words which have fallen
+from you; what sort of vile, pitiless man do you think I would take you
+for?"
+
+"No doubt"--with a grin--"some such pitiless man as has lost his piety
+in much the same way that the jockey loses his honesty."
+
+"And how is that, friend?" still conscientiously holding back the old
+Adam in him, as if it were a mastiff he had by the neck.
+
+"Never you mind how it is"--with a sneer; "but all horses aint virtuous,
+no more than all men kind; and come close to, and much dealt with, some
+things are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I will find you
+a benevolent wise man."
+
+"Some insinuation there."
+
+"More fool you that are puzzled by it."
+
+"Reprobate!" cried the other, his indignation now at last almost boiling
+over; "godless reprobate! if charity did not restrain me, I could call
+you by names you deserve."
+
+"Could you, indeed?" with an insolent sneer.
+
+"Yea, and teach you charity on the spot," cried the goaded Methodist,
+suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar,
+and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a
+nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?--thought, seedy
+coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You
+find your mistake"--with another hearty shake.
+
+"Well said and better done, church militant!" cried a voice.
+
+"The white cravat against the world!" cried another.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" chorused many voices, with like enthusiasm taking sides
+with the resolute champion.
+
+"You fools!" cried he with the wooden leg, writhing himself loose and
+inflamedly turning upon the throng; "you flock of fools, under this
+captain of fools, in this ship of fools!"
+
+With which exclamations, followed by idle threats against his
+admonisher, this condign victim to justice hobbled away, as disdaining
+to hold further argument with such a rabble. But his scorn was more than
+repaid by the hisses that chased him, in which the brave Methodist,
+satisfied with the rebuke already administered, was, to omit still
+better reasons, too magnanimous to join. All he said was, pointing
+towards the departing recusant, "There he shambles off on his one lone
+leg, emblematic of his one-sided view of humanity."
+
+"But trust your painted decoy," retorted the other from a distance,
+pointing back to the black cripple, "and I have my revenge."
+
+"But we aint agoing to trust him!" shouted back a voice.
+
+"So much the better," he jeered back. "Look you," he added, coming to a
+dead halt where he was; "look you, I have been called a Canada thistle.
+Very good. And a seedy one: still better. And the seedy Canada thistle
+has been pretty well shaken among ye: best of all. Dare say some seed
+has been shaken out; and won't it spring though? And when it does
+spring, do you cut down the young thistles, and won't they spring the
+more? It's encouraging and coaxing 'em. Now, when with my thistles your
+farms shall be well stocked, why then--you may abandon 'em!"
+
+"What does all that mean, now?" asked the country merchant, staring.
+
+"Nothing; the foiled wolf's parting howl," said the Methodist. "Spleen,
+much spleen, which is the rickety child of his evil heart of unbelief:
+it has made him mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh,
+friends," raising his arms as in the pulpit, "oh beloved, how are we
+admonished by the melancholy spectacle of this raver. Let us profit by
+the lesson; and is it not this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence,
+there be aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting
+his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses full of tragic mopers, and
+seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness
+muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped
+over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and
+starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot at him."
+
+"What an example," whispered one.
+
+"Might deter Timon," was the response.
+
+"Oh, oh, good ge'mmen, have you no confidence in dis poor ole darkie?"
+now wailed the returning negro, who, during the late scene, had stumped
+apart in alarm.
+
+"Confidence in you?" echoed he who had whispered, with abruptly changed
+air turning short round; "that remains to be seen."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Ebony," in similarly changed tones said he who
+had responded to the whisperer, "yonder churl," pointing toward the
+wooden leg in the distance, "is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough, and
+I would not wish to be like him; but that is no reason why you may not
+be some sort of black Jeremy Diddler."
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie, den?"
+
+"Before giving you our confidence," said a third, "we will wait the
+report of the kind gentleman who went in search of one of your friends
+who was to speak for you."
+
+"Very likely, in that case," said a fourth, "we shall wait here till
+Christmas. Shouldn't wonder, did we not see that kind gentleman again.
+After seeking awhile in vain, he will conclude he has been made a fool
+of, and so not return to us for pure shame. Fact is, I begin to feel a
+little qualmish about the darkie myself. Something queer about this
+darkie, depend upon it."
+
+Once more the negro wailed, and turning in despair from the last
+speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist by the skirt of his coat. But
+a change had come over that before impassioned intercessor. With an
+irresolute and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant; against whom,
+somehow, by what seemed instinctive influences, the distrusts first set
+on foot were now generally reviving, and, if anything, with added
+severity.
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie," yet again wailed the negro,
+letting go the coat-skirts and turning appealingly all round him.
+
+"Yes, my poor fellow _I_ have confidence in you," now exclaimed the
+country merchant before named, whom the negro's appeal, coming so
+piteously on the heel of pitilessness, seemed at last humanely to have
+decided in his favor. "And here, here is some proof of my trust," with
+which, tucking his umbrella under his arm, and diving down his hand into
+his pocket, he fished forth a purse, and, accidentally, along with it,
+his business card, which, unobserved, dropped to the deck. "Here, here,
+my poor fellow," he continued, extending a half dollar.
+
+Not more grateful for the coin than the kindness, the cripple's face
+glowed like a polished copper saucepan, and shuffling a pace nigher,
+with one upstretched hand he received the alms, while, as unconsciously,
+his one advanced leather stump covered the card.
+
+Done in despite of the general sentiment, the good deed of the merchant
+was not, perhaps, without its unwelcome return from the crowd, since
+that good deed seemed somehow to convey to them a sort of reproach.
+Still again, and more pertinaciously than ever, the cry arose against
+the negro, and still again he wailed forth his lament and appeal among
+other things, repeating that the friends, of whom already he had
+partially run off the list, would freely speak for him, would anybody go
+find them.
+
+"Why don't you go find 'em yourself?" demanded a gruff boatman.
+
+"How can I go find 'em myself? Dis poor ole game-legged darkie's friends
+must come to him. Oh, whar, whar is dat good friend of dis darkie's, dat
+good man wid de weed?"
+
+At this point, a steward ringing a bell came along, summoning all
+persons who had not got their tickets to step to the captain's office;
+an announcement which speedily thinned the throng about the black
+cripple, who himself soon forlornly stumped out of sight, probably on
+much the same errand as the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RENEWAL OF OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Don't you know me?"
+
+"No, certainly."
+
+The crowd about the captain's office, having in good time melted away,
+the above encounter took place in one of the side balconies astern,
+between a man in mourning clean and respectable, but none of the
+glossiest, a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant
+before-mentioned, whom, with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, the
+former had accosted.
+
+"Is it possible, my dear sir," resumed he with the weed, "that you do
+not recall my countenance? why yours I recall distinctly as if but half
+an hour, instead of half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don't you
+recall me, now? Look harder."
+
+"In my conscience--truly--I protest," honestly bewildered, "bless my
+soul, sir, I don't know you--really, really. But stay, stay," he
+hurriedly added, not without gratification, glancing up at the crape on
+the stranger's hat, "stay--yes--seems to me, though I have not the
+pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am pretty sure I have at least
+_heard_ of you, and recently too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard
+here referred to you, among others, for a character, I think."
+
+"Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well. They found me. I have
+said all I could for him. I think I abated their distrust. Would I could
+have been of more substantial service. And apropos, sir," he added, "now
+that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the circumstance of one
+man, however humble, referring for a character to another man, however
+afflicted, does not argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?"
+
+The good merchant looked puzzled.
+
+"Still you don't recall my countenance?"
+
+"Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot, despite my best
+efforts," was the reluctantly-candid reply.
+
+"Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who am mistaken?--Are you
+not, sir, Henry Roberts, forwarding merchant, of Wheeling, Pennsylvania?
+Pray, now, if you use the advertisement of business cards, and happen to
+have one with you, just look at it, and see whether you are not the man
+I take you for."
+
+"Why," a bit chafed, perhaps, "I hope I know myself."
+
+"And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my
+dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else?
+Stranger things have happened."
+
+The good merchant stared.
+
+"To come to particulars, my dear sir, I met you, now some six years
+back, at Brade Brothers & Co's office, I think. I was traveling for a
+Philadelphia house. The senior Brade introduced us, you remember; some
+business-chat followed, then you forced me home with you to a family
+tea, and a family time we had. Have you forgotten about the urn, and
+what I said about Werter's Charlotte, and the bread and butter, and that
+capital story you told of the large loaf. A hundred times since, I have
+laughed over it. At least you must recall my name--Ringman, John
+Ringman."
+
+"Large loaf? Invited you to tea? Ringman? Ringman? Ring? Ring?"
+
+"Ah sir," sadly smiling, "don't ring the changes that way. I see you
+have a faithless memory, Mr. Roberts. But trust in the faithfulness of
+mine."
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, in some things my memory aint of the very
+best," was the honest rejoinder. "But still," he perplexedly added,
+"still I----"
+
+"Oh sir, suffice it that it is as I say. Doubt not that we are all well
+acquainted."
+
+"But--but I don't like this going dead against my own memory; I----"
+
+"But didn't you admit, my dear sir, that in some things this memory of
+yours is a little faithless? Now, those who have faithless memories,
+should they not have some little confidence in the less faithless
+memories of others?"
+
+"But, of this friendly chat and tea, I have not the slightest----"
+
+"I see, I see; quite erased from the tablet. Pray, sir," with a sudden
+illumination, "about six years back, did it happen to you to receive any
+injury on the head? Surprising effects have arisen from such a cause.
+Not alone unconsciousness as to events for a greater or less time
+immediately subsequent to the injury, but likewise--strange to
+add--oblivion, entire and incurable, as to events embracing a longer or
+shorter period immediately preceding it; that is, when the mind at the
+time was perfectly sensible of them, and fully competent also to
+register them in the memory, and did in fact so do; but all in vain, for
+all was afterwards bruised out by the injury."
+
+After the first start, the merchant listened with what appeared more
+than ordinary interest. The other proceeded:
+
+"In my boyhood I was kicked by a horse, and lay insensible for a long
+time. Upon recovering, what a blank! No faintest trace in regard to how
+I had come near the horse, or what horse it was, or where it was, or
+that it was a horse at all that had brought me to that pass. For the
+knowledge of those particulars I am indebted solely to my friends, in
+whose statements, I need not say, I place implicit reliance, since
+particulars of some sort there must have been, and why should they
+deceive me? You see sir, the mind is ductile, very much so: but images,
+ductilely received into it, need a certain time to harden and bake in
+their impressions, otherwise such a casualty as I speak of will in an
+instant obliterate them, as though they had never been. We are but clay,
+sir, potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and
+too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize. Tell me, was it your
+misfortune to receive any concussion upon the brain about the period I
+speak of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your memory by
+more minutely rehearsing the circumstances of our acquaintance."
+
+The growing interest betrayed by the merchant had not relaxed as the
+other proceeded. After some hesitation, indeed, something more than
+hesitation, he confessed that, though he had never received any injury
+of the sort named, yet, about the time in question, he had in fact been
+taken with a brain fever, losing his mind completely for a considerable
+interval. He was continuing, when the stranger with much animation
+exclaimed:
+
+"There now, you see, I was not wholly mistaken. That brain fever
+accounts for it all."
+
+"Nay; but----"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Roberts," respectfully interrupting him, "but time is
+short, and I have something private and particular to say to you. Allow
+me."
+
+Mr. Roberts, good man, could but acquiesce, and the two having silently
+walked to a less public spot, the manner of the man with the weed
+suddenly assumed a seriousness almost painful. What might be called a
+writhing expression stole over him. He seemed struggling with some
+disastrous necessity inkept. He made one or two attempts to speak, but
+words seemed to choke him. His companion stood in humane surprise,
+wondering what was to come. At length, with an effort mastering his
+feelings, in a tolerably composed tone he spoke:
+
+"If I remember, you are a mason, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Averting himself a moment, as to recover from a return of agitation, the
+stranger grasped the other's hand; "and would you not loan a brother a
+shilling if he needed it?"
+
+The merchant started, apparently, almost as if to retreat.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Roberts, I trust you are not one of those business men, who
+make a business of never having to do with unfortunates. For God's sake
+don't leave me. I have something on my heart--on my heart. Under
+deplorable circumstances thrown among strangers, utter strangers. I want
+a friend in whom I may confide. Yours, Mr. Roberts, is almost the first
+known face I've seen for many weeks."
+
+It was so sudden an outburst; the interview offered such a contrast to
+the scene around, that the merchant, though not used to be very
+indiscreet, yet, being not entirely inhumane, remained not entirely
+unmoved.
+
+The other, still tremulous, resumed:
+
+"I need not say, sir, how it cuts me to the soul, to follow up a social
+salutation with such words as have just been mine. I know that I
+jeopardize your good opinion. But I can't help it: necessity knows no
+law, and heeds no risk. Sir, we are masons, one more step aside; I will
+tell you my story."
+
+In a low, half-suppressed tone, he began it. Judging from his auditor's
+expression, it seemed to be a tale of singular interest, involving
+calamities against which no integrity, no forethought, no energy, no
+genius, no piety, could guard.
+
+At every disclosure, the hearer's commiseration increased. No
+sentimental pity. As the story went on, he drew from his wallet a bank
+note, but after a while, at some still more unhappy revelation, changed
+it for another, probably of a somewhat larger amount; which, when the
+story was concluded, with an air studiously disclamatory of alms-giving,
+he put into the stranger's hands; who, on his side, with an air
+studiously disclamatory of alms-taking, put it into his pocket.
+
+Assistance being received, the stranger's manner assumed a kind and
+degree of decorum which, under the circumstances, seemed almost
+coldness. After some words, not over ardent, and yet not exactly
+inappropriate, he took leave, making a bow which had one knows not what
+of a certain chastened independence about it; as if misery, however
+burdensome, could not break down self-respect, nor gratitude, however
+deep, humiliate a gentleman.
+
+He was hardly yet out of sight, when he paused as if thinking; then with
+hastened steps returning to the merchant, "I am just reminded that the
+president, who is also transfer-agent, of the Black Rapids Coal Company,
+happens to be on board here, and, having been subpoenaed as witness in a
+stock case on the docket in Kentucky, has his transfer-book with him. A
+month since, in a panic contrived by artful alarmists, some credulous
+stock-holders sold out; but, to frustrate the aim of the alarmists, the
+Company, previously advised of their scheme, so managed it as to get
+into its own hands those sacrificed shares, resolved that, since a
+spurious panic must be, the panic-makers should be no gainers by it. The
+Company, I hear, is now ready, but not anxious, to redispose of those
+shares; and having obtained them at their depressed value, will now sell
+them at par, though, prior to the panic, they were held at a handsome
+figure above. That the readiness of the Company to do this is not
+generally known, is shown by the fact that the stock still stands on the
+transfer-book in the Company's name, offering to one in funds a rare
+chance for investment. For, the panic subsiding more and more every day,
+it will daily be seen how it originated; confidence will be more than
+restored; there will be a reaction; from the stock's descent its rise
+will be higher than from no fall, the holders trusting themselves to
+fear no second fate."
+
+Having listened at first with curiosity, at last with interest, the
+merchant replied to the effect, that some time since, through friends
+concerned with it, he had heard of the company, and heard well of it,
+but was ignorant that there had latterly been fluctuations. He added
+that he was no speculator; that hitherto he had avoided having to do
+with stocks of any sort, but in the present case he really felt
+something like being tempted. "Pray," in conclusion, "do you think that
+upon a pinch anything could be transacted on board here with the
+transfer-agent? Are you acquainted with him?"
+
+"Not personally. I but happened to hear that he was a passenger. For the
+rest, though it might be somewhat informal, the gentleman might not
+object to doing a little business on board. Along the Mississippi, you
+know, business is not so ceremonious as at the East."
+
+"True," returned the merchant, and looked down a moment in thought,
+then, raising his head quickly, said, in a tone not so benign as his
+wonted one, "This would seem a rare chance, indeed; why, upon first
+hearing it, did you not snatch at it? I mean for yourself!"
+
+"I?--would it had been possible!"
+
+Not without some emotion was this said, and not without some
+embarrassment was the reply. "Ah, yes, I had forgotten."
+
+Upon this, the stranger regarded him with mild gravity, not a little
+disconcerting; the more so, as there was in it what seemed the aspect
+not alone of the superior, but, as it were, the rebuker; which sort of
+bearing, in a beneficiary towards his benefactor, looked strangely
+enough; none the less, that, somehow, it sat not altogether unbecomingly
+upon the beneficiary, being free from anything like the appearance of
+assumption, and mixed with a kind of painful conscientiousness, as
+though nothing but a proper sense of what he owed to himself swayed him.
+At length he spoke:
+
+"To reproach a penniless man with remissness in not availing himself of
+an opportunity for pecuniary investment--but, no, no; it was
+forgetfulness; and this, charity will impute to some lingering effect of
+that unfortunate brain-fever, which, as to occurrences dating yet
+further back, disturbed Mr. Roberts's memory still more seriously."
+
+"As to that," said the merchant, rallying, "I am not----"
+
+"Pardon me, but you must admit, that just now, an unpleasant distrust,
+however vague, was yours. Ah, shallow as it is, yet, how subtle a thing
+is suspicion, which at times can invade the humanest of hearts and
+wisest of heads. But, enough. My object, sir, in calling your attention
+to this stock, is by way of acknowledgment of your goodness. I but seek
+to be grateful; if my information leads to nothing, you must remember
+the motive."
+
+He bowed, and finally retired, leaving Mr. Roberts not wholly without
+self-reproach, for having momentarily indulged injurious thoughts
+against one who, it was evident, was possessed of a self-respect which
+forbade his indulging them himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN WITH THE WEED MAKES IT AN EVEN QUESTION WHETHER HE BE A GREAT
+SAGE OR A GREAT SIMPLETON.
+
+
+"Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that
+is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. Dear good man. Poor
+beating heart!"
+
+It was the man with the weed, not very long after quitting the merchant,
+murmuring to himself with his hand to his side like one with the
+heart-disease.
+
+Meditation over kindness received seemed to have softened him something,
+too, it may be, beyond what might, perhaps, have been looked for from
+one whose unwonted self-respect in the hour of need, and in the act of
+being aided, might have appeared to some not wholly unlike pride out of
+place; and pride, in any place, is seldom very feeling. But the truth,
+perhaps, is, that those who are least touched with that vice, besides
+being not unsusceptible to goodness, are sometimes the ones whom a
+ruling sense of propriety makes appear cold, if not thankless, under a
+favor. For, at such a time, to be full of warm, earnest words, and
+heart-felt protestations, is to create a scene; and well-bred people
+dislike few things more than that; which would seem to look as if the
+world did not relish earnestness; but, not so; because the world, being
+earnest itself, likes an earnest scene, and an earnest man, very well,
+but only in their place--the stage. See what sad work they make of it,
+who, ignorant of this, flame out in Irish enthusiasm and with Irish
+sincerity, to a benefactor, who, if a man of sense and respectability,
+as well as kindliness, can but be more or less annoyed by it; and, if of
+a nervously fastidious nature, as some are, may be led to think almost
+as much less favorably of the beneficiary paining him by his gratitude,
+as if he had been guilty of its contrary, instead only of an
+indiscretion. But, beneficiaries who know better, though they may feel
+as much, if not more, neither inflict such pain, nor are inclined to run
+any risk of so doing. And these, being wise, are the majority. By which
+one sees how inconsiderate those persons are, who, from the absence of
+its officious manifestations in the world, complain that there is not
+much gratitude extant; when the truth is, that there is as much of it as
+there is of modesty; but, both being for the most part votarists of the
+shade, for the most part keep out of sight.
+
+What started this was, to account, if necessary, for the changed air of
+the man with the weed, who, throwing off in private the cold garb of
+decorum, and so giving warmly loose to his genuine heart, seemed almost
+transformed into another being. This subdued air of softness, too, was
+toned with melancholy, melancholy unreserved; a thing which, however at
+variance with propriety, still the more attested his earnestness; for
+one knows not how it is, but it sometimes happens that, where
+earnestness is, there, also, is melancholy.
+
+At the time, he was leaning over the rail at the boat's side, in his
+pensiveness, unmindful of another pensive figure near--a young gentleman
+with a swan-neck, wearing a lady-like open shirt collar, thrown back,
+and tied with a black ribbon. From a square, tableted-broach, curiously
+engraved with Greek characters, he seemed a collegian--not improbably, a
+sophomore--on his travels; possibly, his first. A small book bound in
+Roman vellum was in his hand.
+
+Overhearing his murmuring neighbor, the youth regarded him with some
+surprise, not to say interest. But, singularly for a collegian, being
+apparently of a retiring nature, he did not speak; when the other still
+more increased his diffidence by changing from soliloquy to colloquy, in
+a manner strangely mixed of familiarity and pathos.
+
+"Ah, who is this? You did not hear me, my young friend, did you? Why,
+you, too, look sad. My melancholy is not catching!"
+
+"Sir, sir," stammered the other.
+
+"Pray, now," with a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along
+the rail, "Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give
+me leave," gently drawing it from him. "Tacitus!" Then opening it at
+random, read: "In general a black and shameful period lies before me."
+"Dear young sir," touching his arm alarmedly, "don't read this book. It
+is poison, moral poison. Even were there truth in Tacitus, such truth
+would have the operation of falsity, and so still be poison, moral
+poison. Too well I know this Tacitus. In my college-days he came near
+souring me into cynicism. Yes, I began to turn down my collar, and go
+about with a disdainfully joyless expression."
+
+"Sir, sir, I--I--"
+
+"Trust me. Now, young friend, perhaps you think that Tacitus, like me,
+is only melancholy; but he's more--he's ugly. A vast difference, young
+sir, between the melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the
+world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be compatible with
+benevolence, the other not. The one may deepen insight, the other
+shallows it. Drop Tacitus. Phrenologically, my young friend, you would
+seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but cribbed within the
+ugly view, the Tacitus view, your large brain, like your large ox in the
+contracted field, will but starve the more. And don't dream, as some of
+you students may, that, by taking this same ugly view, the deeper
+meanings of the deeper books will so alone become revealed to you. Drop
+Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy
+of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying--'There is a
+subtle man, and the same is deceived.' Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me
+throw the book overboard."
+
+"Sir, I--I--"
+
+"Not a word; I know just what is in your mind, and that is just what I
+am speaking to. Yes, learn from me that, though the sorrows of the world
+are great, its wickedness--that is, its ugliness--is small. Much cause
+to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known adversity, and
+know it still. But for that, do I turn cynic? No, no: it is small beer
+that sours. To my fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I
+may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in my kind. Now, then"
+(winningly), "this book--will you let me drown it for you?"
+
+"Really, sir--I--"
+
+"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in
+understanding human nature--as if truth was ever got at by libel. My
+young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and
+go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."
+
+"Upon my word, I--I--"
+
+"Nay, I foresee all that. But you carry Tacitus, that shallow Tacitus.
+What do _I_ carry? See"--producing a pocket-volume--"Akenside--his
+'Pleasures of Imagination.' One of these days you will know it. Whatever
+our lot, we should read serene and cheery books, fitted to inspire love
+and trust. But Tacitus! I have long been of opinion that these classics
+are the bane of colleges; for--not to hint of the immorality of Ovid,
+Horace, Anacreon, and the rest, and the dangerous theology of Eschylus
+and others--where will one find views so injurious to human nature as in
+Thucydides, Juvenal, Lucian, but more particularly Tacitus? When I
+consider that, ever since the revival of learning, these classics have
+been the favorites of successive generations of students and studious
+men, I tremble to think of that mass of unsuspected heresy on every
+vital topic which for centuries must have simmered unsurmised in the
+heart of Christendom. But Tacitus--he is the most extraordinary example
+of a heretic; not one iota of confidence in his kind. What a mockery
+that such an one should be reputed wise, and Thucydides be esteemed the
+statesman's manual! But Tacitus--I hate Tacitus; not, though, I trust,
+with the hate that sins, but a righteous hate. Without confidence
+himself, Tacitus destroys it in all his readers. Destroys confidence,
+paternal confidence, of which God knows that there is in this world none
+to spare. For, comparatively inexperienced as you are, my dear young
+friend, did you never observe how little, very little, confidence, there
+is? I mean between man and man--more particularly between stranger and
+stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence! I have
+sometimes almost thought that confidence is fled; that confidence is the
+New Astrea--emigrated--vanished--gone." Then softly sliding nearer, with
+the softest air, quivering down and looking up, "could you now, my dear
+young sir, under such circumstances, by way of experiment, simply have
+confidence in _me_?"
+
+From the outset, the sophomore, as has been seen, had struggled with an
+ever-increasing embarrassment, arising, perhaps, from such strange
+remarks coming from a stranger--such persistent and prolonged remarks,
+too. In vain had he more than once sought to break the spell by
+venturing a deprecatory or leave-taking word. In vain. Somehow, the
+stranger fascinated him. Little wonder, then, that, when the appeal
+came, he could hardly speak, but, as before intimated, being apparently
+of a retiring nature, abruptly retired from the spot, leaving the
+chagrined stranger to wander away in the opposite direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+AT THE OUTSET OF WHICH CERTAIN PASSENGERS PROVE DEAF TO THE CALL OF
+CHARITY.
+
+
+----"You--pish! Why will the captain suffer these begging fellows on
+board?";
+
+These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do gentleman in a
+ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored cheek, a ruby-headed
+cane in his hand, to a man in a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly
+after the interview last described, had accosted him for contributions
+to a Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles. Upon
+a cursory view, this last person might have seemed, like the man with
+the weed, one of the less unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a
+closer observation, his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though
+much of sanctity.
+
+With added words of touchy disgust, the well-to-do gentleman hurried
+away. But, though repulsed, and rudely, the man in gray did not
+reproach, for a time patiently remaining in the chilly loneliness to
+which he had been left, his countenance, however, not without token of
+latent though chastened reliance.
+
+At length an old gentleman, somewhat bulky, drew nigh, and from him also
+a contribution was sought.
+
+"Look, you," coming to a dead halt, and scowling upon him. "Look, you,"
+swelling his bulk out before him like a swaying balloon, "look, you, you
+on others' behalf ask for money; you, a fellow with a face as long as my
+arm. Hark ye, now: there is such a thing as gravity, and in condemned
+felons it may be genuine; but of long faces there are three sorts; that
+of grief's drudge, that of the lantern-jawed man, and that of the
+impostor. You know best which yours is."
+
+"Heaven give you more charity, sir."
+
+"And you less hypocrisy, sir."
+
+With which words, the hard-hearted old gentleman marched off.
+
+While the other still stood forlorn, the young clergyman, before
+introduced, passing that way, catching a chance sight of him, seemed
+suddenly struck by some recollection; and, after a moment's pause,
+hurried up with: "Your pardon, but shortly since I was all over looking
+for you."
+
+"For me?" as marveling that one of so little account should be sought
+for.
+
+"Yes, for you; do you know anything about the negro, apparently a
+cripple, aboard here? Is he, or is he not, what he seems to be?"
+
+"Ah, poor Guinea! have you, too, been distrusted? you, upon whom nature
+has placarded the evidence of your claims?"
+
+"Then you do really know him, and he is quite worthy? It relieves me to
+hear it--much relieves me. Come, let us go find him, and see what can be
+done."
+
+"Another instance that confidence may come too late. I am sorry to say
+that at the last landing I myself--just happening to catch sight of him
+on the gangway-plank--assisted the cripple ashore. No time to talk, only
+to help. He may not have told you, but he has a brother in that
+vicinity.
+
+"Really, I regret his going without my seeing him again; regret it,
+more, perhaps, than you can readily think. You see, shortly after
+leaving St. Louis, he was on the forecastle, and there, with many
+others, I saw him, and put trust in him; so much so, that, to convince
+those who did not, I, at his entreaty, went in search of you, you being
+one of several individuals he mentioned, and whose personal appearance
+he more or less described, individuals who he said would willingly speak
+for him. But, after diligent search, not finding you, and catching no
+glimpse of any of the others he had enumerated, doubts were at last
+suggested; but doubts indirectly originating, as I can but think, from
+prior distrust unfeelingly proclaimed by another. Still, certain it is,
+I began to suspect."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+A sort of laugh more like a groan than a laugh; and yet, somehow, it
+seemed intended for a laugh.
+
+Both turned, and the young clergyman started at seeing the wooden-legged
+man close behind him, morosely grave as a criminal judge with a
+mustard-plaster on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster
+might have been the memory of certain recent biting rebuffs and
+mortifications.
+
+"Wouldn't think it was I who laughed would you?"
+
+"But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to laugh at?" demanded
+the young clergyman, flushing, "me?"
+
+"Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles of you. But perhaps you
+don't believe it."
+
+"If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in
+gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to
+fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
+smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly
+making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street,
+as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic
+jeer at him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with his own
+foot."
+
+"Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other folks' sole-leather,"
+said the wooden-legged man with a crusty attempt at humor. But with
+augmented grin and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
+"you still think it was _you_ I was laughing at, just now. To prove your
+mistake, I will tell you what I _was_ laughing at; a story I happened to
+call to mind just then."
+
+Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic details, unpleasant
+to repeat, he related a story, which might, perhaps, in a good-natured
+version, be rendered as follows:
+
+A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man, less slender in purse
+than limb, happening to attend the theatre one evening, was so charmed
+with the character of a faithful wife, as there represented to the life,
+that nothing would do but he must marry upon it. So, marry he did, a
+beautiful girl from Tennessee, who had first attracted his attention by
+her liberal mould, and was subsequently recommended to him through her
+kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition. Though large,
+the praise proved not too much. For, ere long, rumor more than
+corroborated it, by whispering that the lady was liberal to a fault. But
+though various circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have been
+deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the old Frenchman by his
+friends, yet such was his confidence that not a syllable would he
+credit, till, chancing one night to return unexpectedly from a journey,
+upon entering his apartment, a stranger burst from the alcove: "Begar!"
+cried he, "now I _begin_ to suspec."
+
+His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent
+to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of
+a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent
+satisfaction hobbled away.
+
+"Who is that scoffer," said the man in gray, not without warmth. "Who is
+he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make
+truth almost offensive as falsehood. Who is he?"
+
+"He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his suspicion of the
+negro," replied the young clergyman, recovering from disturbance, "in
+short, the person to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
+maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted and painted
+up for a decoy. Yes, these were his very words, I think."
+
+"Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed. Pray, will you call him
+back, and let me ask him if he were really in earnest?"
+
+The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly objections,
+prevailed upon the one-legged individual to return for a moment. Upon
+which, the man in gray thus addressed him: "This reverend gentleman
+tells me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
+considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware that there are
+some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being
+wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have
+sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. I hope
+you are not one of these. In short, would you tell me now, whether you
+were not merely joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
+Would you be so kind?"
+
+"No, I won't be so kind, I'll be so cruel."
+
+"As you please about that."
+
+"Well, he's just what I said he was."
+
+"A white masquerading as a black?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a moment, then quietly
+whispered to him, "I thought you represented your friend here as a very
+distrustful sort of person, but he appears endued with a singular
+credulity.--Tell me, sir, do you really think that a white could look
+the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good acting."
+
+"Not much better than any other man acts."
+
+"How? Does all the world act? Am _I_, for instance, an actor? Is my
+reverend friend here, too, a performer?"
+
+"Yes, don't you both perform acts? To do, is to act; so all doers are
+actors."
+
+"You trifle.--I ask again, if a white, how could he look the negro so?"
+
+"Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying the old saying,
+not more just than charitable, that 'the devil is never so black as he
+is painted.' But his limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his
+limbs so?"
+
+"How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs? Easy enough to see how
+they are hoisted up."
+
+"The sham is evident, then?"
+
+"To the discerning eye," with a horrible screw of his gimlet one.
+
+"Well, where is Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at
+once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis."
+
+"Do so," cried the one-eyed man, "I'm just in the humor now for having
+him found, and leaving the streaks of these fingers on his paint, as the
+lion leaves the streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn't let me
+touch him before. Yes, find him, I'll make wool fly, and him after."
+
+"You forget," here said the young clergyman to the man in gray, "that
+yourself helped poor Guinea ashore."
+
+"So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look now," to the other, "I
+think that without personal proof I can convince you of your mistake.
+For I put it to you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
+sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all that trouble,
+and run all that hazard, for the mere sake of those few paltry coppers,
+which, I hear, was all he got for his pains, if pains they were?"
+
+"That puts the case irrefutably," said the young clergyman, with a
+challenging glance towards the one-legged man.
+
+"You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and
+hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the
+devil make by gulling Eve?"
+
+Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of his intolerable
+jeer.
+
+The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a while, and then,
+turning to his companion, said: "A bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be
+put down in any Christian community.--And this was he who was the means
+of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should shut our ears to distrust, and
+keep them open only for its opposite."
+
+"You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon it this morning, I
+should have spared myself what I now feel.--That but one man, and he
+with one leg, should have such ill power given him; his one sour word
+leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge, it did) the
+dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous company. But, as I
+hinted, with me at the time his ill words went for nothing; the same as
+now; only afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles me."
+
+"It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of distrust works
+something as certain potions do; it is a spirit which may enter such
+minds, and yet, for a time, longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent;
+but only the more deplorable its ultimate activity."
+
+"An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful man did but just now
+anew drop on me his bane, how shall I be sure that my present exemption
+from its effects will be lasting?"
+
+"You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any sort, which
+hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may arise in you."
+
+"I will do so." Then added as in soliloquy, "Indeed, indeed, I was to
+blame in standing passive under such influences as that one-legged
+man's. My conscience upbraids me.--The poor negro: You see him
+occasionally, perhaps?"
+
+"No, not often; though in a few days, as it happens, my engagements will
+call me to the neighborhood of his present retreat; and, no doubt,
+honest Guinea, who is a grateful soul, will come to see me there."
+
+"Then you have been his benefactor?"
+
+"His benefactor? I did not say that. I have known him."
+
+"Take this mite. Hand it to Guinea when you see him; say it comes from
+one who has full belief in his honesty, and is sincerely sorry for
+having indulged, however transiently, in a contrary thought."
+
+"I accept the trust. And, by-the-way, since you are of this truly
+charitable nature, you will not turn away an appeal in behalf of the
+Seminole Widow and Orphan Asylum?"
+
+"I have not heard of that charity."
+
+"But recently founded."
+
+After a pause, the clergyman was irresolutely putting his hand in his
+pocket, when, caught by something in his companion's expression, he eyed
+him inquisitively, almost uneasily.
+
+"Ah, well," smiled the other wanly, "if that subtle bane, we were
+speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning to work, in vain my
+appeal to you. Good-by."
+
+"Nay," not untouched, "you do me injustice; instead of indulging present
+suspicions, I had rather make amends for previous ones. Here is
+something for your asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course you
+have papers?"
+
+"Of course," producing a memorandum book and pencil. "Let me take down
+name and amount. We publish these names. And now let me give you a
+little history of our asylum, and the providential way in which it was
+started."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.
+
+
+At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with
+much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly
+questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted
+both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman
+who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it
+seemed, without being observed by him.
+
+"Pardon me," said he, rising, "but yonder is one who I know will
+contribute, and largely. Don't take it amiss if I quit you."
+
+"Go: duty before all things," was the conscientious reply.
+
+The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect. There he stood apart
+and in repose, and yet, by his mere look, lured the man in gray from his
+story, much as, by its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm,
+alone in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down his sheaves,
+and come and apply for the alms of its shade.
+
+But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing among men--the
+world familiarly know the noun; a common one in every language--it was
+curious that what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like a
+kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it make him appear more
+or less unreal in this portraiture), was but the expression of so
+prevalent a quality. Such goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune,
+that, so far as his own personal experience could have gone, scarcely
+could he have known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or
+suspecting the latter in any serious degree (supposing such degree of it
+to be), by observation or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
+its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly exempted. For
+the rest, he might have been five and fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall,
+rosy, between plump and portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the
+time and place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
+festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts was of
+white satin, which might have looked especially inappropriate, had it
+not seemed less a bit of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as
+it were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what seemed so good
+about him was not all outside; no, the fine covering had a still finer
+lining. Upon one hand he wore a white kid glove, but the other hand,
+which was ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidèle, like
+most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked here and there,
+especially about the railings, it was marvel how, under such
+circumstances, these hands retained their spotlessness. But, if you
+watched them a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
+you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant, whose hands
+nature had dyed black, perhaps with the same purpose that millers wear
+white, this negro servant's hands did most of his master's handling for
+him; having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his prejudices.
+But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences to himself, a
+gentleman could also sin by deputy, how shocking would that be! But it
+is not permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist would
+make proclamation of it.
+
+This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm, was one who, like
+the Hebrew governor, knew how to keep his hands clean, and who never in
+his life happened to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
+or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was to be a very good
+man.
+
+Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce at all; that
+superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing in his manner bespoke him
+righteous, but only good, and though to be good is much below being
+righteous, and though there is a difference between the two, yet not, it
+is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a righteous man can not be a
+good man; though, conversely, in the pulpit it has been with much
+cogency urged, that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
+nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that nothing short of a
+total change and conversion can make him so; which is something which no
+honest mind, well read in the history of righteousness, will care to
+deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a sense with the
+pulpit distinction, though not altogether in the pulpit deduction, and
+also pretty plainly intimating which of the two qualities in question
+enjoys his apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
+said, that, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure
+for a good man some would even dare to die;" therefore, when we repeat
+of this gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever else by severe
+censors may be objected to him, it is still to be hoped that his
+goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him. At all events,
+no man, not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to commit
+this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary as he might deem
+it; more especially, as, until everything could be known, there would be
+some chance that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent of
+it as he himself.
+
+It was pleasant to mark the good man's reception of the salute of the
+righteous man, that is, the man in gray; his inferior, apparently, not
+more in the social scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
+good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness over that suitor, not
+in conceited condescension, but with that even amenity of true majesty,
+which can be kind to any one without stooping to it.
+
+To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and orphans, the gentleman,
+after a question or two duly answered, responded by producing an ample
+pocket-book in the good old capacious style, of fine green French
+morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of the same color, not to omit
+bills crisp with newness, fresh from the bank, no muckworms' grime upon
+them. Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept unspotted
+from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing now three of those
+virgin bills in the applicant's hands, he hoped that the smallness of
+the contribution would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
+accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run down the river,
+to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon wedding of his niece: so
+did not carry much money with him.
+
+The other was about expressing his thanks when the gentleman in his
+pleasant way checked him: the gratitude was on the other side. To him,
+he said, charity was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against
+too great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had sometimes
+admonished him.
+
+In some general talk which followed, relative to organized modes of
+doing good, the gentleman expressed his regrets that so many benevolent
+societies as there were, here and there isolated in the land, should not
+act in concert by coming together, in the way that already in each
+society the individuals composing it had done, which would result, he
+thought, in like advantages upon a larger scale. Indeed, such a
+confederation might, perhaps, be attended with as happy results as
+politically attended that of the states.
+
+Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this suggestion had an
+effect illustrative in a sort of that notion of Socrates, that the soul
+is a harmony; for as the sound of a flute, in any particular key, will,
+it is said, audibly affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
+tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him respond, and
+with animation.
+
+Which animation, by the way, might seem more or less out of character in
+the man in gray, considering his unsprightly manner when first
+introduced, had he not already, in certain after colloquies, given
+proof, in some degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a
+soberly continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of stuff,
+is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because unwasted, and may
+be used the more effectively, too, when opportunity offers. What now
+follows on the part of the man in gray will still further exemplify,
+perhaps somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears to be such, of
+this remark.
+
+"Sir," said he eagerly, "I am before you. A project, not dissimilar to
+yours, was by me thrown out at the World's Fair in London."
+
+"World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?"
+
+"First, let me----"
+
+"Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?"
+
+"I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented."
+
+"Then you have not always been in the charity business?"
+
+"Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am, and always have been,
+as I always will be, I trust, in the charity business, as you call it;
+but charity is not like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
+point; charity is a work to which a good workman may be competent in all
+its branches. I invented my Protean easy-chair in odd intervals stolen
+from meals and sleep."
+
+"You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe it."
+
+"My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and
+bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch,
+that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
+seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,
+nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and
+somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to
+make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little
+means and off to the World's Fair with it."
+
+"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"
+
+"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and
+placed, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt
+upon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and
+reflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass
+house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed
+me. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot
+supply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
+world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired
+by the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my
+prospectus of the World's Charity."
+
+"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it."
+
+"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise
+deputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the
+society to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which
+end, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be
+done away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to
+levy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in
+Augustus Cæsar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax
+which, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in
+England, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all
+possible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the
+county-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors
+rolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,
+would result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
+hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and
+in such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general
+congress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I
+estimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven
+thousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of
+the society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen
+could remain the round world over."
+
+"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,
+as it were."
+
+"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a
+philanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a
+finance which are practicable."
+
+"Practicable?"
+
+"Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a
+retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of
+fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions--what is that, to average it,
+but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? And who
+will refuse, what Turk or Dyak even, his own little dollar for sweet
+charity's sake? Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
+expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries. Consider that
+bloody spendthrift, War. And are mankind so stupid, so wicked, that,
+upon the demonstration of these things they will not, amending their
+ways, devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead of
+cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have not to make it, it is
+theirs already; they have but to direct it from ill to good. And to
+this, scarce a self-denial is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
+mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would they be all
+the better and happier. Don't you see? But admit, as you must, that
+mankind is not mad, and my project is practicable. For, what creature
+but a madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is plain that,
+good or ill, it must return upon himself?"
+
+"Your sort of reasoning," said the good gentleman, adjusting his gold
+sleeve-buttons, "seems all reasonable enough, but with mankind it wont
+do."
+
+"Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason wont do with them."
+
+"That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the manner in which you
+alluded to the world's census, it would appear that, according to your
+world-wide scheme, the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute
+to the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than the Christian
+to the conversion of heathenism. How is that?"
+
+"Why, that--pardon me--is quibbling. Now, no philanthropist likes to be
+opposed with quibbling."
+
+"Well, I won't quibble any more. But, after all, if I understand your
+project, there is little specially new in it, further than the
+magnifying of means now in operation."
+
+"Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions I would thoroughly
+reform. Missions I would quicken with the Wall street spirit."
+
+"The Wall street spirit?"
+
+"Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but
+through the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer
+gaining of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly
+projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
+conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human
+effort, would, by the world's charity, be let out on contract. So much
+by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa.
+Competition allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
+lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house or tract-house of
+which slanderers could, with any plausibility, say that it had
+degenerated in its clerkships into a sort of custom-house. But the main
+point is the Archimedean money-power that would be brought to bear."
+
+"You mean the eight hundred million power?"
+
+"Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by driblets amounts to just
+nothing. I am for doing good to the world with a will. I am for doing
+good to the world once for all and having done with it. Do but think, my
+dear sir, of the eddies and maëlstroms of pagans in China. People here
+have no conception of it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper
+pagans are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin
+of peas. To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to
+be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of
+missionaries to such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am for
+sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and converting the Chinese
+_en masse_ within six months of the debarkation. The thing is then done,
+and turn to something else."
+
+"I fear you are too enthusiastic."
+
+"A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for without enthusiasm
+what was ever achieved but commonplace? But again: consider the poor in
+London. To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf there? I
+am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks and one hundred thousand
+barrels of flour to begin with. They are then comforted, and no more
+hunger for one while among the poor of London. And so all round."
+
+"Sharing the character of your general project, these things, I take it,
+are rather examples of wonders that were to be wished, than wonders that
+will happen."
+
+"And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world too old? Is it barren?
+Think of Sarah."
+
+"Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a smile). But still, as to
+your design at large, there seems a certain audacity."
+
+"But if to the audacity of the design there be brought a commensurate
+circumspectness of execution, how then?"
+
+"Why, do you really believe that your world's charity will ever go into
+operation?"
+
+"I have confidence that it will."
+
+"But may you not be over-confident?"
+
+"For a Christian to talk so!"
+
+"But think of the obstacles!"
+
+"Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles, though mountains.
+Yes, confidence in the world's charity to that degree, that, as no
+better person offers to supply the place, I have nominated myself
+provisional treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
+the present to be devoted to striking off a million more of my
+prospectuses."
+
+The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit of benevolence
+which, mindful of the millennial promise, had gone abroad over all the
+countries of the globe, much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman,
+stirred by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in March
+reveries at his fireside, over every field of his farm. The master chord
+of the man in gray had been touched, and it seemed as if it would never
+cease vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with gestures
+that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness before which
+granite hearts might crumble into gravel.
+
+Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly good-hearted as he
+seemed, remained proof to such eloquence; though not, as it turned out,
+to such pleadings. For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
+incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of destination,
+the gentleman, with a look half humor, half pity, put another bank-note
+into his hands; charitable to the last, if only to the dreams of
+enthusiasm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A CHARITABLE LADY.
+
+
+If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in
+a reason-fit is not the most lively. And this, without prejudice to his
+greatly improved understanding; for, if his elation was the height of
+his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity. Something
+thus now, to all appearance, with the man in gray. Society his stimulus,
+loneliness was his lethargy. Loneliness, like the sea breeze, blowing
+off from a thousand leagues of blankness, he did not find, as veteran
+solitaires do, if anything, too bracing. In short, left to himself, with
+none to charm forth his latent lymphatic, he insensibly resumes his
+original air, a quiescent one, blended of sad humility and demureness.
+
+Ere long he goes laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless
+quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats
+himself upon a sofa with an air of melancholy exhaustion and depression.
+
+At the sofa's further end sits a plump and pleasant person, whose aspect
+seems to hint that, if she have any weak point, it must be anything
+rather than her excellent heart. From her twilight dress, neither dawn
+nor dark, apparently she is a widow just breaking the chrysalis of her
+mourning. A small gilt testament is in her hand, which she has just been
+reading. Half-relinquished, she holds the book in reverie, her finger
+inserted at the xiii. of 1st Corinthians, to which chapter possibly her
+attention might have recently been turned, by witnessing the scene of
+the monitory mute and his slate.
+
+The sacred page no longer meets her eye; but, as at evening, when for a
+time the western hills shine on though the sun be set, her thoughtful
+face retains its tenderness though the teacher is forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the expression of the stranger is such as ere long to attract
+her glance. But no responsive one. Presently, in her somewhat
+inquisitive survey, her volume drops. It is restored. No encroaching
+politeness in the act, but kindness, unadorned. The eyes of the lady
+sparkle. Evidently, she is not now unprepossessed. Soon, bending over,
+in a low, sad tone, full of deference, the stranger breathes, "Madam,
+pardon my freedom, but there is something in that face which strangely
+draws me. May I ask, are you a sister of the Church?"
+
+"Why--really--you--"
+
+In concern for her embarrassment, he hastens to relieve it, but, without
+seeming so to do. "It is very solitary for a brother here," eying the
+showy ladies brocaded in the background, "I find none to mingle souls
+with. It may be wrong--I _know_ it is--but I cannot force myself to be
+easy with the people of the world. I prefer the company, however
+silent, of a brother or sister in good standing. By the way, madam, may
+I ask if you have confidence?"
+
+"Really, sir--why, sir--really--I--"
+
+"Could you put confidence in _me_ for instance?"
+
+"Really, sir--as much--I mean, as one may wisely put in a--a--stranger,
+an entire stranger, I had almost said," rejoined the lady, hardly yet at
+ease in her affability, drawing aside a little in body, while at the
+same time her heart might have been drawn as far the other way. A
+natural struggle between charity and prudence.
+
+"Entire stranger!" with a sigh. "Ah, who would be a stranger? In vain, I
+wander; no one will have confidence in me."
+
+"You interest me," said the good lady, in mild surprise. "Can I any way
+befriend you?"
+
+"No one can befriend me, who has not confidence."
+
+"But I--I have--at least to that degree--I mean that----"
+
+"Nay, nay, you have none--none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence.
+Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"
+
+"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest;
+"but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly
+biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I--yes,
+yes--I may say--that--that----"
+
+"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
+
+"Twenty dollars!"
+
+"There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence."
+
+The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of
+restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty
+different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At
+last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want
+the twenty dollars?"
+
+"And did I not----" then glancing at her half-mourning, "for the widow
+and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum,
+recently founded among the Seminoles."
+
+"And why did you not tell me your object before?" As not a little
+relieved. "Poor souls--Indians, too--those cruelly-used Indians. Here,
+here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more."
+
+"Grieve not for that, madam," rising and folding up the bank-notes.
+"This is an inconsiderable sum, I admit, but," taking out his pencil and
+book, "though I here but register the amount, there is another register,
+where is set down the motive. Good-bye; you have confidence. Yea, you
+can say to me as the apostle said to the Corinthians, 'I rejoice that I
+have confidence in you in all things.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.
+
+
+----"Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed hereabouts, rather
+a saddish gentleman? Strange where he can have gone to. I was talking
+with him not twenty minutes since."
+
+By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap, carrying
+under his arm a ledger-like volume, the above words were addressed to
+the collegian before introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which
+not long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted, he had
+returned, and there remained.
+
+"Have you seen him, sir?"
+
+Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial jauntiness of the
+stranger, the youth answered with unwonted promptitude: "Yes, a person
+with a weed was here not very long ago."
+
+"Saddish?"
+
+"Yes, and a little cracked, too, I should say."
+
+"It was he. Misfortune, I fear, has disturbed his brain. Now quick,
+which way did he go?"
+
+"Why just in the direction from which you came, the gangway yonder."
+
+"Did he? Then the man in the gray coat, whom I just met, said right: he
+must have gone ashore. How unlucky!"
+
+He stood vexedly twitching at his cap-tassel, which fell over by his
+whisker, and continued: "Well, I am very sorry. In fact, I had something
+for him here."--Then drawing nearer, "you see, he applied to me for
+relief, no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate, you
+understand. Well, being very busy just then, I declined; quite rudely,
+too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling way, I fear. At all events, not three
+minutes afterwards I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very
+peremptory, to deliver over into that unfortunate man's hands a
+ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be superstition, but I can't
+help it; I have my weak side, thank God. Then again," he rapidly went
+on, "we have been so very prosperous lately in our affairs--by we, I
+mean the Black Rapids Coal Company--that, really, out of my abundance,
+associative and individual, it is but fair that a charitable investment
+or two should be made, don't you think so?"
+
+"Sir," said the collegian without the least embarrassment, "do I
+understand that you are officially connected with the Black Rapids Coal
+Company?"
+
+"Yes, I happen to be president and transfer-agent."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Yes, but what is it to you? You don't want to invest?"
+
+"Why, do you sell the stock?"
+
+"Some might be bought, perhaps; but why do you ask? you don't want to
+invest?"
+
+"But supposing I did," with cool self-collectedness, "could you do up
+the thing for me, and here?"
+
+"Bless my soul," gazing at him in amaze, "really, you are quite a
+business man. Positively, I feel afraid of you."
+
+"Oh, no need of that.--You could sell me some of that stock, then?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know. To be sure, there are a few shares under
+peculiar circumstances bought in by the Company; but it would hardly be
+the thing to convert this boat into the Company's office. I think you
+had better defer investing. So," with an indifferent air, "you have seen
+the unfortunate man I spoke of?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man go his ways.--What is that large book you have
+with you?"
+
+"My transfer-book. I am subpoenaed with it to court."
+
+"Black Rapids Coal Company," obliquely reading the gilt inscription on
+the back; "I have heard much of it. Pray do you happen to have with you
+any statement of the condition of your company."
+
+"A statement has lately been printed."
+
+"Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have you a copy with you?"
+
+"I tell you again, I do not think that it would be suitable to convert
+this boat into the Company's office.--That unfortunate man, did you
+relieve him at all?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.--Hand me the statement."
+
+"Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly deny you. Here,"
+handing a small, printed pamphlet.
+
+The youth turned it over sagely.
+
+"I hate a suspicious man," said the other, observing him; "but I must
+say I like to see a cautious one."
+
+"I can gratify you there," languidly returning the pamphlet; "for, as I
+said before, I am naturally inquisitive; I am also circumspect. No
+appearances can deceive me. Your statement," he added "tells a very fine
+story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy awhile ago? downward
+tendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that
+stock?"
+
+"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The
+'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the
+growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears."
+
+"How, hypocritical?"
+
+"Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites
+by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of
+bright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of
+depression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;
+spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done,
+return, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the
+gains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!"
+
+"You are warm against these bears?"
+
+"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our
+stock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of
+confidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in
+themselves, are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence and
+gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks,
+politics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it
+may--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness,
+solely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of
+calamity which the gloomy philosopher parades, is but his
+Good-Enough-Morgan."
+
+"I rather like that," knowingly drawled the youth. "I fancy these gloomy
+souls as little as the next one. Sitting on my sofa after a champagne
+dinner, smoking my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me--what
+a bore!"
+
+"You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?"
+
+"I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are happy enough, and
+you know it; and everybody else is as happy as you, and you know that,
+too; and we shall all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
+too; but no, still you must have your sulk."
+
+"And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets his sulk? not from
+life; for he's often too much of a recluse, or else too young to have
+seen anything of it. No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees
+on the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to
+one, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about
+stuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it
+looks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way
+above his kind."
+
+"Just so," assented the youth. "I've lived some, and seen a good many
+such ravens at second hand. By the way, strange how that man with the
+weed, you were inquiring for, seemed to take me for some soft
+sentimentalist, only because I kept quiet, and thought, because I had a
+copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him for his gloom, instead
+of his gossip. But I let him talk. And, indeed, by my manner humored
+him."
+
+"You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate man, you must have made
+quite a fool of him."
+
+"His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable
+fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such
+fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
+superfluity in my pocket, and I'll just----"
+
+"----Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate man?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man be his own brother. What are you dragging him
+in for all the time? One would think you didn't care to register any
+transfers, or dispose of any stock--mind running on something else. I
+say I will invest."
+
+"Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows--this way, this way."
+
+And with off-handed politeness the man with the book escorted his
+companion into a private little haven removed from the brawling swells
+without.
+
+Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked the deck.
+
+"Now tell me, sir," said he with the book, "how comes it that a young
+gentleman like you, a sedate student at the first appearance, should
+dabble in stocks and that sort of thing?"
+
+"There are certain sophomorean errors in the world," drawled the
+sophomore, deliberately adjusting his shirt-collar, "not the least of
+which is the popular notion touching the nature of the modern scholar,
+and the nature of the modern scholastic sedateness."
+
+"So it seems, so it seems. Really, this is quite a new leaf in my
+experience."
+
+"Experience, sir," originally observed the sophomore, "is the only
+teacher."
+
+"Hence am I your pupil; for it's only when experience speaks, that I can
+endure to listen to speculation."
+
+"My speculations, sir," dryly drawing himself up, "have been chiefly
+governed by the maxim of Lord Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies
+which come home to my business and bosom--pray, do you know of any other
+good stocks?"
+
+"You wouldn't like to be concerned in the New Jerusalem, would you?"
+
+"New Jerusalem?"
+
+"Yes, the new and thriving city, so called, in northern Minnesota. It
+was originally founded by certain fugitive Mormons. Hence the name. It
+stands on the Mississippi. Here, here is the map," producing a roll.
+"There--there, you see are the public buildings--here the landing--there
+the park--yonder the botanic gardens--and this, this little dot here, is
+a perpetual fountain, you understand. You observe there are twenty
+asterisks. Those are for the lyceums. They have lignum-vitae rostrums."
+
+"And are all these buildings now standing?"
+
+"All standing--bona fide."
+
+"These marginal squares here, are they the water-lots?"
+
+"Water-lots in the city of New Jerusalem? All terra firma--you don't
+seem to care about investing, though?"
+
+"Hardly think I should read my title clear, as the law students say,"
+yawned the collegian.
+
+"Prudent--you are prudent. Don't know that you are wholly out, either.
+At any rate, I would rather have one of your shares of coal stock than
+two of this other. Still, considering that the first settlement was by
+two fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite shore--it's a
+surprising place. It is, _bona fide_.--But dear me, I must go. Oh, if by
+possibility you should come across that unfortunate man----"
+
+"--In that case," with drawling impatience, "I will send for the
+steward, and have him and his misfortunes consigned overboard."
+
+"Ha ha!--now were some gloomy philosopher here, some theological bear,
+forever taking occasion to growl down the stock of human nature (with
+ulterior views, d'ye see, to a fat benefice in the gift of the
+worshipers of Ariamius), he would pronounce that the sign of a hardening
+heart and a softening brain. Yes, that would be his sinister
+construction. But it's nothing more than the oddity of a genial
+humor--genial but dry. Confess it. Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+IN THE CABIN.
+
+
+Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying them are clusters of
+men, old and young, wise and simple; in their hands are cards spotted
+with diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist,
+cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering among the
+marble-topped tables, amused with the scene, are the comparatively few,
+who, instead of having hands in the games, for the most part keep their
+hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes. But here and
+there, with a curious expression, one is reading a small sort of
+handbill of anonymous poetry, rather wordily entitled:--
+
+  "ODE
+  ON THE INTIMATIONS
+  OF
+  DISTRUST IN MAN,
+  UNWILLINGLY INFERRED FROM REPEATED REPULSES,
+  IN DISINTERESTED ENDEAVORS
+  TO PROCURE HIS
+  CONFIDENCE."
+
+On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered down from a
+balloon. The way they came there was this: A somewhat elderly person, in
+the quaker dress, had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in
+the manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede their proffers of
+sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or indirect, of the volumes to
+follow, had, without speaking, handed about the odes, which, for the
+most part, after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed
+aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some wandering
+rhapsodist.
+
+In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man with the
+traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro, looks animatedly about
+him, with a yearning sort of gratulatory affinity and longing,
+expressive of the very soul of sociality; as much as to say, "Oh, boys,
+would that I were personally acquainted with each mother's son of you,
+since what a sweet world, to make sweet acquaintance in, is ours, my
+brothers; yea, and what dear, happy dogs are we all!"
+
+And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes fraternally up
+to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging with him some pleasant
+remark.
+
+"Pray, what have you there?" he asked of one newly accosted, a little,
+dried-up man, who looked as if he never dined.
+
+"A little ode, rather queer, too," was the reply, "of the same sort you
+see strewn on the floor here."
+
+"I did not observe them. Let me see;" picking one up and looking it
+over. "Well now, this is pretty; plaintive, especially the opening:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+--If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir.
+Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?"
+
+"As to that," said the little dried-up man, "I think it a kind of queer
+thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set
+me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were
+trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I
+am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works
+on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying
+dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in
+well-doing."
+
+"Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who
+snowed the odes about here?"
+
+"I cannot say; I have not been here long."
+
+"Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as
+the rest, and have cards."
+
+"Thank you, I never play cards."
+
+"A bottle of wine?"
+
+"Thank you, I never drink wine."
+
+"Cigars?"
+
+"Thank you, I never smoke cigars."
+
+"Tell stories?"
+
+"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling."
+
+"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as
+water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial
+hand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you
+please; just enough to make it interesting."
+
+"Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards."
+
+"What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad
+Philomel here:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+Good-bye!"
+
+Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at
+length seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a
+partly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon,
+like his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming
+not a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a
+party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a
+red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome,
+self-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of
+professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil
+law.
+
+By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the
+good merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of
+the Ode which he holds: "Sir, I don't like the looks of those two, do
+you?"
+
+"Hardly," was the whispered reply; "those colored cravats are not in the
+best taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all."
+
+"You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't refer to dress, but
+countenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further
+than reading about them in the papers--but those two are--are sharpers,
+aint they?"
+
+"Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit, my dear sir."
+
+"Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given that way: but
+certainly, to say the least, these two youths can hardly be adepts,
+while the opposed couple may be even more."
+
+"You would not hint that the colored cravats would be so bungling as to
+lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous as to cheat?--Sour imaginations,
+my dear sir. Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the Ode you
+have there. Years and experience, I trust, have not sophisticated you. A
+fresh and liberal construction would teach us to regard those four
+players--indeed, this whole cabin-full of players--as playing at games
+in which every player plays fair, and not a player but shall win."
+
+"Now, you hardly mean that; because games in which all may win, such
+games remain as yet in this world uninvented, I think."
+
+"Come, come," luxuriously laying himself back, and casting a free glance
+upon the players, "fares all paid; digestion sound; care, toil, penury,
+grief, unknown; lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
+be cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick holes in the
+blessed fate of the world?"
+
+Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and hard, and then
+rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation, at first uneasy, but at last
+composed, and in the end, once more addressed his companion: "Well, I
+see it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and then. Somehow,
+I don't know why, a certain misty suspiciousness seems inseparable from
+most of one's private notions about some men and some things; but once
+out with these misty notions, and their mere contact with other men's
+soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies them."
+
+"You think I have done you good, then? may be, I have. But don't
+thank me, don't thank me. If by words, casually delivered in the
+social hour, I do any good to right or left, it is but involuntary
+influence--locust-tree sweetening the herbage under it; no merit at
+all; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.--Don't you see?"
+
+Another stare from the good merchant, and both were silent again.
+
+Finding his book, hitherto resting on his lap, rather irksome there, the
+owner now places it edgewise on the settee, between himself and
+neighbor; in so doing, chancing to expose the lettering on the
+back--"_Black Rapids Coal Company_"--which the good merchant,
+scrupulously honorable, had much ado to avoid reading, so directly would
+it have fallen under his eye, had he not conscientiously averted it. On
+a sudden, as if just reminded of something, the stranger starts up, and
+moves away, in his haste leaving his book; which the merchant observing,
+without delay takes it up, and, hurrying after, civilly returns it; in
+which act he could not avoid catching sight by an involuntary glance of
+part of the lettering.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, my good sir," said the other, receiving the
+volume, and was resuming his retreat, when the merchant spoke: "Excuse
+me, but are you not in some way connected with the--the Coal Company I
+have heard of?"
+
+"There is more than one Coal Company that may be heard of, my good sir,"
+smiled the other, pausing with an expression of painful impatience,
+disinterestedly mastered.
+
+"But you are connected with one in particular.--The 'Black Rapids,' are
+you not?"
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+"Well, sir, I have heard rather tempting information of your Company."
+
+"Who is your informant, pray," somewhat coldly.
+
+"A--a person by the name of Ringman."
+
+"Don't know him. But, doubtless, there are plenty who know our Company,
+whom our Company does not know; in the same way that one may know an
+individual, yet be unknown to him.--Known this Ringman long? Old friend,
+I suppose.--But pardon, I must leave you."
+
+"Stay, sir, that--that stock."
+
+"Stock?"
+
+"Yes, it's a little irregular, perhaps, but----"
+
+"Dear me, you don't think of doing any business with me, do you? In my
+official capacity I have not been authenticated to you. This
+transfer-book, now," holding it up so as to bring the lettering in
+sight, "how do you know that it may not be a bogus one? And I, being
+personally a stranger to you, how can you have confidence in me?"
+
+"Because," knowingly smiled the good merchant, "if you were other than I
+have confidence that you are, hardly would you challenge distrust that
+way."
+
+"But you have not examined my book."
+
+"What need to, if already I believe that it is what it is lettered to
+be?"
+
+"But you had better. It might suggest doubts."
+
+"Doubts, may be, it might suggest, but not knowledge; for how, by
+examining the book, should I think I knew any more than I now think I
+do; since, if it be the true book, I think it so already; and since if
+it be otherwise, then I have never seen the true one, and don't know
+what that ought to look like."
+
+"Your logic I will not criticize, but your confidence I admire, and
+earnestly, too, jocose as was the method I took to draw it out. Enough,
+we will go to yonder table, and if there be any business which, either
+in my private or official capacity, I can help you do, pray command
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ONLY A PAGE OR SO.
+
+
+The transaction concluded, the two still remained seated, falling into
+familiar conversation, by degrees verging into that confidential sort of
+sympathetic silence, the last refinement and luxury of unaffected good
+feeling. A kind of social superstition, to suppose that to be truly
+friendly one must be saying friendly words all the time, any more than
+be doing friendly deeds continually. True friendliness, like true
+religion, being in a sort independent of works.
+
+At length, the good merchant, whose eyes were pensively resting upon the
+gay tables in the distance, broke the spell by saying that, from the
+spectacle before them, one would little divine what other quarters of
+the boat might reveal. He cited the case, accidentally encountered but
+an hour or two previous, of a shrunken old miser, clad in shrunken old
+moleskin, stretched out, an invalid, on a bare plank in the emigrants'
+quarters, eagerly clinging to life and lucre, though the one was gasping
+for outlet, and about the other he was in torment lest death, or some
+other unprincipled cut-purse, should be the means of his losing it; by
+like feeble tenure holding lungs and pouch, and yet knowing and
+desiring nothing beyond them; for his mind, never raised above mould,
+was now all but mouldered away. To such a degree, indeed, that he had no
+trust in anything, not even in his parchment bonds, which, the better to
+preserve from the tooth of time, he had packed down and sealed up, like
+brandy peaches, in a tin case of spirits.
+
+The worthy man proceeded at some length with these dispiriting
+particulars. Nor would his cheery companion wholly deny that there might
+be a point of view from which such a case of extreme want of confidence
+might, to the humane mind, present features not altogether welcome as
+wine and olives after dinner. Still, he was not without compensatory
+considerations, and, upon the whole, took his companion to task for
+evincing what, in a good-natured, round-about way, he hinted to be a
+somewhat jaundiced sentimentality. Nature, he added, in Shakespeare's
+words, had meal and bran; and, rightly regarded, the bran in its way was
+not to be condemned.
+
+The other was not disposed to question the justice of Shakespeare's
+thought, but would hardly admit the propriety of the application in this
+instance, much less of the comment. So, after some further temperate
+discussion of the pitiable miser, finding that they could not entirely
+harmonize, the merchant cited another case, that of the negro cripple.
+But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that
+alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer
+than the experience of the observed. He knew nothing about the cripple,
+nor had seen him, but ventured to surmise that, could one but get at the
+real state of his heart, he would be found about as happy as most men,
+if not, in fact, full as happy as the speaker himself. He added that
+negroes were by nature a singularly cheerful race; no one ever heard of
+a native-born African Zimmermann or Torquemada; that even from religion
+they dismissed all gloom; in their hilarious rituals they danced, so to
+speak, and, as it were, cut pigeon-wings. It was improbable, therefore,
+that a negro, however reduced to his stumps by fortune, could be ever
+thrown off the legs of a laughing philosophy.
+
+Foiled again, the good merchant would not desist, but ventured still a
+third case, that of the man with the weed, whose story, as narrated by
+himself, and confirmed and filled out by the testimony of a certain man
+in a gray coat, whom the merchant had afterwards met, he now proceeded
+to give; and that, without holding back those particulars disclosed by
+the second informant, but which delicacy had prevented the unfortunate
+man himself from touching upon.
+
+But as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better justice to the man
+than the story, we shall venture to tell it in other words than his,
+though not to any other effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+STORY OF THE UNFORTUNATE MAN, FROM WHICH MAY BE GATHERED WHETHER OR NO
+HE HAS BEEN JUSTLY SO ENTITLED.
+
+
+It appeared that the unfortunate man had had for a wife one of those
+natures, anomalously vicious, which would almost tempt a metaphysical
+lover of our species to doubt whether the human form be, in all cases,
+conclusive evidence of humanity, whether, sometimes, it may not be a
+kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle, and whether, once for all
+to crush the saying of Thrasea, (an unaccountable one, considering that
+he himself was so good a man) that "he who hates vice, hates humanity,"
+it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable maxim, that
+none but the good are human.
+
+Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too straight, indeed,
+for a woman, a complexion naturally rosy, and which would have been
+charmingly so, but for a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of
+the glazed colors on stone-ware. Her hair was of a deep, rich chestnut,
+but worn in close, short curls all round her head. Her Indian figure was
+not without its impairing effect on her bust, while her mouth would have
+been pretty but for a trace of moustache. Upon the whole, aided by the
+resources of the toilet, her appearance at distance was such, that some
+might have thought her, if anything, rather beautiful, though of a style
+of beauty rather peculiar and cactus-like.
+
+It was happy for Goneril that her more striking peculiarities were less
+of the person than of temper and taste. One hardly knows how to reveal,
+that, while having a natural antipathy to such things as the breast of
+chicken, or custard, or peach, or grape, Goneril could yet in private
+make a satisfactory lunch on hard crackers and brawn of ham. She liked
+lemons, and the only kind of candy she loved were little dried sticks of
+blue clay, secretly carried in her pocket. Withal she had hard, steady
+health like a squaw's, with as firm a spirit and resolution. Some other
+points about her were likewise such as pertain to the women of savage
+life. Lithe though she was, she loved supineness, but upon occasion
+could endure like a stoic. She was taciturn, too. From early morning
+till about three o'clock in the afternoon she would seldom speak--it
+taking that time to thaw her, by all accounts, into but talking terms
+with humanity. During the interval she did little but look, and keep
+looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her enemies called cold
+as a cuttle-fish's, but which by her were esteemed gazelle-like; for
+Goneril was not without vanity. Those who thought they best knew her,
+often wondered what happiness such a being could take in life, not
+considering the happiness which is to be had by some natures in the very
+easy way of simply causing pain to those around them. Those who suffered
+from Goneril's strange nature, might, with one of those hyberboles to
+which the resentful incline, have pronounced her some kind of toad; but
+her worst slanderers could never, with any show of justice, have accused
+her of being a toady. In a large sense she possessed the virtue of
+independence of mind. Goneril held it flattery to hint praise even of
+the absent, and even if merited; but honesty, to fling people's imputed
+faults into their faces. This was thought malice, but it certainly was
+not passion. Passion is human. Like an icicle-dagger, Goneril at once
+stabbed and froze; so at least they said; and when she saw frankness and
+innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to
+the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark
+that she chuckled. These peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but
+another was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company she had a
+strange way of touching, as by accident, the arm or hand of comely young
+men, and seemed to reap a secret delight from it, but whether from the
+humane satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called, or
+whether it was something else in her, not equally wonderful, but quite
+as deplorable, remained an enigma.
+
+Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's, when, engaged
+in conversation with company, he would suddenly perceive his Goneril
+bestowing her mysterious touches, especially in such cases where the
+strangeness of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
+notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing the mystery, on the
+spot, as a subject of discussion for the company. In these cases, too,
+the unfortunate man could never endure so much as to look upon the
+touched young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification of
+meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less quizzingly-knowing
+expression. He would shudderingly shun the young gentleman. So that
+here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the
+heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times,
+he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private
+interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable
+propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was
+witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the
+unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such
+chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad--a
+touching case--but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
+unfortunate man--conscientiously mindful of his vow--for better or for
+worse--to love and cherish his dear Goneril so long as kind heaven might
+spare her to him--but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
+jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for none other could
+possess her, and the object of that deranged jealousy, her own child, a
+little girl of seven, her father's consolation and pet; when he saw
+Goneril artfully torment the little innocent, and then play the maternal
+hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient long-suffering gave
+way. Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might,
+possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
+father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he
+could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself.
+Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female
+neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
+out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause,
+could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting
+to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring.
+To all this, self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
+kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been had he continued so;
+for when, driven to desperation, he hinted something of the truth of the
+case, not a soul would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
+he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the suggestion of some
+woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
+counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
+only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
+awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
+he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
+a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
+lamentable was, that the unfortunate man, thinking that, before the
+court, his wisest plan, as well as the most Christian besides, being, as
+he deemed, not at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to put
+forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril, which done, he
+could, with less of mortification to himself, and odium to her, reveal
+in self-defense those eccentricities which had led to his retirement
+from the joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this charge
+of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself--especially, when,
+among other things, he alleged her mysterious teachings. In vain did his
+counsel, striving to make out the derangement to be where, in fact, if
+anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise, to hold that such a
+being as Goneril was sane, this was constructively a libel upon
+womankind. Libel be it. And all ended by the unfortunate man's
+subsequently getting wind of Goneril's intention to procure him to be
+permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which he fled, and was now an
+innocent outcast, wandering forlorn in the great valley of the
+Mississippi, with a weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he
+had lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought it but
+proper to comply with the prescribed form of mourning in such cases. For
+some days past he had been trying to get money enough to return to his
+child, and was but now started with inadequate funds.
+
+Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant could not but
+consider rather hard for the unfortunate man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE TRAVELING-CAP EVINCES MUCH HUMANITY, AND IN A WAY WHICH
+WOULD SEEM TO SHOW HIM TO BE ONE OF THE MOST LOGICAL OF OPTIMISTS.
+
+
+Years ago, a grave American savant, being in London, observed at an
+evening party there, a certain coxcombical fellow, as he thought, an
+absurd ribbon in his lapel, and full of smart persiflage, whisking about
+to the admiration of as many as were disposed to admire. Great was the
+savan's disdain; but, chancing ere long to find himself in a corner with
+the jackanapes, got into conversation with him, when he was somewhat
+ill-prepared for the good sense of the jackanapes, but was altogether
+thrown aback, upon subsequently being whispered by a friend that the
+jackanapes was almost as great a savan as himself, being no less a
+personage than Sir Humphrey Davy.
+
+The above anecdote is given just here by way of an anticipative reminder
+to such readers as, from the kind of jaunty levity, or what may have
+passed for such, hitherto for the most part appearing in the man with
+the traveling-cap, may have been tempted into a more or less hasty
+estimate of him; that such readers, when they find the same person, as
+they presently will, capable of philosophic and humanitarian
+discourse--no mere casual sentence or two as heretofore at times, but
+solidly sustained throughout an almost entire sitting; that they may
+not, like the American savan, be thereupon betrayed into any surprise
+incompatible with their own good opinion of their previous penetration.
+
+The merchant's narration being ended, the other would not deny but that
+it did in some degree affect him. He hoped he was not without proper
+feeling for the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what spirit he
+bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond or have confidence?
+
+The merchant did not, perhaps, take the exact import of the last member
+of the question; but answered, that, if whether the unfortunate man was
+becomingly resigned under his affliction or no, was the point, he could
+say for him that resigned he was, and to an exemplary degree: for not
+only, so far as known, did he refrain from any one-sided reflections
+upon human goodness and human justice, but there was observable in him
+an air of chastened reliance, and at times tempered cheerfulness.
+
+Upon which the other observed, that since the unfortunate man's alleged
+experience could not be deemed very conciliatory towards a view of human
+nature better than human nature was, it largely redounded to his
+fair-mindedness, as well as piety, that under the alleged dissuasives,
+apparently so, from philanthropy, he had not, in a moment of excitement,
+been warped over to the ranks of the misanthropes. He doubted not,
+also, that with such a man his experience would, in the end, act by a
+complete and beneficent inversion, and so far from shaking his
+confidence in his kind, confirm it, and rivet it. Which would the more
+surely be the case, did he (the unfortunate man) at last become
+satisfied (as sooner or later he probably would be) that in the
+distraction of his mind his Goneril had not in all respects had fair
+play. At all events, the description of the lady, charity could not but
+regard as more or less exaggerated, and so far unjust. The truth
+probably was that she was a wife with some blemishes mixed with some
+beauties. But when the blemishes were displayed, her husband, no adept
+in the female nature, had tried to use reason with her, instead of
+something far more persuasive. Hence his failure to convince and
+convert. The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the
+circumstances, abrupt. In brief, there were probably small faults on
+both sides, more than balanced by large virtues; and one should not be
+hasty in judging.
+
+When the merchant, strange to say, opposed views so calm and impartial,
+and again, with some warmth, deplored the case of the unfortunate man,
+his companion, not without seriousness, checked him, saying, that this
+would never do; that, though but in the most exceptional case, to admit
+the existence of unmerited misery, more particularly if alleged to have
+been brought about by unhindered arts of the wicked, such an admission
+was, to say the least, not prudent; since, with some, it might
+unfavorably bias their most important persuasions. Not that those
+persuasions were legitimately servile to such influences. Because,
+since the common occurrences of life could never, in the nature of
+things, steadily look one way and tell one story, as flags in the
+trade-wind; hence, if the conviction of a Providence, for instance, were
+in any way made dependent upon such variabilities as everyday events,
+the degree of that conviction would, in thinking minds, be subject to
+fluctuations akin to those of the stock-exchange during a long and
+uncertain war. Here he glanced aside at his transfer-book, and after a
+moment's pause continued. It was of the essence of a right conviction of
+the divine nature, as with a right conviction of the human, that, based
+less on experience than intuition, it rose above the zones of weather.
+
+When now the merchant, with all his heart, coincided with this (as being
+a sensible, as well as religious person, he could not but do), his
+companion expressed satisfaction, that, in an age of some distrust on
+such subjects, he could yet meet with one who shared with him, almost to
+the full, so sound and sublime a confidence.
+
+Still, he was far from the illiberality of denying that philosophy duly
+bounded was not permissible. Only he deemed it at least desirable that,
+when such a case as that alleged of the unfortunate man was made the
+subject of philosophic discussion, it should be so philosophized upon,
+as not to afford handles to those unblessed with the true light. For,
+but to grant that there was so much as a mystery about such a case,
+might by those persons be held for a tacit surrender of the question.
+And as for the apparent license temporarily permitted sometimes, to the
+bad over the good (as was by implication alleged with regard to Goneril
+and the unfortunate man), it might be injudicious there to lay too much
+polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the
+vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded
+that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse
+the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though
+mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one
+which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In
+short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and
+everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the
+secure Malakoff of confidence, nor be tempted forth to hazardous
+skirmishes on the open ground of reason. Therefore, he deemed it
+unadvisable in the good man, even in the privacy of his own mind, or in
+communion with a congenial one, to indulge in too much latitude of
+philosophizing, or, indeed, of compassionating, since this might, beget
+an indiscreet habit of thinking and feeling which might unexpectedly
+betray him upon unsuitable occasions. Indeed, whether in private or
+public, there was nothing which a good man was more bound to guard
+himself against than, on some topics, the emotional unreserve of his
+natural heart; for, that the natural heart, in certain points, was not
+what it might be, men had been authoritatively admonished.
+
+But he thought he might be getting dry.
+
+The merchant, in his good-nature, thought otherwise, and said that he
+would be glad to refresh himself with such fruit all day. It was sitting
+under a ripe pulpit, and better such a seat than under a ripe
+peach-tree.
+
+The other was pleased to find that he had not, as he feared, been
+prosing; but would rather not be considered in the formal light of a
+preacher; he preferred being still received in that of the equal and
+genial companion. To which end, throwing still more of sociability into
+his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate man. Take the very
+worst view of that case; admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril;
+how fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by nature and by
+law? If he were acquainted with the unfortunate man, instead of
+condoling with him, he would congratulate him. Great good fortune had
+this unfortunate man. Lucky dog, he dared say, after all.
+
+To which the merchant replied, that he earnestly hoped it might be so,
+and at any rate he tried his best to comfort himself with the persuasion
+that, if the unfortunate man was not happy in this world, he would, at
+least, be so in another.
+
+His companion made no question of the unfortunate man's happiness in
+both worlds; and, presently calling for some champagne, invited the
+merchant to partake, upon the playful plea that, whatever notions other
+than felicitous ones he might associate with the unfortunate man, a
+little champagne would readily bubble away.
+
+At intervals they slowly quaffed several glasses in silence and
+thoughtfulness. At last the merchant's expressive face flushed, his eye
+moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative and feminine
+sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed
+to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. "Ah," he cried,
+pushing his glass from him, "Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good;
+but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata
+of hard considerations, and drop warmly and ruddily into the cold cave
+of truth? Truth will _not_ be comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by
+sweet hope, fond fancy essays this feat; but in vain; mere dreams and
+ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving naught but the scorching
+behind!"
+
+"Why, why, why!" in amaze, at the burst: "bless me, if _In vino veritas_
+be a true saying, then, for all the fine confidence you professed with
+me, just now, distrust, deep distrust, underlies it; and ten thousand
+strong, like the Irish Rebellion, breaks out in you now. That wine, good
+wine, should do it! Upon my soul," half seriously, half humorously,
+securing the bottle, "you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to
+gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence, not depress
+it."
+
+Sobered, shamed, all but confounded, by this raillery, the most telling
+rebuke under such circumstances, the merchant stared about him, and
+then, with altered mien, stammeringly confessed, that he was almost as
+much surprised as his companion, at what had escaped him. He did not
+understand it; was quite at a loss to account for such a rhapsody
+popping out of him unbidden. It could hardly be the champagne; he felt
+his brain unaffected; in fact, if anything, the wine had acted upon it
+something like white of egg in coffee, clarifying and brightening.
+
+"Brightening? brightening it may be, but less like the white of egg in
+coffee, than like stove-lustre on a stove--black, brightening seriously,
+I repent calling for the champagne. To a temperament like yours,
+champagne is not to be recommended. Pray, my dear sir, do you feel quite
+yourself again? Confidence restored?"
+
+"I hope so; I think I may say it is so. But we have had a long talk, and
+I think I must retire now."
+
+So saying, the merchant rose, and making his adieus, left the table with
+the air of one, mortified at having been tempted by his own honest
+goodness, accidentally stimulated into making mad disclosures--to
+himself as to another--of the queer, unaccountable caprices of his
+natural heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE WORTH CONSIDERING.
+
+
+As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the
+present must consist of one glancing backwards.
+
+To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of
+confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the
+moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have
+betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and
+even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be
+urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully
+see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look
+for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
+should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable
+enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it
+couple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that,
+while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction
+based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact,
+that, in real life, a consistent character is a _rara avis_? Which
+being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can
+hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from
+perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at
+his wits' ends to understand living character, shall those who are not
+sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit
+along a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every
+character can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a
+glance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear
+for wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand,
+that author who draws a character, even though to common view
+incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different
+periods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the
+caterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false
+but faithful to facts.
+
+If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters
+as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader
+unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of
+conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide
+here; but as no one man can be coextensive with _what is_, it may be
+unwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of
+Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists,
+appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
+reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in
+some way, artificially stuck on.
+
+But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her
+duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no
+business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always,
+they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency,
+which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in
+certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to
+their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted,
+considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen
+through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon
+the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its
+inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its
+contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out,
+thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always
+representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he
+clearly knows all about it.
+
+But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in
+books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first
+their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out
+to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as
+in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web
+of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their
+satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to
+the understanding even of school misses, the last complications of that
+spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
+made.
+
+At least, something like this is claimed for certain psychological
+novelists; nor will the claim be here disputed. Yet, as touching this
+point, it may prove suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity,
+having for their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
+have, by the best judges, been excluded with contempt from the ranks of
+the sciences--palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise,
+the fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the most
+eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as with other topics, seem
+some presumption of a pretty general and pretty thorough ignorance of
+it. Which may appear the less improbable if it be considered that, after
+poring over the best novels professing to portray human nature, the
+studious youth will still run risk of being too often at fault upon
+actually entering the world; whereas, had he been furnished with a true
+delineation, it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
+entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be very crooked, he
+may often pause; but, thanks to his true map, he does not hopelessly
+lose his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection,
+that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human
+nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the
+same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them
+is in expression, not in feature.
+
+But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some mathematicians are yet
+in hopes of hitting upon an exact method of determining the longitude,
+the more earnest psychologists may, in the face of previous failures,
+still cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
+discovering the heart of man.
+
+But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed
+amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains
+but to turn to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
+thought to that of action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+AN OLD MISER, UPON SUITABLE REPRESENTATIONS, IS PREVAILED UPON TO
+VENTURE AN INVESTMENT.
+
+
+The merchant having withdrawn, the other remained seated alone for a
+time, with the air of one who, after having conversed with some
+excellent man, carefully ponders what fell from him, however
+intellectually inferior it may be, that none of the profit may be lost;
+happy if from any honest word he has heard he can derive some hint,
+which, besides confirming him in the theory of virtue, may, likewise,
+serve for a finger-post to virtuous action.
+
+Ere long his eye brightened, as if some such hint was now caught. He
+rises, book in hand, quits the cabin, and enters upon a sort of
+corridor, narrow and dim, a by-way to a retreat less ornate and cheery
+than the former; in short, the emigrants' quarters; but which, owing to
+the present trip being a down-river one, will doubtless be found
+comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side
+windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most
+part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious
+sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for
+light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day;
+in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without
+bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical towns of the associate
+penguin and pelican, these bunks were disposed with Philadelphian
+regularity, but, like the cradle of the oriole, they were pendulous,
+and, moreover, were, so to speak, three-story cradles; the description
+of one of which will suffice for all.
+
+Four ropes, secured to the ceiling, passed downwards through auger-holes
+bored in the corners of three rough planks, which at equal distances
+rested on knots vertically tied in the ropes, the lowermost plank but an
+inch or two from the floor, the whole affair resembling, on a large
+scale, rope book-shelves; only, instead of hanging firmly against a
+wall, they swayed to and fro at the least suggestion of motion, but were
+more especially lively upon the provocation of a green emigrant
+sprawling into one, and trying to lay himself out there, when the
+cradling would be such as almost to toss him back whence he came. In
+consequence, one less inexperienced, essaying repose on the uppermost
+shelf, was liable to serious disturbance, should a raw beginner select a
+shelf beneath. Sometimes a throng of poor emigrants, coming at night in
+a sudden rain to occupy these oriole nests, would--through ignorance of
+their peculiarity--bring about such a rocking uproar of carpentry,
+joining to it such an uproar of exclamations, that it seemed as if some
+luckless ship, with all its crew, was being dashed to pieces among the
+rocks. They were beds devised by some sardonic foe of poor travelers,
+to deprive them of that tranquility which should precede, as well as
+accompany, slumber.--Procrustean beds, on whose hard grain humble worth
+and honesty writhed, still invoking repose, while but torment responded.
+Ah, did any one make such a bunk for himself, instead of having it made
+for him, it might be just, but how cruel, to say, You must lie on it!
+
+But, purgatory as the place would appear, the stranger advances into it:
+and, like Orpheus in his gay descent to Tartarus, lightly hums to
+himself an opera snatch.
+
+Suddenly there is a rustling, then a creaking, one of the cradles swings
+out from a murky nook, a sort of wasted penguin-flipper is
+supplicatingly put forth, while a wail like that of Dives is
+heard:--"Water, water!"
+
+It was the miser of whom the merchant had spoken.
+
+Swift as a sister-of-charity, the stranger hovers over him:--
+
+"My poor, poor sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh--water!"
+
+Darting out, he procures a glass, returns, and, holding it to the
+sufferer's lips, supports his head while he drinks: "And did they let
+you lie here, my poor sir, racked with this parching thirst?"
+
+The miser, a lean old man, whose flesh seemed salted cod-fish, dry as
+combustibles; head, like one whittled by an idiot out of a knot; flat,
+bony mouth, nipped between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting
+between hunks and imbecile--now one, now the other--he made no response.
+His eyes were closed, his cheek lay upon an old white moleskin coat,
+rolled under his head like a wizened apple upon a grimy snow-bank.
+
+Revived at last, he inclined towards his ministrant, and, in a voice
+disastrous with a cough, said:--"I am old and miserable, a poor beggar,
+not worth a shoestring--how can I repay you?"
+
+"By giving me your confidence."
+
+"Confidence!" he squeaked, with changed manner, while the pallet swung,
+"little left at my age, but take the stale remains, and welcome."
+
+"Such as it is, though, you give it. Very good. Now give me a hundred
+dollars."
+
+Upon this the miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his
+waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and
+there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he
+incoherently mumbled:--"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum,
+bubble!--Confidence? fetch, gouge!--Hundred dollars?--hundred devils!"
+
+Half spent, he lay mute awhile, then feebly raising himself, in a voice
+for the moment made strong by the sarcasm, said, "A hundred dollars?
+rather high price to put upon confidence. But don't you see I am a poor,
+old rat here, dying in the wainscot? You have served me; but, wretch
+that I am, I can but cough you my thanks,--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+This time his cough was so violent that its convulsions were imparted to
+the plank, which swung him about like a stone in a sling preparatory to
+its being hurled.
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"What a shocking cough. I wish, my friend, the herb-doctor was here now;
+a box of his Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would do you good."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I've a good mind to go find him. He's aboard somewhere. I saw his long,
+snuff-colored surtout. Trust me, his medicines are the best in the
+world."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, how sorry I am."
+
+"No doubt of it," squeaked the other again, "but go, get your charity
+out on deck. There parade the pursy peacocks; they don't cough down here
+in desertion and darkness, like poor old me. Look how scaly a pauper I
+am, clove with this churchyard cough. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Again, how sorry I feel, not only for your cough, but your poverty.
+Such a rare chance made unavailable. Did you have but the sum named, how
+I could invest it for you. Treble profits. But confidence--I fear that,
+even had you the precious cash, you would not have the more precious
+confidence I speak of."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!" flightily raising himself. "What's that? How, how? Then
+you don't want the money for yourself?"
+
+"My dear, _dear_ sir, how could you impute to me such preposterous
+self-seeking? To solicit out of hand, for my private behoof, an hundred
+dollars from a perfect stranger? I am not mad, my dear sir."
+
+"How, how?" still more bewildered, "do you, then, go about the world,
+gratis, seeking to invest people's money for them?"
+
+"My humble profession, sir. I live not for myself; but the world will
+not have confidence in me, and yet confidence in me were great gain."
+
+"But, but," in a kind of vertigo, "what do--do you do--do with people's
+money? Ugh, ugh! How is the gain made?"
+
+"To tell that would ruin me. That known, every one would be going into
+the business, and it would be overdone. A secret, a mystery--all I have
+to do with you is to receive your confidence, and all you have to do
+with me is, in due time, to receive it back, thrice paid in trebling
+profits."
+
+"What, what?" imbecility in the ascendant once more; "but the vouchers,
+the vouchers," suddenly hunkish again.
+
+"Honesty's best voucher is honesty's face."
+
+"Can't see yours, though," peering through the obscurity.
+
+From this last alternating flicker of rationality, the miser fell back,
+sputtering, into his previous gibberish, but it took now an arithmetical
+turn. Eyes closed, he lay muttering to himself--
+
+"One hundred, one hundred--two hundred, two hundred--three hundred,
+three hundred."
+
+He opened his eyes, feebly stared, and still more feebly said--
+
+"It's a little dim here, ain't it? Ugh, ugh! But, as well as my poor old
+eyes can see, you look honest."
+
+"I am glad to hear that."
+
+"If--if, now, I should put"--trying to raise himself, but vainly,
+excitement having all but exhausted him--"if, if now, I should put,
+put----"
+
+"No ifs. Downright confidence, or none. So help me heaven, I will have
+no half-confidences."
+
+He said it with an indifferent and superior air, and seemed moving to
+go.
+
+"Don't, don't leave me, friend; bear with me; age can't help some
+distrust; it can't, friend, it can't. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and
+miserable. I ought to have a guardian. Tell me, if----"
+
+"If? No more!"
+
+"Stay! how soon--ugh, ugh!--would my money be trebled? How soon,
+friend?"
+
+"You won't confide. Good-bye!"
+
+"Stay, stay," falling back now like an infant, "I confide, I confide;
+help, friend, my distrust!"
+
+From an old buckskin pouch, tremulously dragged forth, ten hoarded
+eagles, tarnished into the appearance of ten old horn-buttons, were
+taken, and half-eagerly, half-reluctantly, offered.
+
+"I know not whether I should accept this slack confidence," said the
+other coldly, receiving the gold, "but an eleventh-hour confidence, a
+sick-bed confidence, a distempered, death-bed confidence, after all.
+Give me the healthy confidence of healthy men, with their healthy wits
+about them. But let that pass. All right. Good-bye!"
+
+"Nay, back, back--receipt, my receipt! Ugh, ugh, ugh! Who are you? What
+have I done? Where go you? My gold, my gold! Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+But, unluckily for this final flicker of reason, the stranger was now
+beyond ear-shot, nor was any one else within hearing of so feeble a
+call.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A SICK MAN, AFTER SOME IMPATIENCE, IS INDUCED TO BECOME A PATIENT
+
+
+The sky slides into blue, the bluffs into bloom; the rapid Mississippi
+expands; runs sparkling and gurgling, all over in eddies; one magnified
+wake of a seventy-four. The sun comes out, a golden huzzar, from his
+tent, flashing his helm on the world. All things, warmed in the
+landscape, leap. Speeds the dædal boat as a dream.
+
+But, withdrawn in a corner, wrapped about in a shawl, sits an
+unparticipating man, visited, but not warmed, by the sun--a plant whose
+hour seems over, while buds are blowing and seeds are astir. On a stool
+at his left sits a stranger in a snuff-colored surtout, the collar
+thrown back; his hand waving in persuasive gesture, his eye beaming with
+hope. But not easily may hope be awakened in one long tranced into
+hopelessness by a chronic complaint.
+
+To some remark the sick man, by word or look, seemed to have just made
+an impatiently querulous answer, when, with a deprecatory air, the other
+resumed:
+
+"Nay, think not I seek to cry up my treatment by crying down that of
+others. And yet, when one is confident he has truth on his side, and
+that is not on the other, it is no very easy thing to be charitable; not
+that temper is the bar, but conscience; for charity would beget
+toleration, you know, which is a kind of implied permitting, and in
+effect a kind of countenancing; and that which is countenanced is so far
+furthered. But should untruth be furthered? Still, while for the world's
+good I refuse to further the cause of these mineral doctors, I would
+fain regard them, not as willful wrong-doers, but good Samaritans
+erring. And is this--I put it to you, sir--is this the view of an
+arrogant rival and pretender?"
+
+His physical power all dribbled and gone, the sick man replied not by
+voice or by gesture; but, with feeble dumb-show of his face, seemed to
+be saying "Pray leave me; who was ever cured by talk?"
+
+But the other, as if not unused to make allowances for such despondency,
+proceeded; and kindly, yet firmly:
+
+"You tell me, that by advice of an eminent physiologist in Louisville,
+you took tincture of iron. For what? To restore your lost energy. And
+how? Why, in healthy subjects iron is naturally found in the blood, and
+iron in the bar is strong; ergo, iron is the source of animal
+invigoration. But you being deficient in vigor, it follows that the
+cause is deficiency of iron. Iron, then, must be put into you; and so
+your tincture. Now as to the theory here, I am mute. But in modesty
+assuming its truth, and then, as a plain man viewing that theory in
+practice, I would respectfully question your eminent physiologist:
+'Sir,' I would say, 'though by natural processes, lifeless natures taken
+as nutriment become vitalized, yet is a lifeless nature, under any
+circumstances, capable of a living transmission, with all its qualities
+as a lifeless nature unchanged? If, sir, nothing can be incorporated
+with the living body but by assimilation, and if that implies the
+conversion of one thing to a different thing (as, in a lamp, oil is
+assimilated into flame), is it, in this view, likely, that by banqueting
+on fat, Calvin Edson will fatten? That is, will what is fat on the board
+prove fat on the bones? If it will, then, sir, what is iron in the vial
+will prove iron in the vein.' Seems that conclusion too confident?"
+
+But the sick man again turned his dumb-show look, as much as to say,
+"Pray leave me. Why, with painful words, hint the vanity of that which
+the pains of this body have too painfully proved?"
+
+But the other, as if unobservant of that querulous look, went on:
+
+"But this notion, that science can play farmer to the flesh, making
+there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other
+conceit--that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive
+cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain
+vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but
+lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir,
+that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you
+were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of
+every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring vapors
+generated by the burning of drugs? as if this concocted atmosphere of
+man were an antidote to the poison of God's natural air. Oh, who can
+wonder at that old reproach against science, that it is atheistical? And
+here is my prime reason for opposing these chemical practitioners, who
+have sought out so many inventions. For what do their inventions
+indicate, unless it be that kind and degree of pride in human skill,
+which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power
+above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical
+practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult
+incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat
+down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for
+them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked to anger
+with their inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A
+thousand pities that you should ever have been in the hands of these
+Egyptians."
+
+But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as much as to say, "Pray
+leave me; quacks, and indignation against quacks, both are vain."
+
+But, once more, the other went on: "How different we herb-doctors! who
+claim nothing, invent nothing; but staff in hand, in glades, and upon
+hillsides, go about in nature, humbly seeking her cures. True Indian
+doctors, though not learned in names, we are not unfamiliar with
+essences--successors of Solomon the Wise, who knew all vegetables, from
+the cedar of Lebanon, to the hyssop on the wall. Yes, Solomon was the
+first of herb-doctors. Nor were the virtues of herbs unhonored by yet
+older ages. Is it not writ, that on a moonlight night,
+
+    "Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
+    That did renew old Æson?"
+
+Ah, would you but have confidence, you should be the new Æson, and
+I your Medea. A few vials of my Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would, I am
+certain, give you some strength."
+
+Upon this, indignation and abhorrence seemed to work by their excess the
+effect promised of the balsam. Roused from that long apathy of
+impotence, the cadaverous man started, and, in a voice that was as the
+sound of obstructed air gurgling through a maze of broken honey-combs,
+cried: "Begone! You are all alike. The name of doctor, the dream of
+helper, condemns you. For years I have been but a gallipot for you
+experimentizers to rinse your experiments into, and now, in this livid
+skin, partake of the nature of my contents. Begone! I hate ye."
+
+"I were inhuman, could I take affront at a want of confidence, born of
+too bitter an experience of betrayers. Yet, permit one who is not
+without feeling----"
+
+"Begone! Just in that voice talked to me, not six months ago, the German
+doctor at the water cure, from which I now return, six months and sixty
+pangs nigher my grave."
+
+"The water-cure? Oh, fatal delusion of the well-meaning Preisnitz!--Sir,
+trust me----"
+
+"Begone!"
+
+"Nay, an invalid should not always have his own way. Ah, sir, reflect
+how untimely this distrust in one like you. How weak you are; and
+weakness, is it not the time for confidence? Yes, when through weakness
+everything bids despair, then is the time to get strength by
+confidence."
+
+Relenting in his air, the sick man cast upon him a long glance of
+beseeching, as if saying, "With confidence must come hope; and how can
+hope be?"
+
+The herb-doctor took a sealed paper box from his surtout pocket, and
+holding it towards him, said solemnly, "Turn not away. This may be the
+last time of health's asking. Work upon yourself; invoke confidence,
+though from ashes; rouse it; for your life, rouse it, and invoke it, I
+say."
+
+The other trembled, was silent; and then, a little commanding himself,
+asked the ingredients of the medicine.
+
+"Herbs."
+
+"What herbs? And the nature of them? And the reason for giving them?"
+
+"It cannot be made known."
+
+"Then I will none of you."
+
+Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before him, the
+herb-doctor was mute a moment, then said:--"I give up."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You are sick, and a philosopher."
+
+"No, no;--not the last."
+
+"But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for giving, is the mark
+of a philosopher; just as the consequence is the penalty of a fool. A
+sick philosopher is incurable?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he has no confidence."
+
+"How does that make him incurable?"
+
+"Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a
+blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity,
+would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon
+the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other."
+
+Again, the sick man appeared not unmoved. He seemed to be thinking what
+in candid truth could be said to all this. At length, "You talk of
+confidence. How comes it that when brought low himself, the herb-doctor,
+who was most confident to prescribe in other cases, proves least
+confident to prescribe in his own; having small confidence in himself
+for himself?"
+
+"But he has confidence in the brother he calls in. And that he does so,
+is no reproach to him, since he knows that when the body is prostrated,
+the mind is not erect. Yes, in this hour the herb-doctor does distrust
+himself, but not his art."
+
+The sick man's knowledge did not warrant him to gainsay this. But he
+seemed not grieved at it; glad to be confuted in a way tending towards
+his wish.
+
+"Then you give me hope?" his sunken eye turned up.
+
+"Hope is proportioned to confidence. How much confidence you give me, so
+much hope do I give you. For this," lifting the box, "if all depended
+upon this, I should rest. It is nature's own."
+
+"Nature!"
+
+"Why do you start?"
+
+"I know not," with a sort of shudder, "but I have heard of a book
+entitled 'Nature in Disease.'"
+
+"A title I cannot approve; it is suspiciously scientific. 'Nature in
+Disease?' As if nature, divine nature, were aught but health; as if
+through nature disease is decreed! But did I not before hint of the
+tendency of science, that forbidden tree? Sir, if despondency is yours
+from recalling that title, dismiss it. Trust me, nature is health; for
+health is good, and nature cannot work ill. As little can she work
+error. Get nature, and you get well. Now, I repeat, this medicine is
+nature's own."
+
+Again the sick man could not, according to his light, conscientiously
+disprove what was said. Neither, as before, did he seem over-anxious to
+do so; the less, as in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly
+could he offer so to do without something like the appearance of a kind
+of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he ungrateful, that since a
+spirit opposite to that pervaded all the herb-doctor's hopeful words,
+therefore, for hopefulness, he (the sick man) had not alone medical
+warrant, but also doctrinal.
+
+"Then you do really think," hectically, "that if I take this medicine,"
+mechanically reaching out for it, "I shall regain my health?"
+
+"I will not encourage false hopes," relinquishing to him the box, "I
+will be frank with you. Though frankness is not always the weakness of
+the mineral practitioner, yet the herb doctor must be frank, or nothing.
+Now then, sir, in your case, a radical cure--such a cure, understand, as
+should make you robust--such a cure, sir, I do not and cannot promise."
+
+"Oh, you need not! only restore me the power of being something else to
+others than a burdensome care, and to myself a droning grief. Only cure
+me of this misery of weakness; only make me so that I can walk about in
+the sun and not draw the flies to me, as lured by the coming of decay.
+Only do that--but that."
+
+"You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have you suffered. That
+little you ask, I think, can be granted. But remember, not in a day, nor
+a week, nor perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly
+when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if, according to
+the directions in your box there, you take my medicine steadily, without
+assigning an especial day, near or remote, to discontinue it, then may
+you calmly look for some eventual result of good. But again I say, you
+must have confidence."
+
+Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and hourly should pray
+for its increase. When suddenly relapsing into one of those strange
+caprices peculiar to some invalids, he added: "But to one like me, it is
+so hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have failed me, and
+as often have I vowed never, no, never, to trust them again. Oh," feebly
+wringing his hands, "you do not know, you do not know."
+
+"I know this, that never did a right confidence, come to naught. But
+time is short; you hold your cure, to retain or reject."
+
+"I retain," with a clinch, "and now how much?"
+
+"As much as you can evoke from your heart and heaven."
+
+"How?--the price of this medicine?"
+
+"I thought it was confidence you meant; how much confidence you should
+have. The medicine,--that is half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six."
+
+The money was paid.
+
+"Now, sir," said the herb-doctor, "my business calls me away, and it may
+so be that I shall never see you again; if then----"
+
+He paused, for the sick man's countenance fell blank.
+
+"Forgive me," cried the other, "forgive that imprudent phrase 'never see
+you again.' Though I solely intended it with reference to myself, yet I
+had forgotten what your sensitiveness might be. I repeat, then, that it
+may be that we shall not soon have a second interview, so that
+hereafter, should another of my boxes be needed, you may not be able to
+replace it except by purchase at the shops; and, in so doing, you may
+run more or less risk of taking some not salutary mixture. For such is
+the popularity of the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator--thriving not by the
+credulity of the simple, but the trust of the wise--that certain
+contrivers have not been idle, though I would not, indeed, hastily
+affirm of them that they are aware of the sad consequences to the
+public. Homicides and murderers, some call those contrivers; but I do
+not; for murder (if such a crime be possible) comes from the heart, and
+these men's motives come from the purse. Were they not in poverty, I
+think they would hardly do what they do. Still, the public interests
+forbid that I should let their needy device for a living succeed. In
+short, I have adopted precautions. Take the wrapper from any of my vials
+and hold it to the light, you will see water-marked in capitals the word
+'_confidence_,' which is the countersign of the medicine, as I wish it
+was of the world. The wrapper bears that mark or else the medicine is
+counterfeit. But if still any lurking doubt should remain, pray enclose
+the wrapper to this address," handing a card, "and by return mail I will
+answer."
+
+At first the sick man listened, with the air of vivid interest, but
+gradually, while the other was still talking, another strange caprice
+came over him, and he presented the aspect of the most calamitous
+dejection.
+
+"How now?" said the herb-doctor.
+
+"You told me to have confidence, said that confidence was indispensable,
+and here you preach to me distrust. Ah, truth will out!"
+
+"I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant
+confidence in the genuine medicine, and the genuine _me_."
+
+"But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be yours, it seems I
+cannot have unquestioning confidence."
+
+"Prove all the vials; trust those which are true."
+
+"But to doubt, to suspect, to prove--to have all this wearing work to
+be doing continually--how opposed to confidence. It is evil!"
+
+"From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to confidence. How has it
+proved in our interview? But your voice is husky; I have let you talk
+too much. You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay--when I hear
+that health is yours, I will not, like some I know, vainly make boasts;
+but, giving glory where all glory is due, say, with the devout
+herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil, when, in the unseen but efficacious
+presence of Venus, he with simples healed the wound of Æneas:--
+
+    'This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,
+    Nor art's effect, but done by power divine.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+TOWARDS THE END OF WHICH THE HERB-DOCTOR PROVES HIMSELF A FORGIVER OF
+INJURIES.
+
+
+In a kind of ante-cabin, a number of respectable looking people, male
+and female, way-passengers, recently come on board, are listlessly
+sitting in a mutually shy sort of silence.
+
+Holding up a small, square bottle, ovally labeled with the engraving of
+a countenance full of soft pity as that of the Romish-painted Madonna,
+the herb-doctor passes slowly among them, benignly urbane, turning this
+way and that, saying:--
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I hold in my hand here the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader, thrice-blessed discovery of that disinterested friend of
+humanity whose portrait you see. Pure vegetable extract. Warranted to
+remove the acutest pain within less than ten minutes. Five hundred
+dollars to be forfeited on failure. Especially efficacious in heart
+disease and tic-douloureux. Observe the expression of this pledged
+friend of humanity.--Price only fifty cents."
+
+In vain. After the first idle stare, his auditors--in pretty good
+health, it seemed--instead of encouraging his politeness, appeared, if
+anything, impatient of it; and, perhaps, only diffidence, or some small
+regard for his feelings, prevented them from telling him so. But,
+insensible to their coldness, or charitably overlooking it, he more
+wooingly than ever resumed: "May I venture upon a small supposition?
+Have I your kind leave, ladies and gentlemen?"
+
+To which modest appeal, no one had the kindness to answer a syllable.
+
+"Well," said he, resignedly, "silence is at least not denial, and may be
+consent. My supposition is this: possibly some lady, here present, has a
+dear friend at home, a bed-ridden sufferer from spinal complaint. If so,
+what gift more appropriate to that sufferer than this tasteful little
+bottle of Pain Dissuader?"
+
+Again he glanced about him, but met much the same reception as before.
+Those faces, alien alike to sympathy or surprise, seemed patiently to
+say, "We are travelers; and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly
+put up with, many antic fools, and more antic quacks."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," (deferentially fixing his eyes upon their now
+self-complacent faces) "ladies and gentlemen, might I, by your kind
+leave, venture upon one other small supposition? It is this: that there
+is scarce a sufferer, this noonday, writhing on his bed, but in his hour
+he sat satisfactorily healthy and happy; that the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader is the one only balm for that to which each living
+creature--who knows?--may be a draughted victim, present or prospective.
+In short:--Oh, Happiness on my right hand, and oh, Security on my left,
+can ye wisely adore a Providence, and not think it wisdom to
+provide?--Provide!" (Uplifting the bottle.)
+
+What immediate effect, if any, this appeal might have had, is uncertain.
+For just then the boat touched at a houseless landing, scooped, as by a
+land-slide, out of sombre forests; back through which led a road, the
+sole one, which, from its narrowness, and its being walled up with story
+on story of dusk, matted foliage, presented the vista of some cavernous
+old gorge in a city, like haunted Cock Lane in London. Issuing from that
+road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the
+door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that
+shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his
+beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress
+dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a
+clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak;
+with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably
+his child, but evidently of alien maternity, perhaps Creole, or even
+Camanche. Her eye would have been large for a woman, and was inky as the
+pools of falls among mountain-pines. An Indian blanket, orange-hued, and
+fringed with lead tassel-work, appeared that morning to have shielded
+the child from heavy showers. Her limbs were tremulous; she seemed a
+little Cassandra, in nervousness.
+
+No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful
+air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the
+child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my
+little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance
+in." Then with a half caper sang--
+
+    "'Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
+      The cow jumped over the moon.'
+
+Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
+
+Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor
+appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything,
+to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile
+hypochondriacally scornful.
+
+Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the stranger in a manly,
+business-like way--a transition which, though it might seem a little
+abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his
+recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic
+condescension of a kindly heart.
+
+"Excuse me," said he, "but, if I err not, I was speaking to you the
+other day;--on a Kentucky boat, wasn't it?"
+
+"Never to me," was the reply; the voice deep and lonesome enough to have
+come from the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft.
+
+"Ah!--But am I again mistaken, (his eye falling on the swamp-oak stick,)
+or don't you go a little lame, sir?"
+
+"Never was lame in my life."
+
+"Indeed? I fancied I had perceived not a limp, but a hitch, a slight
+hitch;--some experience in these things--divined some hidden cause of
+the hitch--buried bullet, may be--some dragoons in the Mexican war
+discharged with such, you know.--Hard fate!" he sighed, "little pity for
+it, for who sees it?--have you dropped anything?"
+
+Why, there is no telling, but the stranger was bowed over, and might
+have seemed bowing for the purpose of picking up something, were it not
+that, as arrested in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so
+remained; slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding to the
+gale, or Adam to the thunder.
+
+The little child pulled him. With a kind of a surge he righted himself,
+for an instant looked toward the herb-doctor; but, either from emotion
+or aversion, or both together, withdrew his eyes, saying nothing.
+Presently, still stooping, he seated himself, drawing his child between
+his knees, his massy hands tremulous, and still averting his face, while
+up into the compassionate one of the herb-doctor the child turned a
+fixed, melancholy glance of repugnance.
+
+The herb-doctor stood observant a moment, then said:
+
+"Surely you have pain, strong pain, somewhere; in strong frames pain is
+strongest. Try, now, my specific," (holding it up). "Do but look at the
+expression of this friend of humanity. Trust me, certain cure for any
+pain in the world. Won't you look?"
+
+"No," choked the other.
+
+"Very good. Merry time to you, little May Queen."
+
+And so, as if he would intrude his cure upon no one, moved pleasantly
+off, again crying his wares, nor now at last without result. A
+new-comer, not from the shore, but another part of the boat, a sickly
+young man, after some questions, purchased a bottle. Upon this, others
+of the company began a little to wake up as it were; the scales of
+indifference or prejudice fell from their eyes; now, at last, they
+seemed to have an inkling that here was something not undesirable which
+might be had for the buying.
+
+But while, ten times more briskly bland than ever, the herb-doctor was
+driving his benevolent trade, accompanying each sale with added praises
+of the thing traded, all at once the dusk giant, seated at some
+distance, unexpectedly raised his voice with--
+
+"What was that you last said?"
+
+The question was put distinctly, yet resonantly, as when a great
+clock-bell--stunning admonisher--strikes one; and the stroke, though
+single, comes bedded in the belfry clamor.
+
+All proceedings were suspended. Hands held forth for the specific were
+withdrawn, while every eye turned towards the direction whence the
+question came. But, no way abashed, the herb-doctor, elevating his voice
+with even more than wonted self-possession, replied--
+
+"I was saying what, since you wish it, I cheerfully repeat, that the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader, which I here hold in my hand, will either cure
+or ease any pain you please, within ten minutes after its application."
+
+"Does it produce insensibility?"
+
+"By no means. Not the least of its merits is, that it is not an opiate.
+It kills pain without killing feeling."
+
+"You lie! Some pains cannot be eased but by producing insensibility, and
+cannot be cured but by producing death."
+
+Beyond this the dusk giant said nothing; neither, for impairing the
+other's market, did there appear much need to. After eying the rude
+speaker a moment with an expression of mingled admiration and
+consternation, the company silently exchanged glances of mutual sympathy
+under unwelcome conviction. Those who had purchased looked sheepish or
+ashamed; and a cynical-looking little man, with a thin flaggy beard, and
+a countenance ever wearing the rudiments of a grin, seated alone in a
+corner commanding a good view of the scene, held a rusty hat before his
+face.
+
+But, again, the herb-doctor, without noticing the retort, overbearing
+though it was, began his panegyrics anew, and in a tone more assured
+than before, going so far now as to say that his specific was sometimes
+almost as effective in cases of mental suffering as in cases of
+physical; or rather, to be more precise, in cases when, through
+sympathy, the two sorts of pain coöperated into a climax of both--in
+such cases, he said, the specific had done very well. He cited an
+example: Only three bottles, faithfully taken, cured a Louisiana widow
+(for three weeks sleepless in a darkened chamber) of neuralgic sorrow
+for the loss of husband and child, swept off in one night by the last
+epidemic. For the truth of this, a printed voucher was produced, duly
+signed.
+
+While he was reading it aloud, a sudden side-blow all but felled him.
+
+It was the giant, who, with a countenance lividly epileptic with
+hypochondriac mania, exclaimed--
+
+"Profane fiddler on heart-strings! Snake!"
+
+More he would have added, but, convulsed, could not; so, without another
+word, taking up the child, who had followed him, went with a rocking
+pace out of the cabin.
+
+"Regardless of decency, and lost to humanity!" exclaimed the
+herb-doctor, with much ado recovering himself. Then, after a pause,
+during which he examined his bruise, not omitting to apply externally a
+little of his specific, and with some success, as it would seem, plained
+to himself:
+
+"No, no, I won't seek redress; innocence is my redress. But," turning
+upon them all, "if that man's wrathful blow provokes me to no wrath,
+should his evil distrust arouse you to distrust? I do devoutly hope,"
+proudly raising voice and arm, "for the honor of humanity--hope that,
+despite this coward assault, the Samaritan Pain Dissuader stands
+unshaken in the confidence of all who hear me!"
+
+But, injured as he was, and patient under it, too, somehow his case
+excited as little compassion as his oratory now did enthusiasm. Still,
+pathetic to the last, he continued his appeals, notwithstanding the
+frigid regard of the company, till, suddenly interrupting himself, as
+if in reply to a quick summons from without, he said hurriedly, "I come,
+I come," and so, with every token of precipitate dispatch, out of the
+cabin the herb-doctor went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+INQUEST INTO THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE HERB-DOCTOR.
+
+
+"Sha'n't see that fellow again in a hurry," remarked an auburn-haired
+gentleman, to his neighbor with a hook-nose. "Never knew an operator so
+completely unmasked."
+
+"But do you think it the fair thing to unmask an operator that way?"
+
+"Fair? It is right."
+
+"Supposing that at high 'change on the Paris Bourse, Asmodeus should
+lounge in, distributing hand-bills, revealing the true thoughts and
+designs of all the operators present--would that be the fair thing in
+Asmodeus? Or, as Hamlet says, were it 'to consider the thing too
+curiously?'"
+
+"We won't go into that. But since you admit the fellow to be a
+knave----"
+
+"I don't admit it. Or, if I did, I take it back. Shouldn't wonder if,
+after all, he is no knave at all, or, but little of one. What can you
+prove against him?"
+
+"I can prove that he makes dupes."
+
+"Many held in honor do the same; and many, not wholly knaves, do it
+too."
+
+"How about that last?"
+
+"He is not wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among whose dupes is
+himself. Did you not see our quack friend apply to himself his own
+quackery? A fanatic quack; essentially a fool, though effectively a
+knave."
+
+Bending over, and looking down between his knees on the floor, the
+auburn-haired gentleman meditatively scribbled there awhile with his
+cane, then, glancing up, said:
+
+"I can't conceive how you, in anyway, can hold him a fool. How he
+talked--so glib, so pat, so well."
+
+"A smart fool always talks well; takes a smart fool to be tonguey."
+
+In much the same strain the discussion continued--the hook-nosed
+gentleman talking at large and excellently, with a view of demonstrating
+that a smart fool always talks just so. Ere long he talked to such
+purpose as almost to convince.
+
+Presently, back came the person of whom the auburn-haired gentleman had
+predicted that he would not return. Conspicuous in the door-way he
+stood, saying, in a clear voice, "Is the agent of the Seminole Widow and
+Orphan Asylum within here?"
+
+No one replied.
+
+"Is there within here any agent or any member of any charitable
+institution whatever?"
+
+No one seemed competent to answer, or, no one thought it worth while
+to.
+
+"If there be within here any such person, I have in my hand two dollars
+for him."
+
+Some interest was manifested.
+
+"I was called away so hurriedly, I forgot this part of my duty. With the
+proprietor of the Samaritan Pain Dissuader it is a rule, to devote, on
+the spot, to some benevolent purpose, the half of the proceeds of sales.
+Eight bottles were disposed of among this company. Hence, four
+half-dollars remain to charity. Who, as steward, takes the money?"
+
+One or two pair of feet moved upon the floor, as with a sort of itching;
+but nobody rose.
+
+"Does diffidence prevail over duty? If, I say, there be any gentleman,
+or any lady, either, here present, who is in any connection with any
+charitable institution whatever, let him or her come forward. He or she
+happening to have at hand no certificate of such connection, makes no
+difference. Not of a suspicious temper, thank God, I shall have
+confidence in whoever offers to take the money."
+
+A demure-looking woman, in a dress rather tawdry and rumpled, here drew
+her veil well down and rose; but, marking every eye upon her, thought it
+advisable, upon the whole, to sit down again.
+
+"Is it to be believed that, in this Christian company, there is no one
+charitable person? I mean, no one connected with any charity? Well,
+then, is there no object of charity here?"
+
+Upon this, an unhappy-looking woman, in a sort of mourning, neat, but
+sadly worn, hid her face behind a meagre bundle, and was heard to sob.
+Meantime, as not seeing or hearing her, the herb-doctor again spoke, and
+this time not unpathetically:
+
+"Are there none here who feel in need of help, and who, in accepting
+such help, would feel that they, in their time, have given or done more
+than may ever be given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none such
+here?"
+
+The sobs of the woman were more audible, though she strove to repress
+them. While nearly every one's attention was bent upon her, a man of the
+appearance of a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face,
+concealing the side of the nose, and who, for coolness' sake, had been
+sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat thrown across one
+shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping behind--this man shufflingly rose,
+and, with a pace that seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of
+convicts, went up for a duly-qualified claimant.
+
+"Poor wounded huzzar!" sighed the herb-doctor, and dropping the money
+into the man's clam-shell of a hand turned and departed.
+
+The recipient of the alms was about moving after, when the auburn-haired
+gentleman staid him: "Don't be frightened, you; but I want to see those
+coins. Yes, yes; good silver, good silver. There, take them again, and
+while you are about it, go bandage the rest of yourself behind
+something. D'ye hear? Consider yourself, wholly, the scar of a nose, and
+be off with yourself."
+
+Being of a forgiving nature, or else from emotion not daring to trust
+his voice, the man silently, but not without some precipitancy,
+withdrew.
+
+"Strange," said the auburn-haired gentleman, returning to his friend,
+"the money was good money."
+
+"Aye, and where your fine knavery now? Knavery to devote the half of
+one's receipts to charity? He's a fool I say again."
+
+"Others might call him an original genius."
+
+"Yes, being original in his folly. Genius? His genius is a cracked pate,
+and, as this age goes, not much originality about that."
+
+"May he not be knave, fool, and genius altogether?"
+
+"I beg pardon," here said a third person with a gossiping expression who
+had been listening, "but you are somewhat puzzled by this man, and well
+you may be."
+
+"Do you know anything about him?" asked the hooked-nosed gentleman.
+
+"No, but I suspect him for something."
+
+"Suspicion. We want knowledge."
+
+"Well, suspect first and know next. True knowledge comes but by
+suspicion or revelation. That's my maxim."
+
+"And yet," said the auburn-haired gentleman, "since a wise man will keep
+even some certainties to himself, much more some suspicions, at least he
+will at all events so do till they ripen into knowledge."
+
+"Do you hear that about the wise man?" said the hook-nosed gentleman,
+turning upon the new comer. "Now what is it you suspect of this fellow?"
+
+"I shrewdly suspect him," was the eager response, "for one of those
+Jesuit emissaries prowling all over our country. The better to
+accomplish their secret designs, they assume, at times, I am told, the
+most singular masques; sometimes, in appearance, the absurdest."
+
+This, though indeed for some reason causing a droll smile upon the face
+of the hook-nosed gentleman, added a third angle to the discussion,
+which now became a sort of triangular duel, and ended, at last, with but
+a triangular result.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
+
+
+"Mexico? Molino del Rey? Resaca de la Palma?"
+
+"Resaca de la _Tomba_!"
+
+Leaving his reputation to take care of itself, since, as is not seldom
+the case, he knew nothing of its being in debate, the herb-doctor,
+wandering towards the forward part of the boat, had there espied a
+singular character in a grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once
+grim and wizened, interwoven paralyzed legs, stiff as icicles, suspended
+between rude crutches, while the whole rigid body, like a ship's long
+barometer on gimbals, swung to and fro, mechanically faithful to the
+motion of the boat. Looking downward while he swung, the cripple seemed
+in a brown study.
+
+As moved by the sight, and conjecturing that here was some battered hero
+from the Mexican battle-fields, the herb-doctor had sympathetically
+accosted him as above, and received the above rather dubious reply. As,
+with a half moody, half surly sort of air that reply was given, the
+cripple, by a voluntary jerk, nervously increased his swing (his custom
+when seized by emotion), so that one would have thought some squall had
+suddenly rolled the boat and with it the barometer.
+
+"Tombs? my friend," exclaimed the herb-doctor in mild surprise. "You
+have not descended to the dead, have you? I had imagined you a scarred
+campaigner, one of the noble children of war, for your dear country a
+glorious sufferer. But you are Lazarus, it seems."
+
+"Yes, he who had sores."
+
+"Ah, the _other_ Lazarus. But I never knew that either of them was in
+the army," glancing at the dilapidated regimentals.
+
+"That will do now. Jokes enough."
+
+"Friend," said the other reproachfully, "you think amiss. On principle,
+I greet unfortunates with some pleasant remark, the better to call off
+their thoughts from their troubles. The physician who is at once wise
+and humane seldom unreservedly sympathizes with his patient. But come, I
+am a herb-doctor, and also a natural bone-setter. I may be sanguine, but
+I think I can do something for you. You look up now. Give me your story.
+Ere I undertake a cure, I require a full account of the case."
+
+"You can't help me," returned the cripple gruffly. "Go away."
+
+"You seem sadly destitute of----"
+
+"No I ain't destitute; to-day, at least, I can pay my way."
+
+"The Natural Bone-setter is happy, indeed, to hear that. But you were
+premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of
+confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well,
+suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You,
+my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then,
+for my private good, how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus,
+you have arrived at his heroic sang-froid in misfortune."
+
+At these words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the hard ironic eye of
+one toughened and defiant in misery, and, in the end, grinned upon him
+with his unshaven face like an ogre.
+
+"Come, come, be sociable--be human, my friend. Don't make that face; it
+distresses me."
+
+"I suppose," with a sneer, "you are the man I've long heard of--The
+Happy Man."
+
+"Happy? my friend. Yes, at least I ought to be. My conscience is
+peaceful. I have confidence in everybody. I have confidence that, in my
+humble profession, I do some little good to the world. Yes, I think
+that, without presumption, I may venture to assent to the proposition
+that I am the Happy Man--the Happy Bone-setter."
+
+"Then, you shall hear my story. Many a month I have longed to get hold
+of the Happy Man, drill him, drop the powder, and leave him to explode
+at his leisure.".
+
+"What a demoniac unfortunate" exclaimed the herb-doctor retreating.
+"Regular infernal machine!"
+
+"Look ye," cried the other, stumping after him, and with his horny hand
+catching him by a horn button, "my name is Thomas Fry. Until my----"
+
+--"Any relation of Mrs. Fry?" interrupted the other. "I still correspond
+with that excellent lady on the subject of prisons. Tell me, are you
+anyway connected with _my_ Mrs. Fry?"
+
+"Blister Mrs. Fry! What do them sentimental souls know of prisons or any
+other black fact? I'll tell ye a story of prisons. Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor shrank, and with reason, the laugh being strangely
+startling.
+
+"Positively, my friend," said he, "you must stop that; I can't stand
+that; no more of that. I hope I have the milk of kindness, but your
+thunder will soon turn it."
+
+"Hold, I haven't come to the milk-turning part yet. My name is Thomas
+Fry. Until my twenty-third year I went by the nickname of Happy
+Tom--happy--ha, ha! They called me Happy Tom, d'ye see? because I was so
+good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am now--ha, ha!"
+
+Upon this the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run, but once more the
+hyæna clawed him. Presently, sobering down, he continued:
+
+"Well, I was born in New York, and there I lived a steady, hard-working
+man, a cooper by trade. One evening I went to a political meeting in the
+Park--for you must know, I was in those days a great patriot. As bad
+luck would have it, there was trouble near, between a gentleman who had
+been drinking wine, and a pavior who was sober. The pavior chewed
+tobacco, and the gentleman said it was beastly in him, and pushed him,
+wanting to have his place. The pavior chewed on and pushed back. Well,
+the gentleman carried a sword-cane, and presently the pavior was
+down--skewered."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Why you see the pavior undertook something above his strength."
+
+"The other must have been a Samson then. 'Strong as a pavior,' is a
+proverb."
+
+"So it is, and the gentleman was in body a rather weakly man, but, for
+all that, I say again, the pavior undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"What are you talking about? He tried to maintain his rights, didn't
+he?"
+
+"Yes; but, for all that, I say again, he undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"I don't understand you. But go on."
+
+"Along with the gentleman, I, with other witnesses, was taken to the
+Tombs. There was an examination, and, to appear at the trial, the
+gentleman and witnesses all gave bail--I mean all but me."
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+"Couldn't get it."
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper like you; what was the reason you couldn't
+get bail?"
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper hadn't no friends. Well, souse I went into
+a wet cell, like a canal-boat splashing into the lock; locked up in
+pickle, d'ye see? against the time of the trial."
+
+"But what had you done?"
+
+"Why, I hadn't got any friends, I tell ye. A worse crime than murder, as
+ye'll see afore long."
+
+"Murder? Did the wounded man die?"
+
+"Died the third night."
+
+"Then the gentleman's bail didn't help him. Imprisoned now, wasn't he?"
+
+"Had too many friends. No, it was _I_ that was imprisoned.--But I was
+going on: They let me walk about the corridor by day; but at night I
+must into lock. There the wet and the damp struck into my bones. They
+doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was boosted up and said
+my say."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it sticking in."
+
+"And that hung the gentleman."
+
+"Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park,
+and presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal."
+
+"Acquittal?"
+
+"Didn't I say he had friends?"
+
+There was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor's saying: "Well,
+there is a bright side to everything. If this speak prosaically for
+justice, it speaks romantically for friendship! But go on, my fine
+fellow."
+
+"My say being said, they told me I might go. I said I could not without
+help. So the constables helped me, asking _where_ would I go? I told
+them back to the 'Tombs.' I knew no other place. 'But where are your
+friends?' said they. 'I have none.' So they put me into a hand-barrow
+with an awning to it, and wheeled me down to the dock and on board a
+boat, and away to Blackwell's Island to the Corporation Hospital. There
+I got worse--got pretty much as you see me now. Couldn't cure me. After
+three years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of
+groaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver
+dollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother
+who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go
+to him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It
+was on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump fence, the old
+gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the
+grave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green
+twigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the
+mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soils for
+grave-yards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and
+rest myself on the bier and think about my brother in heaven, but the
+bier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs
+out of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make
+too long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other
+bit of wreck."
+
+The herb-doctor was silent for a time, buried in thought. At last,
+raising his head, he said: "I have considered your whole story, my
+friend, and strove to consider it in the light of a commentary on what I
+believe to be the system of things; but it so jars with all, is so
+incompatible with all, that you must pardon me, if I honestly tell you,
+I cannot believe it."
+
+"That don't surprise me."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Hardly anybody believes my story, and so to most I tell a different
+one."
+
+"How, again?"
+
+"Wait here a bit and I'll show ye."
+
+With that, taking off his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered
+regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers
+in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air:
+"Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady,
+something for General Scott's soldier, crippled in both pins at glorious
+Contreras."
+
+Now, it so chanced that, unbeknown to the cripple, a prim-looking
+stranger had overheard part of his story. Beholding him, then, on his
+present begging adventure, this person, turning to the herb-doctor,
+indignantly said: "Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder rascal should lie
+so?"
+
+"Charity never faileth, my good sir," was the reply. "The vice of this
+unfortunate is pardonable. Consider, he lies not out of wantonness."
+
+"Not out of wantonness. I never heard more wanton lies. In one breath to
+tell you what would appear to be his true story, and, in the next, away
+and falsify it."
+
+"For all that, I repeat he lies not out of wantonness. A ripe
+philosopher, turned out of the great Sorbonne of hard times, he thinks
+that woes, when told to strangers for money, are best sugared. Though
+the inglorious lock-jaw of his knee-pans in a wet dungeon is a far more
+pitiable ill than to have been crippled at glorious Contreras, yet he is
+of opinion that this lighter and false ill shall attract, while the
+heavier and real one might repel."
+
+"Nonsense; he belongs to the Devil's regiment; and I have a great mind
+to expose him."
+
+"Shame upon you. Dare to expose that poor unfortunate, and by
+heaven--don't you do it, sir."
+
+Noting something in his manner, the other thought it more prudent to
+retire than retort. By-and-by, the cripple came back, and with glee,
+having reaped a pretty good harvest.
+
+"There," he laughed, "you know now what sort of soldier I am."
+
+"Aye, one that fights not the stupid Mexican, but a foe worthy your
+tactics--Fortune!"
+
+"Hi, hi!" clamored the cripple, like a fellow in the pit of a sixpenny
+theatre, then said, "don't know much what you meant, but it went off
+well."
+
+This over, his countenance capriciously put on a morose ogreness. To
+kindly questions he gave no kindly answers. Unhandsome notions were
+thrown out about "free Ameriky," as he sarcastically called his country.
+These seemed to disturb and pain the herb-doctor, who, after an interval
+of thoughtfulness, gravely addressed him in these words:
+
+"You, my Worthy friend, to my concern, have reflected upon the
+government under which you live and suffer. Where is your patriotism?
+Where your gratitude? True, the charitable may find something in your
+case, as you put it, partly to account for such reflections as coming
+from you. Still, be the facts how they may, your reflections are none
+the less unwarrantable. Grant, for the moment, that your experiences are
+as you give them; in which case I would admit that government might be
+thought to have more or less to do with what seems undesirable in them.
+But it is never to be forgotten that human government, being subordinate
+to the divine, must needs, therefore, in its degree, partake of the
+characteristics of the divine. That is, while in general efficacious to
+happiness, the world's law may yet, in some cases, have, to the eye of
+reason, an unequal operation, just as, in the same imperfect view, some
+inequalities may appear in the operations of heaven's law; nevertheless,
+to one who has a right confidence, final benignity is, in every
+instance, as sure with the one law as the other. I expound the point at
+some length, because these are the considerations, my poor fellow,
+which, weighed as they merit, will enable you to sustain with unimpaired
+trust the apparent calamities which are yours."
+
+"What do you talk your hog-latin to me for?" cried the cripple, who,
+throughout the address, betrayed the most illiterate obduracy; and, with
+an incensed look, anew he swung himself.
+
+Glancing another way till the spasm passed, the other continued:
+
+"Charity marvels not that you should be somewhat hard of conviction, my
+friend, since you, doubtless, believe yourself hardly dealt by; but
+forget not that those who are loved are chastened."
+
+"Mustn't chasten them too much, though, and too long, because their skin
+and heart get hard, and feel neither pain nor tickle."
+
+"To mere reason, your case looks something piteous, I grant. But never
+despond; many things--the choicest--yet remain. You breathe this
+bounteous air, are warmed by this gracious sun, and, though poor and
+friendless, indeed, nor so agile as in your youth, yet, how sweet to
+roam, day by day, through the groves, plucking the bright mosses and
+flowers, till forlornness itself becomes a hilarity, and, in your
+innocent independence, you skip for joy."
+
+"Fine skipping with these 'ere horse-posts--ha ha!"
+
+"Pardon; I forgot the crutches. My mind, figuring you after receiving
+the benefit of my art, overlooked you as you stand before me."
+
+"Your art? You call yourself a bone-setter--a natural bone-setter, do
+ye? Go, bone-set the crooked world, and then come bone-set crooked me."
+
+"Truly, my honest friend, I thank you for again recalling me to my
+original object. Let me examine you," bending down; "ah, I see, I see;
+much such a case as the negro's. Did you see him? Oh no, you came aboard
+since. Well, his case was a little something like yours. I prescribed
+for him, and I shouldn't wonder at all if, in a very short time, he were
+able to walk almost as well as myself. Now, have you no confidence in my
+art?"
+
+"Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor averted himself; but, the wild laugh dying away,
+resumed:
+
+"I will not force confidence on you. Still, I would fain do the friendly
+thing by you. Here, take this box; just rub that liniment on the joints
+night and morning. Take it. Nothing to pay. God bless you. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay," pausing in his swing, not untouched by so unexpected an act;
+"stay--thank'ee--but will this really do me good? Honor bright, now;
+will it? Don't deceive a poor fellow," with changed mien and glistening
+eye.
+
+"Try it. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay! _Sure_ it will do me good?"
+
+"Possibly, possibly; no harm in trying. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay; give me three more boxes, and here's the money."
+
+"My friend," returning towards him with a sadly pleased sort of air, "I
+rejoice in the birth of your confidence and hopefulness. Believe me
+that, like your crutches, confidence and hopefulness will long support a
+man when his own legs will not. Stick to confidence and hopefulness,
+then, since how mad for the cripple to throw his crutches away. You ask
+for three more boxes of my liniment. Luckily, I have just that number
+remaining. Here they are. I sell them at half-a-dollar apiece. But I
+shall take nothing from you. There; God bless you again; good-bye."
+
+"Stay," in a convulsed voice, and rocking himself, "stay, stay! You have
+made a better man of me. You have borne with me like a good Christian,
+and talked to me like one, and all that is enough without making me a
+present of these boxes. Here is the money. I won't take nay. There,
+there; and may Almighty goodness go with you."
+
+As the herb-doctor withdrew, the cripple gradually subsided from his
+hard rocking into a gentle oscillation. It expressed, perhaps, the
+soothed mood of his reverie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+REAPPEARANCE OF ONE WHO MAY BE REMEMBERED.
+
+
+The herb-doctor had not moved far away, when, in advance of him, this
+spectacle met his eye. A dried-up old man, with the stature of a boy of
+twelve, was tottering about like one out of his mind, in rumpled clothes
+of old moleskin, showing recent contact with bedding, his ferret eyes,
+blinking in the sunlight of the snowy boat, as imbecilely eager, and, at
+intervals, coughing, he peered hither and thither as if in alarmed
+search for his nurse. He presented the aspect of one who, bed-rid, has,
+through overruling excitement, like that of a fire, been stimulated to
+his feet.
+
+"You seek some one," said the herb-doctor, accosting him. "Can I assist
+you?"
+
+"Do, do; I am so old and miserable," coughed the old man. "Where is he?
+This long time I've been trying to get up and find him. But I haven't
+any friends, and couldn't get up till now. Where is he?"
+
+"Who do you mean?" drawing closer, to stay the further wanderings of one
+so weakly.
+
+"Why, why, why," now marking the other's dress, "why you, yes you--you,
+you--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--you are the man he spoke of. Who is he?"
+
+"Faith, that is just what I want to know."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" coughed the old man, bewildered, "ever since seeing him,
+my head spins round so. I ought to have a guard_ee_an. Is this a
+snuff-colored surtout of yours, or ain't it? Somehow, can't trust my
+senses any more, since trusting him--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you have trusted somebody? Glad to hear it. Glad to hear of any
+instance, of that sort. Reflects well upon all men. But you inquire
+whether this is a snuff-colored surtout. I answer it is; and will add
+that a herb-doctor wears it."
+
+Upon this the old man, in his broken way, replied that then he (the
+herb-doctor) was the person he sought--the person spoken of by the other
+person as yet unknown. He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted to know
+who this last person was, and where he was, and whether he could be
+trusted with money to treble it.
+
+"Aye, now, I begin to understand; ten to one you mean my worthy friend,
+who, in pure goodness of heart, makes people's fortunes for them--their
+everlasting fortunes, as the phrase goes--only charging his one small
+commission of confidence. Aye, aye; before intrusting funds with my
+friend, you want to know about him. Very proper--and, I am glad to
+assure you, you need have no hesitation; none, none, just none in the
+world; bona fide, none. Turned me in a trice a hundred dollars the other
+day into as many eagles."
+
+"Did he? did he? But where is he? Take me to him."
+
+"Pray, take my arm! The boat is large! We may have something of a hunt!
+Come on! Ah, is that he?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"O, no; I took yonder coat-skirts for his. But no, my honest friend
+would never turn tail that way. Ah!----"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Another mistake. Surprising resemblance. I took yonder clergyman for
+him. Come on!"
+
+Having searched that part of the boat without success, they went to
+another part, and, while exploring that, the boat sided up to a landing,
+when, as the two were passing by the open guard, the herb-doctor
+suddenly rushed towards the disembarking throng, crying out: "Mr.
+Truman, Mr. Truman! There he goes--that's he. Mr. Truman, Mr.
+Truman!--Confound that steam-pipe., Mr. Truman! for God's sake, Mr.
+Truman!--No, no.--There, the plank's in--too late--we're off."
+
+With that, the huge boat, with a mighty, walrus wallow, rolled away from
+the shore, resuming her course.
+
+"How vexatious!" exclaimed the herb-doctor, returning. "Had we been but
+one single moment sooner.--There he goes, now, towards yon hotel, his
+portmanteau following. You see him, don't you?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Can't see him any more. Wheel-house shot between. I am very sorry. I
+should have so liked you to have let him have a hundred or so of your
+money. You would have been pleased with the investment, believe me."
+
+"Oh, I _have_ let him have some of my money," groaned the old man.
+
+"You have? My dear sir," seizing both the miser's hands in both his own
+and heartily shaking them. "My dear sir, how I congratulate you. You
+don't know."
+
+"Ugh, ugh! I fear I don't," with another groan. "His name is Truman, is
+it?"
+
+"John Truman."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"In St. Louis."
+
+"Where's his office?"
+
+"Let me see. Jones street, number one hundred and--no, no--anyway, it's
+somewhere or other up-stairs in Jones street."
+
+"Can't you remember the number? Try, now."
+
+"One hundred--two hundred--three hundred--"
+
+"Oh, my hundred dollars! I wonder whether it will be one hundred, two
+hundred, three hundred, with them! Ugh, ugh! Can't remember the number?"
+
+"Positively, though I once knew, I have forgotten, quite forgotten it.
+Strange. But never mind. You will easily learn in St. Louis. He is well
+known there."
+
+"But I have no receipt--ugh, ugh! Nothing to show--don't know where I
+stand--ought to have a guard_ee_an--ugh, ugh! Don't know anything. Ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Why, you know that you gave him your confidence, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But what, what--how, how--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Why, didn't he tell you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What! Didn't he tell you that it was a secret, a mystery?"
+
+"Oh--yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But I have no bond."
+
+"Don't need any with Mr. Truman. Mr. Truman's word is his bond."
+
+"But how am I to get my profits--ugh, ugh!--and my money back? Don't
+know anything. Ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you must have confidence."
+
+"Don't say that word again. Makes my head spin so. Oh, I'm so old and
+miserable, nobody caring for me, everybody fleecing me, and my head
+spins so--ugh, ugh!--and this cough racks me so. I say again, I ought to
+have a guard_ee_an."
+
+"So you ought; and Mr. Truman is your guardian to the extent you
+invested with him. Sorry we missed him just now. But you'll hear from
+him. All right. It's imprudent, though, to expose yourself this way. Let
+me take you to your berth."
+
+Forlornly enough the old miser moved slowly away with him. But, while
+descending a stairway, he was seized with such coughing that he was fain
+to pause.
+
+"That is a very bad cough."
+
+"Church-yard--ugh, ugh!--church-yard cough.--Ugh!"
+
+"Have you tried anything for it?"
+
+"Tired of trying. Nothing does me any good--ugh! ugh! Not even the
+Mammoth Cave. Ugh! ugh! Denned there six months, but coughed so bad the
+rest of the coughers--ugh! ugh!--black-balled me out. Ugh, ugh! Nothing
+does me good."
+
+"But have you tried the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator, sir?"
+
+"That's what that Truman--ugh, ugh!--said I ought to take.
+Yarb-medicine; you are that yarb-doctor, too?"
+
+"The same. Suppose you try one of my boxes now. Trust me, from what I
+know of Mr. Truman, he is not the gentleman to recommend, even in behalf
+of a friend, anything of whose excellence he is not conscientiously
+satisfied."
+
+"Ugh!--how much?"
+
+"Only two dollars a box."
+
+"Two dollars? Why don't you say two millions? ugh, ugh! Two dollars,
+that's two hundred cents; that's eight hundred farthings; that's two
+thousand mills; and all for one little box of yarb-medicine. My head, my
+head!--oh, I ought to have a guard_ee_an for; my head. Ugh, ugh, ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, if two dollars a box seems too much, take a dozen boxes at twenty
+dollars; and that will be getting four boxes for nothing, and you need
+use none but those four, the rest you can retail out at a premium, and
+so cure your cough, and make money by it. Come, you had better do it.
+Cash down. Can fill an order in a day or two. Here now," producing a
+box; "pure herbs."
+
+At that moment, seized with another spasm, the miser snatched each
+interval to fix his half distrustful, half hopeful eye upon the
+medicine, held alluringly up. "Sure--ugh! Sure it's all nat'ral? Nothing
+but yarbs? If I only thought it was a purely nat'ral medicine now--all
+yarbs--ugh, ugh!--oh this cough, this cough--ugh, ugh!--shatters my
+whole body. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"For heaven's sake try my medicine, if but a single box. That it is pure
+nature you may be confident, Refer you to Mr. Truman."
+
+"Don't know his number--ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh this cough. He did speak
+well of this medicine though; said solemnly it would cure me--ugh, ugh,
+ugh, ugh!--take off a dollar and I'll have a box."
+
+"Can't sir, can't."
+
+"Say a dollar-and-half. Ugh!"
+
+"Can't. Am pledged to the one-price system, only honorable one."
+
+"Take off a shilling--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Can't."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh--I'll take it.--There."
+
+Grudgingly he handed eight silver coins, but while still in his hand,
+his cough took him and they were shaken upon the deck.
+
+One by one, the herb-doctor picked them up, and, examining them, said:
+"These are not quarters, these are pistareens; and clipped, and sweated,
+at that."
+
+"Oh don't be so miserly--ugh, ugh!--better a beast than a miser--ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, let it go. Anything rather than the idea of your not being cured
+of such a cough. And I hope, for the credit of humanity, you have not
+made it appear worse than it is, merely with a view to working upon the
+weak point of my pity, and so getting my medicine the cheaper. Now,
+mind, don't take it till night. Just before retiring is the time. There,
+you can get along now, can't you? I would attend you further, but I land
+presently, and must go hunt up my luggage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A HARD CASE.
+
+
+"Yarbs, yarbs; natur, natur; you foolish old file you! He diddled you
+with that hocus-pocus, did he? Yarbs and natur will cure your incurable
+cough, you think."
+
+It was a rather eccentric-looking person who spoke; somewhat ursine in
+aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bear's-skin; a
+high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin, the long bushy tail switching over
+behind; raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a
+double-barreled gun in hand--a Missouri bachelor, a Hoosier gentleman,
+of Spartan leisure and fortune, and equally Spartan manners and
+sentiments; and, as the sequel may show, not less acquainted, in a
+Spartan way of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
+and rifles.
+
+He must have overheard some of the talk between the miser and the
+herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal of the one, he made up to
+the other--now at the foot of the stairs leaning against the baluster
+there--with the greeting above.
+
+"Think it will cure me?" coughed the miser in echo; "why shouldn't it?
+The medicine is nat'ral yarbs, pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me."
+
+"Because a thing is nat'ral, as you call it, you think it must be good.
+But who gave you that cough? Was it, or was it not, nature?"
+
+"Sure, you don't think that natur, Dame Natur, will hurt a body, do
+you?"
+
+"Natur is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?"
+
+"But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?"
+
+"What's deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur and yarbs--ugh, ugh,
+ugh!--ain't sick men sent out into the country; sent out to natur and
+grass?"
+
+"Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame
+horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of
+yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for
+sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster
+on the prairie? And who made an idiot of Peter the Wild Boy?"
+
+"Then you don't believe in these 'ere yarb-doctors?"
+
+"Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor I saw once on a
+hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the faculty passing round and seeing who
+lay there, said with professional triumph, 'Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
+don't help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and the mercury now,
+Dr. Green.--Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!'"
+
+"Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?" here said a
+flute-like voice, advancing.
+
+It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in hand, he happened to be
+strolling back that way.
+
+"Pardon me," addressing the Missourian, "but if I caught your words
+aright, you would seem to have little confidence in nature; which,
+really, in my way of thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of
+distrust pretty far."
+
+"And who of my sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon
+him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half
+cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the
+expression, which made its sincerity appear more or less dubious.
+
+"One who has confidence in nature, and confidence in man, with some
+little modest confidence in himself."
+
+"That's your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence in man, eh? Pray,
+which do you think are most, knaves or fools?"
+
+"Having met with few or none of either, I hardly think I am competent to
+answer."
+
+"I will answer for you. Fools are most."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses.
+Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"
+
+"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"But I'm in earnest."
+
+"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest
+air--knaves munching up fools as horses oats.--Faith, very droll,
+indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I
+was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about
+having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much as I
+have."
+
+"_I_ have confidence in nature? _I?_ I say again there is nothing I am
+more suspicious of. I once lost ten thousand dollars by nature. Nature
+embezzled that amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars'
+worth of my property; a plantation on this stream, swept clean away by
+one of those sudden shiftings of the banks in a freshet; ten thousand
+dollars' worth of alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters."
+
+"But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting that soil will
+come back after many days?--ah, here is my venerable friend," observing
+the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you _will_ keep afoot,
+don't lean against that baluster; take my arm."
+
+It was taken; and the two stood together; the old miser leaning against
+the herb-doctor with something of that air of trustful fraternity with
+which, when standing, the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually
+leans against the other.
+
+The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was broken by the
+herb-doctor.
+
+"You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly take under my
+protection a figure like this? But I am never ashamed of honesty,
+whatever his coat."
+
+"Look you," said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing pause, "you are a
+queer sort of chap. Don't know exactly what to make of you. Upon the
+whole though, you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my place."
+
+"Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?"
+
+"Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some kind of machine to do
+the sort of work which boys are supposed to be fitted for."
+
+"Then you have passed a veto upon boys?"
+
+"And men, too."
+
+"But, my dear sir, does not that again imply more or less lack of
+confidence?--(Stand up a little, just a very little, my venerable
+friend; you lean rather hard.)--No confidence in boys, no confidence in
+men, no confidence in nature. Pray, sir, who or what may you have
+confidence in?"
+
+"I have confidence in distrust; more particularly as applied to you and
+your herbs."
+
+"Well," with a forbearing smile, "that is frank. But pray, don't forget
+that when you suspect my herbs you suspect nature."
+
+"Didn't I say that before?"
+
+"Very good. For the argument's sake I will suppose you are in earnest.
+Now, can you, who suspect nature, deny, that this same nature not only
+kindly brought you into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your
+present vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature that you
+are indebted for that robustness of mind which you so unhandsomely use
+to her scandal? Pray, is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by
+which you criticise her?"
+
+"No! for the privilege of vision I am indebted to an oculist, who in my
+tenth year operated upon me in Philadelphia. Nature made me blind and
+would have kept me so. My oculist counterplotted her."
+
+"And yet, sir, by your complexion, I judge you live an out-of-door life;
+without knowing it, you are partial to nature; you fly to nature, the
+universal mother."
+
+"Very motherly! Sir, in the passion-fits of nature, I've known birds fly
+from nature to me, rough as I look; yes, sir, in a tempest, refuge
+here," smiting the folds of his bearskin. "Fact, sir, fact. Come, come,
+Mr. Palaverer, for all your palavering, did you yourself never shut out
+nature of a cold, wet night? Bar her out? Bolt her out? Lint her out?"
+
+"As to that," said the herb-doctor calmly, "much may be said."
+
+"Say it, then," ruffling all his hairs. "You can't, sir, can't." Then,
+as in apostrophe: "Look you, nature! I don't deny but your clover is
+sweet, and your dandelions don't roar; but whose hailstones smashed my
+windows?"
+
+"Sir," with unimpaired affability, producing one of his boxes, "I am
+pained to meet with one who holds nature a dangerous character. Though
+your manner is refined your voice is rough; in short, you seem to have a
+sore throat. In the calumniated name of nature, I present you with this
+box; my venerable friend here has a similar one; but to you, a free
+gift, sir. Through her regularly-authorized agents, of whom I happen to
+be one, Nature delights in benefiting those who most abuse her. Pray,
+take it."
+
+"Away with it! Don't hold it so near. Ten to one there is a torpedo in
+it. Such things have been. Editors been killed that way. Take it further
+off, I say."
+
+"Good heavens! my dear sir----"
+
+"I tell you I want none of your boxes," snapping his rifle.
+
+"Oh, take it--ugh, ugh! do take it," chimed in the old miser; "I wish he
+would give me one for nothing."
+
+"You find it lonely, eh," turning short round; "gulled yourself, you
+would have a companion."
+
+"How can he find it lonely," returned the herb-doctor, "or how desire a
+companion, when here I stand by him; I, even I, in whom he has trust.
+For the gulling, tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man?
+Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain, is it kind to
+deprive him of what, in mere imagination, if nothing more, may help eke
+out, with hope, his disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and,
+thanks to your native health, can get along without it, so far, at
+least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet, how cruel an argument to
+use, with this afflicted one here. Is it not for all the world as if
+some brawny pugilist, aglow in December, should rush in and put out a
+hospital-fire, because, forsooth, he feeling no need of artificial heat,
+the shivering patients shall have none? Put it to your conscience, sir,
+and you will admit, that, whatever be the nature of this afflicted one's
+trust, you, in opposing it, evince either an erring head or a heart
+amiss. Come, own, are you not pitiless?"
+
+"Yes, poor soul," said the Missourian, gravely eying the old man--"yes,
+it _is_ pitiless in one like me to speak too honestly to one like you.
+You are a late sitter-up in this life; past man's usual bed-time; and
+truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast, proves to all a
+supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives bad dreams."
+
+"What, in wonder's name--ugh, ugh!--is he talking about?" asked the old
+miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.
+
+"Heaven be praised for that!" cried the Missourian.
+
+"Out of his mind, ain't he?" again appealed the old miser.
+
+"Pray, sir," said the herb-doctor to the Missourian, "for what were you
+giving thanks just now?"
+
+"For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a
+thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded pistol found by poor devils
+of savages, it raises more wonder than terror--its peculiar virtue being
+unguessed, unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should happen to
+go off of itself."
+
+"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor,
+after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of
+pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his
+state of mind, and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him to
+it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your
+thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them,
+but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet
+recant."
+
+"Recant?"
+
+"Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when
+a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the
+dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence
+begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it
+return to you in age."
+
+"Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood, indeed. You are soft."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" cried the old miser, "what is all this!--ugh, ugh! Do
+talk sense, my good friends. Ain't you," to the Missourian, "going to
+buy some of that medicine?"
+
+"Pray, my venerable friend," said the herb-doctor, now trying to
+straighten himself, "don't lean _quite_ so hard; my arm grows numb;
+abate a little, just a very little."
+
+"Go," said the Missourian, "go lay down in your grave, old man, if you
+can't stand of yourself. It's a hard world for a leaner."
+
+"As to his grave," said the herb-doctor, "that is far enough off, so he
+but faithfully take my medicine."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--He says true. No, I ain't--ugh! a going to die
+yet--ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I approve your confidence," said the herb-doctor; "but your coughing
+distresses me, besides being injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you
+to your berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait till my
+return, I know."
+
+With which he led the old miser away, and then, coming back, the talk
+with the Missourian was resumed.
+
+"Sir," said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and more feeling, "now
+that our infirm friend is withdrawn, allow me, to the full, to express
+my concern at the words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
+of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to beget
+deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to convey unpleasant
+imputations against me, his physician."
+
+"Suppose they did?" with a menacing air.
+
+"Why, then--then, indeed," respectfully retreating, "I fall back upon my
+previous theory of your general facetiousness. I have the fortune to be
+in company with a humorist--a wag."
+
+"Fall back you had better, and wag it is," cried the Missourian,
+following him up, and wagging his raccoon tail almost into the
+herb-doctor's face, "look you!"
+
+"At what?"
+
+"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
+
+"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I
+flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or
+pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer
+that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the
+kind."
+
+"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
+
+"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me.
+The innocence in me heals me."
+
+"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man--a very queer
+and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met."
+
+The scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome to the diffidence of the
+herb-doctor. As if at once to attest the absence of resentment, as well
+as to change the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into
+his air, and said: "So you are going to get some machine made to do your
+work? Philanthropic scruples, doubtless, forbid your going as far as New
+Orleans for slaves?"
+
+"Slaves?" morose again in a twinkling, "won't have 'em! Bad enough to
+see whites ducking and grinning round for a favor, without having those
+poor devils of niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,
+the niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist, ain't
+you?" he added, squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for
+a staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence
+than if it were a target. "You are an abolitionist, ain't you?"
+
+"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a
+zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for
+all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's
+interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly
+abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among
+mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say."
+
+"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable
+understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for
+wrong, but are useless for right."
+
+"From all this," said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly, "I infer, that
+you, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state, are without slave
+sentiments."
+
+"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring
+and yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are
+you owned by a company?"
+
+"_My_ master?"
+
+"Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come from a slave-state, and a
+slave-pen, where the best breeds are to be bought up at any price from a
+livelihood to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but expresses the
+fellow-feeling of slave for slave."
+
+"The back-woods would seem to have given you rather eccentric notions,"
+now with polite superiority smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly
+intrepidity forbearing each unmanly thrust, "but to return; since, for
+your purpose, you will have neither man nor boy, bond nor free, truly,
+then some sort of machine for you is all there is left. My desires for
+your success attend you, sir.--Ah!" glancing shoreward, "here is Cape
+Girádeau; I must leave you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
+
+
+--"'Philosophical Intelligence Office'--novel idea! But how did you come
+to dream that I wanted anything in your absurd line, eh?"
+
+About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Girádeau, the above was growled
+out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had
+just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean
+five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate,
+inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk
+obliquely behind.
+
+"How did you come to dream that I wanted anything in your line, eh?"
+
+"Oh, respected sir," whined the other, crouching a pace nearer, and, in
+his obsequiousness, seeming to wag his very coat-tails behind him,
+shabby though they were, "oh, sir, from long experience, one glance
+tells me the gentleman who is in need of our humble services."
+
+"But suppose I did want a boy--what they jocosely call a good boy--how
+could your absurd office help me?--Philosophical Intelligence Office?"
+
+"Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical and
+physio----"
+
+"Look you--come up here--how, by philosophy or physiology either, make
+good boys to order? Come up here. Don't give me a crick in the neck.
+Come up here, come, sir, come," calling as if to his pointer. "Tell me,
+how put the requisite assortment of good qualities into a boy, as the
+assorted mince into the pie?"
+
+"Respected sir, our office----"
+
+"You talk much of that office. Where is it? On board this boat?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office----"
+
+"Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do you know a herb-doctor
+there? Smooth scamp in a snuff-colored surtout?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Girádeau. Though, now that you
+mention a snuff-colored surtout, I think I met such a man as you speak
+of stepping ashore as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
+somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian sort of person, I
+should say. Do you know him, respected sir?"
+
+"Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed with your business."
+
+With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission, the other began:
+"Our office----"
+
+"Look you," broke in the bachelor with ire, "have you the spinal
+complaint? What are you ducking and groveling about? Keep still. Where's
+your office?"
+
+"The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir, in the free state
+we now pass," (pointing somewhat proudly ashore).
+
+"Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself? With those coat-tails
+and that spinal complaint of servility? Free? Just cast up in your
+private mind who is your master, will you?"
+
+"Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand--indeed--indeed. But, respected sir, as
+before said, our office, founded on principles wholly new----"
+
+"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk
+of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I
+tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old
+home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels,
+chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and
+waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of
+your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've
+lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born
+cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
+mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your boys would be to me. A
+rot on your boys!"
+
+"But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might we not, in our
+small way, accommodate you with a man?"
+
+"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a
+bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate:
+there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a
+loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a
+chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be
+accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours,
+the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine
+to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill--does that ever steal my
+cider? My mowing-machine--does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My
+corn-husker--does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill,
+mowing-machine, corn-husker--all faithfully attend to their business.
+Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives
+long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward--the only practical
+Christians I know."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Yes, sir:--boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference, in a moral
+point of view, between a corn-husker and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for
+its patient continuance in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven.
+Do you suppose a boy will?"
+
+"A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites of his eyes). Respected
+sir, this way of talking as if heaven were a kind of Washington
+patent-office museum--oh, oh, oh!--as if mere machine-work and
+puppet-work went to heaven--oh, oh, oh! Things incapable of free agency,
+to receive the eternal reward of well-doing--oh, oh, oh!"
+
+"You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning about? Did I say
+anything of that sort? Seems to me, though you talk so good, you are
+mighty quick at a hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
+quarrel with me."
+
+"It may be so or not, respected sir," was now the demure reply; "but if
+it be, it is only because as a soldier out of honor is quick in taking
+affront, so a Christian out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a
+little too much so, in spying heresy."
+
+"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
+the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."
+
+So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
+brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
+that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
+further on the subject of servants.
+
+"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
+at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
+coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
+experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
+servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
+human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
+trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
+dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
+horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
+apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
+machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
+Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
+refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
+by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
+doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
+knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
+on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
+to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."
+
+"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
+as I ventured to observe----"
+
+"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
+"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
+now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
+boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."
+
+"Save us, save us!"
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
+fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
+English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
+me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
+Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
+my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
+Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
+juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
+twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
+viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
+myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
+exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
+those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
+virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
+boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
+offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
+the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
+request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
+nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
+island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
+deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
+why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
+too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
+always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
+combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
+singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
+family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
+would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
+out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
+he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
+so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
+there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
+please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
+scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
+didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
+to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
+polite he grew."
+
+"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
+exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
+for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
+After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
+slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
+Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
+strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
+settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
+thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
+dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
+Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
+less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
+fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
+afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
+across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
+rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
+black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
+are rascals."
+
+"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
+sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
+hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
+confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
+are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
+respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
+and wholly?"
+
+Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
+whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
+summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
+was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
+continued as follows:
+
+"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
+'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
+all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
+keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
+peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
+confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
+that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
+
+"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
+up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
+praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
+thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
+office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
+concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
+Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
+must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
+mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
+the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
+various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
+educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
+random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
+that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
+they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
+imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
+could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."
+
+"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
+sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
+your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
+for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
+wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
+into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
+put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
+insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--
+
+    'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--
+
+and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
+but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
+offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."
+
+"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
+less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
+are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
+enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
+have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
+me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
+man, I may have my small share of feelings."
+
+"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
+are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
+is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
+way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
+I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
+rascals."
+
+"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
+badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
+mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
+me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
+of the subject in hand?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
+other way. "Oh, yes; go on."
+
+"Well, then, respected sir," continued the other, now assuming as
+genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar
+suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the
+strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in
+dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office is
+founded, has led me and my associates, in our small, quiet way, to a
+careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory, and
+with an unobtrusive aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
+large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting from it, I will,
+by your permission, very briefly mention; such of them, I mean, as refer
+to the state of boyhood scientifically viewed."
+
+"Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied boys, eh? Why didn't
+you out with that before?"
+
+"Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed with so many
+masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing. I have been taught that in this
+world there is a precedence of opinions as well as of persons. You have
+kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty, about to give you
+mine."
+
+"Stop flunkying--go on."
+
+"In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed by analogy
+from the physical to the moral. Are we right there, sir? Now, sir, take
+a young boy, a young male infant rather, a man-child in short--what sir,
+I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?"
+
+"A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!"
+
+"Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. May I
+proceed? Well, then, what, in the first place, in a general view, do you
+remark, respected sir, in that male baby or man-child?"
+
+The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the whole, better
+governed himself than before, though not, indeed, to the degree of
+thinking it prudent to risk an articulate response.
+
+"What do you remark? I respectfully repeat." But, as no answer came,
+only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the
+questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small
+way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation;
+loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or
+careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected
+sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir,
+the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to
+deny it; but, then, he _promises_ well, does he not? Yes, promises very
+well indeed, I may say. (So, too, we say to our patrons in reference to
+some noble little youngster objected to for being a _dwarf_.) But, to
+advance one step further," extending his thread-bare leg, as he drew a
+pace nearer, "we must now drop the figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and
+borrow one--to use presently, when wanted--from the horticultural
+kingdom. Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such points as the
+new-born man-child has--as yet not all that could be desired, I am free
+to confess--still, such as they are, there they are, and palpable as
+those of an adult. But we stop not here," taking another step. "The
+man-child not only possesses these present points, small though they
+are, but, likewise--now our horticultural image comes into play--like
+the bud of the lily, he contains concealed rudiments of others; that
+is, points at present invisible, with beauties at present dormant."
+
+"Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural and beautiful
+altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!"
+
+"Respected sir," with a rustily martial sort of gesture, like a decayed
+corporal's, "when deploying into the field of discourse the vanguard of
+an important argument, much more in evolving the grand central forces of
+a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you will kindly allow
+scope adequate to the movement in hand, small and humble in its way as
+that movement may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected sir?"
+
+"Yes, stop flunkying and go on."
+
+Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate proceeded:
+
+"Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such terms, to an applicant
+for service, we allude to some patron we chance to have in our eye),
+supposing, respected sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
+dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture; supposing that,
+sir--then how could even the learned serpent himself have foreknown that
+such a downy-chinned little innocent would eventually rival the goat in
+a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality would have been
+entirely hidden from his wisdom."
+
+"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the
+event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who
+made him."
+
+"For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point. Can it now with
+fairness be denied that, in his beard, the man-child prospectively
+possesses an appendix, not less imposing than patriarchal; and for this
+goodly beard, should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
+even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now, sir? respectfully I put
+it."
+
+"Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it shoots," porcinely
+rubbing his stubble-chin against his coon-skins.
+
+"I have hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful
+of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble
+quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't
+you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon
+us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may be) has this boy a
+beard?' 'No.' 'Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
+quality?' 'No, indeed.' 'Then, madam, or sir, take him back, we humbly
+beseech; and keep him till that same noble quality sprouts; for, have
+confidence, it, like the beard, is in him.'"
+
+"Very fine theory," scornfully exclaimed the bachelor, yet in secret,
+perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by these strange new views of the
+matter; "but what trust is to be placed in it?"
+
+"The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed. Once more, if you
+please, regard the man-child."
+
+"Hold!" paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm, "don't intrude that
+man-child upon me too often. He who loves not bread, dotes not on
+dough. As little of your man-child as your logical arrangements will
+admit."
+
+"Anew regard the man-child," with inspired intrepidity repeated he with
+the brass-plate, "in the perspective of his developments, I mean. At
+first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month--am I right,
+sir?"
+
+"Don't know anything about it."
+
+"To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth, about the sixth
+month the man-child begins to put forth in that particular. And sweet
+those tender little puttings-forth are."
+
+"Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless enough."
+
+"Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning with a boy
+alleged not only to be deficient in goodness, but redundant in ill: 'The
+lad, madam or sir, evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
+them.' 'But, have confidence, there will be; for pray, madam, in this
+lad's early childhood, were not those frail first teeth, then his,
+followed by his present sound, even, beautiful and permanent set. And
+the more objectionable those first teeth became, was not that, madam, we
+respectfully submit, so much the more reason to look for their speedy
+substitution by the present sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.'
+'True, true, can't deny that.' 'Then, madam, take him back, we
+respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift course of nature,
+dropping those transient moral blemishes you complain of, he
+replacingly buds forth in the sound, even, beautiful and permanent
+virtues.'"
+
+"Very philosophical again," was the contemptuous reply--the outward
+contempt, perhaps, proportioned to the inward misgiving. "Vastly
+philosophical, indeed, but tell me--to continue your analogy--since the
+second teeth followed--in fact, came from--the first, is there no chance
+the blemish may be transmitted?"
+
+"Not at all." Abating in humility as he gained in the argument. "The
+second teeth follow, but do not come from, the first; successors, not
+sons. The first teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
+once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it foreruns; but
+they are thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the
+succeeding set--an illustration, by the way, which shows more for me
+than I meant, though not more than I wish."
+
+"What does it show?" Surly-looking as a thundercloud with the inkept
+unrest of unacknowledged conviction.
+
+"It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any boy, especially
+an ill one, to apply unconditionally the saying, that the 'child is
+father of the man', is, besides implying an uncharitable aspersion of
+the race, affirming a thing very wide of----"
+
+"--Your analogy," like a snapping turtle.
+
+"Yes, respected sir."
+
+"But is analogy argument? You are a punster."
+
+"Punster, respected sir?" with a look of being aggrieved.
+
+"Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with words."
+
+"Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever has no confidence
+in human reason, whoever despises human reason, in vain to reason with
+him. Still, respected sir," altering his air, "permit me to hint that,
+had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you would hardly have
+offered to contemn it."
+
+"Talk away," disdainfully; "but pray tell me what has that last analogy
+of yours to do with your intelligence office business?"
+
+"Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that analogy we derive
+the reply made to such a patron as, shortly after being supplied by us
+with an adult servant, proposes to return him upon our hands; not that,
+while with the patron, said adult has given any cause of
+dissatisfaction, but the patron has just chanced to hear something
+unfavorable concerning him from some gentleman who employed said adult,
+long before, while a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking
+said adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to the patron,
+say: 'Far be it from you, madam, or sir, to proceed in your censure
+against this adult, in anything of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law.
+Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In
+the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over
+and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better? Madam,
+or sir, take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar, but is now
+a butterfly."
+
+"Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount
+to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The
+butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
+lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped as
+before."
+
+"You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You deny that a youth of one
+character can be transformed into a man of an opposite character. Now
+then--yes, I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
+Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care
+bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish
+self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as
+would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or
+sir--patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you
+discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles
+more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
+him is working.' 'But he is a sad rake.' 'Therein is his promise; the
+rake being crude material for the saint.'"
+
+"Ah, you are a talking man--what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."
+
+"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or
+prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation
+of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best
+wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
+literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?"
+
+"You, you, you!" rattling down his rifle.
+
+"To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray, what is your
+opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?"
+
+"St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know of him? Seems to me,
+for one in such a business, to say nothing of such a coat, that though
+you don't know a great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
+you ought to know, or than you have a right to know, or than it is safe
+or expedient for you to know, or than, in the fair course of life, you
+could have honestly come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
+like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
+which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
+it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."
+
+"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
+suppose."
+
+"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
+where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
+speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
+altogether unexampled and extraordinary."
+
+"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
+method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
+has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
+fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
+to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
+included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
+say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
+among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"
+
+"Excellent genius!"
+
+"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
+Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
+dog?"
+
+"A saint a sad dog?"
+
+"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
+boy."
+
+"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
+tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."
+
+"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
+eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
+that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
+an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
+than in nature herself."
+
+"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
+his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
+don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
+five and thirty boys of mine."
+
+"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
+flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
+boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
+of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
+corn."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
+illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how often
+I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
+half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
+of August."
+
+"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
+analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
+thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
+thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
+hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
+at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."
+
+"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
+I intended."
+
+"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
+of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
+Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
+it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
+charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
+of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
+Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
+Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."
+
+"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
+said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
+asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
+reformado boys."
+
+"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
+never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
+juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
+boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
+measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
+but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
+you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
+boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."
+
+"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
+fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
+absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
+might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
+conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
+Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
+this sort of conditional confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a
+boy, in sober fact, could you send me? And what would be your fee?"
+
+"Conducted," replied the other somewhat loftily, rising now in eloquence
+as his proselyte, for all his pretenses, sunk in conviction, "conducted
+upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
+usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is
+forced to charge somewhat higher than customary. Briefly, our fee is
+three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a
+very promising little fellow now in my eye--a very likely little fellow,
+indeed."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at
+least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his
+head, submitted to me by the mother."
+
+"How old?"
+
+"Just fifteen."
+
+"Tall? Stout?"
+
+"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."
+
+"Industrious?"
+
+"The busy bee."
+
+The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy,
+he spoke:
+
+"Do you think now, candidly, that--I say candidly--candidly--could I
+have some small, limited--some faint, conditional degree of confidence
+in that boy? Candidly, now?"
+
+"Candidly, you could."
+
+"A sound boy? A good boy?"
+
+"Never knew one more so."
+
+The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well,
+now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too.
+Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
+Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try
+that boy. I don't think him an angel, mind. No, no. But I'll try him.
+There are my three dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
+day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money for his passage.
+There," handing it somewhat reluctantly.
+
+"Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;" then, altering in manner,
+and gravely holding the bills, continued: "Respected sir, never
+willingly do I handle money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a
+certain alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect and
+unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy now) or permit me
+respectfully to return these bills."
+
+"Put 'em up, put 'em-up!"
+
+"Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of
+business transactions. Without it, commerce between man and man, as
+between country and country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
+now, supposing that against present expectation the lad should, after
+all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
+dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
+vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
+and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
+grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
+the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
+brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE
+OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A
+RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.
+
+
+At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up
+its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand
+at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
+Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three
+undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.
+
+In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with
+fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain
+passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over
+the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
+medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his
+cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.
+He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this
+villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.
+Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform
+treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,
+had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To
+what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the
+mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with
+Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the
+morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere
+bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake
+up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and
+for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
+the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally
+little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.
+
+But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,
+experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but
+unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its
+genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
+indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished
+by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse
+henceforth.
+
+He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he
+fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a
+fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
+case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.
+He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the
+operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the
+lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And
+yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the
+person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,
+that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems
+him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make
+out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough
+doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of
+cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples
+the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast
+in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by
+the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the
+insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky
+beast that windeth his way on his belly.
+
+From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the
+shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which
+came a voice, sweet as a seraph's:
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET
+BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.
+
+
+"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
+moroseness.
+
+"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair
+has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a
+fine fellow wears it."
+
+"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't
+you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat."
+
+This ungentle mention of the toucan was not improbably suggested by the
+parti-hued, and rather plumagy aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would
+seem, but a liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
+than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
+informalities, might, even to observers less critical than the bachelor,
+have looked, if anything, a little out of the common; but not more so
+perhaps, than, considering the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor's
+own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture barred with
+various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style
+participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from
+its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
+while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over
+maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple
+crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently.
+Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused; all showed signs
+of easy service, the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
+That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was
+now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of
+Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its
+long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
+bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked
+nations--a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing
+essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something
+similar of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But rosy
+pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on that unrosy man, the
+bachelor, who, waiting a moment till the commotion, caused by the boat's
+renewed progress, had a little abated, thus continued:
+
+"Hark ye," jeeringly eying the cap and belt, "did you ever see Signor
+Marzetti in the African pantomime?"
+
+"No;--good performer?"
+
+"Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it. With such
+naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that
+of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
+hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that."
+
+The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on one hip, his right
+leg cavalierly crossed before the other, the toe of his vertical slipper
+pointed easily down on the deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of
+indifferent and charitable puff, betokening him more or less of the
+mature man of the world, a character which, like its opposite, the
+sincere Christian's, is not always swift to take offense; and then,
+drawing near, still smoking, again laid his hand, this time with mild
+impressiveness, on the ursine shoulder, and not unamiably said: "That in
+your address there is a sufficiency of the _fortiter in re_ few unbiased
+observers will question; but that this is duly attempered with the
+_suaviter in modo_ may admit, I think, of an honest doubt. My dear
+fellow," beaming his eyes full upon him, "what injury have I done you,
+that you should receive my greeting with a curtailed civility?"
+
+"Off hands;" once more shaking the friendly member from him. "Who in the
+name of the great chimpanzee, in whose likeness, you, Marzetti, and the
+other chatterers are made, who in thunder are you?"
+
+"A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such, ties himself to no
+narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume,
+something of the various gallantries of men under various suns. Oh, one
+roams not over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal and
+fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost anybody. Warm and
+confiding, you wait not for measured advances. And though, indeed,
+mine, in this instance, have met with no very hilarious encouragement,
+yet the principle of a true citizen of the world is still to return good
+for ill.--My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."
+
+"By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world, into the heart of
+the Lunar Mountains. You are another of them. Out of my sight!"
+
+"Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you then? Ah, I may be
+foolish, but for my part, in all its aspects, I love it. Served up à la
+Pole, or à la Moor, à la Ladrone, or à la Yankee, that good dish, man,
+still delights me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of comparing
+and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan, a sort of
+London-Dock-Vault connoisseur, going about from Teheran to Natchitoches,
+a taster of races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy
+creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal palates which have
+a distaste even for Amontillado, so I suppose there may be teetotal
+souls which relish not even the very best brands of humanity. Excuse me,
+but it just occurs to me that you, my dear fellow, possibly lead a
+solitary life."
+
+"Solitary?" starting as at a touch of divination.
+
+"Yes: in a solitary life one insensibly contracts oddities,--talking to
+one's self now."
+
+"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"
+
+"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without
+much reproach to the hearer."
+
+"You are an eaves-dropper."
+
+"Well. Be it so."
+
+"Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?"
+
+"I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing by, caught a
+word or two, and, by like chance, something previous of your chat with
+the Intelligence-office man;--a rather sensible fellow, by the way; much
+of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake, he were of my style of
+dress. Grief to good minds, to see a man of superior sense forced to
+hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.--Well, from what
+little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable
+philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have
+observed--excuse me--to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness,
+of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix
+in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a
+good time. Life is a pic-nic _en costume_; one must take a part, assume
+a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
+plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a
+discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold
+water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated
+ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
+confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
+soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
+Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
+beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."
+
+"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
+for?"
+
+"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
+story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
+wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
+might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
+green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
+into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
+her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
+after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
+husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured?' 'Indeed I do.'
+'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
+drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
+can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
+doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
+the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
+woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
+famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
+experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
+herself a cup too low."
+
+This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
+though hardly into approval.
+
+"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
+churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
+unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
+view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
+though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
+jug."
+
+"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
+see; you go in for the lofty."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
+story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
+sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
+leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
+philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
+be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
+humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
+is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
+one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
+one, or the one that has the pip."
+
+"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.
+
+"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
+race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."
+
+"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.
+
+"And what race may _you_ belong to? now don't you see, my dear fellow,
+in what inconsistencies one involves himself by affecting disesteem for
+men. To a charm, my little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
+of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude. I fear, by
+the way, you have at some time been reading Zimmermann, that old Mr.
+Megrims of a Zimmermann, whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume's on
+Suicide, as Bacon's on Knowledge; and, like these, will betray him who
+seeks to steer soul and body by it, like a false religion. All they, be
+they what boasted ones you please, who, to the yearning of our kind
+after a founded rule of content, offer aught not in the spirit of
+fellowly gladness based on due confidence in what is above, away with
+them for poor dupes, or still poorer impostors."
+
+His manner here was so earnest that scarcely any auditor, perhaps, but
+would have been more or less impressed by it, while, possibly, nervous
+opponents might have a little quailed under it. Thinking within himself
+a moment, the bachelor replied: "Had you experience, you would know that
+your tippling theory, take it in what sense you will, is poor as any
+other. And Rabelais's pro-wine Koran no more trustworthy than Mahomet's
+anti-wine one."
+
+"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and
+keep talking, and still stand where we did. What do you say for a walk?
+My arm, and let's a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck
+to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to save the
+pieces, you hold my loose change; and following that, I propose that
+you, my dear fellow, stack your gun, and throw your bearskins in a
+sailor's hornpipe--I holding your watch. What do you say?"
+
+At this proposition the other was himself again, all raccoon.
+
+"Look you," thumping down his rifle, "are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?"
+
+"Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor
+the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted
+with."
+
+"You are his confidential clerk, ain't you?"
+
+"_Whose_, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in,
+but I don't understand."
+
+"You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary
+metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that
+herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that
+come after him."
+
+"Herb-doctor? who is he?"
+
+"Like you--another of them."
+
+"_Who?_" Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his
+left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a
+ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter
+into a little argument and----"
+
+"No you don't. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little
+arguments to-day."
+
+"But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading
+a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions
+touching strangers?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the
+controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look,
+you----"
+
+"Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for
+double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say
+what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society
+in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace
+it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny."
+
+Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into
+the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening
+world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
+corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for
+disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through
+lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of
+man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.
+
+"Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could
+abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony,
+and Satire, his bosom friend."
+
+"A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his
+rifle-lock.
+
+"Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous. But, no, no, you didn't
+mean it; any way, I can make allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how
+much pleasanter to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
+fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your worldling, glutton,
+and coquette, though, doubtless, being such, they may have their little
+foibles--as who has not?--yet not one of the three can be reproached
+with that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for not seldom
+it presupposes a still darker thing than itself--remorse."
+
+"Remorse drives man away from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain,
+after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it
+that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?
+
+"My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you will, I for one must have
+my fellow-creatures round me. Thick, too--I must have them thick."
+
+"The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures round him.
+Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd but for his end; and the end of too
+many is the same as the pick-pocket's--a purse."
+
+"Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience to say that, when
+it is as much according to natural law that men are social as sheep
+gregarious. But grant that, in being social, each man has his end, do
+you, upon the strength of that, do you yourself, I say, mix with man,
+now, immediately, and be your end a more genial philosophy. Come, let's
+take a turn."
+
+Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor once more flung it
+off, and, raising his rifle in energetic invocation, cried: "Now the
+high-constable catch and confound all knaves in towns and rats in
+grain-bins, and if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the
+time, any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin him, thou
+high rat-catcher, against this rail."
+
+"A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And when a card's that,
+little matters it whether it be spade or diamond. You are good wine
+that, to be still better, only needs a shaking up. Come, let's agree
+that we'll to New Orleans, and there embark for London--I staying with
+my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting up at the Piazza, Covent
+Garden--Piazza, Covent Garden; for tell me--since you will not be a
+disciple to the full--tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes, which
+led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market, better than that
+of the less wise Athenian, which made him a skulking scare-crow in
+pine-barrens? An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon."
+
+"Your hand!" seizing it.
+
+"Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we shall be brothers,
+then?"
+
+"As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be," with another and
+terrific squeeze. "I had thought that the moderns had degenerated
+beneath the capacity of misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one
+instance, and that disguised, to be undeceived."
+
+The other stared in blank amaze.
+
+"Won't do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise. I say--Diogenes
+masquerading as a cosmopolitan."
+
+With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute awhile. At
+length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who,
+in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he
+but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change
+of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I
+came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for
+your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate
+accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
+but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
+"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
+men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
+See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
+beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
+I stark and stiff!"
+
+With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
+come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
+sapient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
+with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
+stranger.
+
+"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
+Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
+Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
+Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
+should think."
+
+It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
+deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
+vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
+speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
+scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.
+
+A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
+fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
+less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
+beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
+the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
+reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
+sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
+habit.
+
+But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
+unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
+not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
+curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
+contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
+saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
+thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
+fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
+were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might have hinted that
+they were too good to be true; or rather, were not so good as they might
+be; since the best false teeth are those made with at least two or three
+blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately for better
+constructions, no such critics had the stranger now in eye; only the
+cosmopolitan, who, after, in the first place, acknowledging his advances
+with a mute salute--in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
+spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably
+because of the saddening sequel of that late interview--thus now
+replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly;
+"that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he
+anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock Hall, Northamptonshire,
+England?"
+
+"I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall than of the Burdocks
+of Burdock Hut," returned the other, with the air somehow of one whose
+fortunes had been of his own making; "all I know is, that the late
+Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time; eye like Lochiel's;
+finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount's; and with but two little
+oddities--seldom stirred without his rifle, and hated Indians like
+snakes."
+
+"Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of Misanthrope Hall--the
+Woods. No very sleek creature, the colonel, I fancy."
+
+"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly
+headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians--how the
+late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians,
+to be sure!"
+
+"Never heard of such a thing. Hate Indians? Why should he or anybody
+else hate Indians? _I_ admire Indians. Indians I have always heard to be
+one of the finest of the primitive races, possessed of many heroic
+virtues. Some noble women, too. When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready
+to love Indians. Then there's Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and
+Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan--all heroes; and there's the Five
+Nations, and Araucanians--federations and communities of heroes. God
+bless me; hate Indians? Surely the late Colonel John Moredock must have
+wandered in his mind."
+
+"Wandered in the woods considerably, but never wandered elsewhere, that
+I ever heard."
+
+"Are you in earnest? Was there ever one who so made it his particular
+mission to hate Indians that, to designate him, a special word has been
+coined--Indian-hater?"
+
+"Even so."
+
+"Dear me, you take it very calmly.--But really, I would like to know
+something about this Indian-hating, I can hardly believe such a thing to
+be. Could you favor me with a little history of the extraordinary man
+you mentioned?"
+
+"With all my heart," and immediately stepping from the porch, gestured
+the cosmopolitan to a settee near by, on deck. "There, sir, sit you
+there, and I will sit here beside you--you desire to hear of Colonel
+John Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with a white
+stone--the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached, hanging
+in a cabin on the West bank of the Wabash river. I was going westward a
+long journey through the wilderness with my father. It was nigh noon,
+and we had stopped at the cabin to unsaddle and bait. The man at the
+cabin pointed out the rifle, and told whose it was, adding that the
+colonel was that moment sleeping on wolf-skins in the corn-loft above,
+so we must not talk very loud, for the colonel had been out all night
+hunting (Indians, mind), and it would be cruel to disturb his sleep.
+Curious to see one so famous, we waited two hours over, in hopes he
+would come forth; but he did not. So, it being necessary to get to the
+next cabin before nightfall, we had at last to ride off without the
+wished-for satisfaction. Though, to tell the truth, I, for one, did not
+go away entirely ungratified, for, while my father was watering the
+horses, I slipped back into the cabin, and stepping a round or two up
+the ladder, pushed my head through the trap, and peered about. Not much
+light in the loft; but off, in the further corner, I saw what I took to
+be the wolf-skins, and on them a bundle of something, like a drift of
+leaves; and at one end, what seemed a moss-ball; and over it,
+deer-antlers branched; and close by, a small squirrel sprang out from a
+maple-bowl of nuts, brushed the moss-ball with his tail, through a hole,
+and vanished, squeaking. That bit of woodland scene was all I saw. No
+Colonel Moredock there, unless that moss-ball was his curly head, seen
+in the back view. I would have gone clear up, but the man below had
+warned me, that though, from his camping habits, the colonel could sleep
+through thunder, he was for the same cause amazing quick to waken at the
+sound of footsteps, however soft, and especially if human."
+
+"Excuse me," said the other, softly laying his hand on the narrator's
+wrist, "but I fear the colonel was of a distrustful nature--little or no
+confidence. He _was_ a little suspicious-minded, wasn't he?"
+
+"Not a bit. Knew too much. Suspected nobody, but was not ignorant of
+Indians. Well: though, as you may gather, I never fully saw the man,
+yet, have I, one way and another, heard about as much of him as any
+other; in particular, have I heard his history again and again from my
+father's friend, James Hall, the judge, you know. In every company being
+called upon to give this history, which none could better do, the judge
+at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke
+less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking
+for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an
+equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you
+the judge upon the colonel almost word for word."
+
+"Do so, by all means," said the cosmopolitan, well pleased.
+
+"Shall I give you the judge's philosophy, and all?"
+
+"As to that," rejoined the other gravely, pausing over the pipe-bowl he
+was filling, "the desirableness, to a man of a certain mind, of having
+another man's philosophy given, depends considerably upon what school of
+philosophy that other man belongs to. Of what school or system was the
+judge, pray?"
+
+"Why, though he knew how to read and write, the judge never had much
+schooling. But, I should say he belonged, if anything, to the
+free-school system. Yes, a true patriot, the judge went in strong for
+free-schools."
+
+"In philosophy? The man of a certain mind, then, while respecting the
+judge's patriotism, and not blind to the judge's capacity for narrative,
+such as he may prove to have, might, perhaps, with prudence, waive an
+opinion of the judge's probable philosophy. But I am no rigorist;
+proceed, I beg; his philosophy or not, as you please."
+
+"Well, I would mostly skip that part, only, to begin, some
+reconnoitering of the ground in a philosophical way the judge always
+deemed indispensable with strangers. For you must know that
+Indian-hating was no monopoly of Colonel Moredock's; but a passion, in
+one form or other, and to a degree, greater or less, largely shared
+among the class to which he belonged. And Indian-hating still exists;
+and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do.
+Indian-hating, then, shall be my first theme, and Colonel Moredock, the
+Indian-hater, my next and last."
+
+With which the stranger, settling himself in his seat, commenced--the
+hearer paying marked regard, slowly smoking, his glance, meanwhile,
+steadfastly abstracted towards the deck, but his right ear so disposed
+towards the speaker that each word came through as little atmospheric
+intervention as possible. To intensify the sense of hearing, he seemed
+to sink the sense of sight. No complaisance of mere speech could have
+been so flattering, or expressed such striking politeness as this mute
+eloquence of thoroughly digesting attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CONTAINING THE METAPHYSICS OF INDIAN-HATING, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF
+ONE EVIDENTLY NOT SO PREPOSSESSED AS ROUSSEAU IN FAVOR OF SAVAGES.
+
+
+"The judge always began in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of
+the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the
+frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian
+rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once prevailed, the
+philanthropist is surprised that Indian-hating has not in like degree
+ceased with it. He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the red
+man in much the same spirit that a jury does a murderer, or a trapper a
+wild cat--a creature, in whose behalf mercy were not wisdom; truce is
+vain; he must be executed.
+
+"'A curious point,' the judge would continue, 'which perhaps not
+everybody, even upon explanation, may fully understand; while, in order
+for any one to approach to an understanding, it is necessary for him to
+learn, or if he already know, to bear in mind, what manner of man the
+backwoodsman is; as for what manner of man the Indian is, many know,
+either from history or experience.
+
+"'The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a man
+strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call
+unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less
+hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to
+see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he
+must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence
+self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it
+stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in
+following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines
+such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum.
+To these fellow-beings of the wilds their untutored sagacity is their
+best dependence. If with either it prove faulty, if the 'possum's betray
+it to the trap, or the backwoodsman's mislead him into ambuscade, there
+are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame. As with the
+'possum, instincts prevail with the backwoodsman over precepts. Like the
+'possum, the backwoodsman presents the spectacle of a creature dwelling
+exclusively among the works of God, yet these, truth must confess, breed
+little in him of a godly mind. Small bowing and scraping is his, further
+than when with bent knee he points his rifle, or picks its flint. With
+few companions, solitude by necessity his lengthened lot, he stands the
+trial--no slight one, since, next to dying, solitude, rightly borne, is
+perhaps of fortitude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
+backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases is anxious to be
+so. The sight of smoke ten miles off is provocation to one more remove
+from man, one step deeper into nature. Is it that he feels that whatever
+man may be, man is not the universe? that glory, beauty, kindness, are
+not all engrossed by him? that as the presence of man frights birds
+away, so, many bird-like thoughts? Be that how it will, the backwoodsman
+is not without some fineness to his nature. Hairy Orson as he looks, it
+may be with him as with the Shetland seal--beneath the bristles lurks
+the fur.
+
+"'Though held in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to
+America what Alexander was to Asia--captain in the vanguard of
+conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or
+power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to
+those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship.
+Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in
+Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted
+legions, marched so through the elements, day after day. The tide of
+emigration, let it roll as it will, never overwhelms the backwoodsman
+into itself; he rides upon advance, as the Polynesian upon the comb of
+the surf.
+
+"'Thus, though he keep moving on through life, he maintains with respect
+to nature much the same unaltered relation throughout; with her
+creatures, too, including panthers and Indians. Hence, it is not
+unlikely that, accurate as the theory of the Peace Congress may be with
+respect to those two varieties of beings, among others, yet the
+backwoodsman might be qualified to throw out some practical suggestions.
+
+"'As the child born to a backwoodsman must in turn lead his father's
+life--a life which, as related to humanity, is related mainly to
+Indians--it is thought best not to mince matters, out of delicacy; but
+to tell the boy pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must
+expect from him. For however charitable it may be to view Indians as
+members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one
+ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their
+lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel.
+At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which
+backwoods' education is based. Accordingly, if in youth the backwoodsman
+incline to knowledge, as is generally the case, he hears little from his
+schoolmasters, the old chroniclers of the forest, but histories of
+Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing, Indian fraud and
+perfidy, Indian want of conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian
+diabolism--histories which, though of wild woods, are almost as full of
+things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the Annals of Europe. In
+these Indian narratives and traditions the lad is thoroughly grounded.
+"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The instinct of antipathy
+against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and
+bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother is to be
+loved, and an Indian to be hated.
+
+"'Such are the facts,' the judge would say, 'upon which, if one seek to
+moralize, he must do so with an eye to them. It is terrible that one
+creature should so regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an
+entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising? Surprising, that one
+should hate a race which he believes to be red from a cause akin to that
+which makes some tribes of garden insects green? A race whose name is
+upon the frontier a _memento mori_; painted to him in every evil light;
+now a horse-thief like those in Moyamensing; now an assassin like a New
+York rowdy; now a treaty-breaker like an Austrian; now a Palmer with
+poisoned arrows; now a judicial murderer and Jeffries, after a fierce
+farce of trial condemning his victim to bloody death; or a Jew with
+hospitable speeches cozening some fainting stranger into ambuscade,
+there to burk him, and account it a deed grateful to Manitou, his god.
+
+"'Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians than as
+examples of the backwoodsman's impression of them--in which the
+charitable may think he does them some injustice. Certain it is, the
+Indians themselves think so; quite unanimously, too. The Indians, in
+deed, protest against the backwoodsman's view of them; and some think
+that one cause of their returning his antipathy so sincerely as they do,
+is their moral indignation at being so libeled by him, as they really
+believe and say. But whether, on this or any point, the Indians should
+be permitted to testify for themselves, to the exclusion of other
+testimony, is a question that may be left to the Supreme Court. At any
+rate, it has been observed that when an Indian becomes a genuine
+proselyte to Christianity (such cases, however, not being very many;
+though, indeed, entire tribes are sometimes nominally brought to the
+true light,) he will not in that case conceal his enlightened
+conviction, that his race's portion by nature is total depravity; and,
+in that way, as much as admits that the backwoodsman's worst idea of it
+is not very far from true; while, on the other hand, those red men who
+are the greatest sticklers for the theory of Indian virtue, and Indian
+loving-kindness, are sometimes the arrantest horse-thieves and
+tomahawkers among them. So, at least, avers the backwoodsman. And
+though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he does, he fancies he
+is not ignorant that an Indian may in some points deceive himself almost
+as effectually as in bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and his
+practice as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency so
+extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it on the supposition
+that when a tomahawking red-man advances the notion of the benignity of
+the red race, it is but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which
+he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general conduct of life.'
+
+"In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with which the
+backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge used to think it might
+perhaps a little help, to consider what kind of stimulus to it is
+furnished in those forest histories and traditions before spoken of. In
+which behalf, he would tell the story of the little colony of Wrights
+and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia, who, after
+successive removals with their families, at last established themselves
+near the southern frontier of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: 'They were
+strong, brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those days,
+theirs was no love of conflict for conflict's sake. Step by step they
+had been lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
+seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
+during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
+built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
+persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
+tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
+cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
+spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
+cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
+Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
+enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
+first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
+hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
+on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
+the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
+renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.
+
+"'But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly blind them to what the
+chief had been; so that, though in no small degree influenced by his
+change of bearing, they still distrusted him enough to covenant with
+him, among other articles on their side, that though friendly visits
+should be exchanged between the wigwams and the cabins, yet the five
+cousins should never, on any account, be expected to enter the chief's
+lodge together. The intention was, though they reserved it, that if
+ever, under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them mischief, and
+effect it, it should be but partially; so that some of the five might
+survive, not only for their families' sake, but also for retribution's.
+Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
+carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a
+feast of bear's meat, and there, by stratagem, ended them. Years after,
+over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief,
+reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
+jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant
+first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting
+Mocmohoc."'
+
+"At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his hand, and rolling
+his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough voice, 'Circling wiles and bloody
+lusts. The acuteness and genius of the chief but make him the more
+atrocious.'
+
+"After another pause, he would begin an imaginary kind of dialogue
+between a backwoodsman and a questioner:
+
+"'But are all Indians like Mocmohoc?--Not all have proved such; but in
+the least harmful may lie his germ. There is an Indian nature. "Indian
+blood is in me," is the half-breed's threat.--But are not some Indians
+kind?--Yes, but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed simple--at
+all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the red men being taken from
+the active, and those accounted wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind
+Indians have but proportionate influence. And kind Indians may be forced
+to do unkind biddings. So "beware the Indian, kind or unkind," said
+Daniel Boone, who lost his sons by them.--But, have all you backwoodsmen
+been some way victimized by Indians?--No.--Well, and in certain cases
+may not at least some few of you be favored by them?--Yes, but scarce
+one among us so self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his
+personal exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off against the
+contrary experience of so many others, as that he must needs, in a
+general way, think well of Indians; or, if he do, an arrow in his flank
+might suggest a pertinent doubt.
+
+"'In short,' according to the judge, 'if we at all credit the
+backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be taken aright, must be
+considered as being not so much on his own account as on others', or
+jointly on both accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some
+member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed or scalped. What
+avails, then, that some one Indian, or some two or three, treat a
+backwoodsman friendly-like? He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from
+me, give him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how know I what
+involuntary preparations may be going on in him for things as unbeknown
+in present time to him as me--a sort of chemical preparation in the
+soul for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for malady.'
+
+"Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words, you see, but the judge
+found him expression for his meaning. And this point he would conclude
+with saying, that, 'what is called a "friendly Indian" is a very rare
+sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness exceeds that
+of a "friendly Indian" turned enemy. A coward friend, he makes a valiant
+foe.
+
+"'But, thus far the passion in question has been viewed in a general way
+as that of a community. When to his due share of this the backwoodsman
+adds his private passion, we have then the stock out of which is formed,
+if formed at all, the Indian-hater _par excellence_.'
+
+"The Indian-hater _par excellence_ the judge defined to be one 'who,
+having with his mother's milk drank in small love for red men, in youth
+or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at
+their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same,
+some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her
+solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly
+does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as
+straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling
+thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus thought, assimilate with
+it, and swell it. At last, taking counsel with the elements, he comes to
+his resolution. An intenser Hannibal, he makes a vow, the hate of which
+is a vortex from whose suction scarce the remotest chip of the guilty
+race may reasonably feel secure. Next, he declares himself and settles
+his temporal affairs. With the solemnity of a Spaniard turned monk, he
+takes leave of his kin; or rather, these leave-takings have something of
+the still more impressive finality of death-bed adieus. Last, he commits
+himself to the forest primeval; there, so long as life shall be his, to
+act upon a calm, cloistered scheme of strategical, implacable, and
+lonesome vengeance. Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected,
+patient; less seen than felt; snuffing, smelling--a Leather-stocking
+Nemesis. In the settlements he will not be seen again; in eyes of old
+companions tears may start at some chance thing that speaks of him; but
+they never look for him, nor call; they know he will not come. Suns and
+seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap
+in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-hater is good as gone to his
+long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph.'
+
+"Here the judge, not unaffected, would pause again, but presently
+resume: 'How evident that in strict speech there can be no biography of
+an Indian-hater _par excellence_, any more than one of a sword-fish, or
+other deep-sea denizen; or, which is still less imaginable, one of a
+dead man. The career of the Indian-hater _par excellence_ has the
+impenetrability of the fate of a lost steamer. Doubtless, events,
+terrible ones, have happened, must have happened; but the powers that be
+in nature have taken order that they shall never become news.
+
+"'But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
+Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft
+enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail;
+a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too,
+though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green harbor
+which he does not forget. It is with him as with the Papist converts in
+Senegal; fasting and mortification prove hard to bear.'
+
+"The judge, with his usual judgment, always thought that the intense
+solitude to which the Indian-hater consigns himself, has, by its
+overawing influence, no little to do with relaxing his vow. He would
+relate instances where, after some months' lonely scoutings, the
+Indian-hater is suddenly seized with a sort of calenture; hurries openly
+towards the first smoke, though he knows it is an Indian's, announces
+himself as a lost hunter, gives the savage his rifle, throws himself
+upon his charity, embraces him with much affection, imploring the
+privilege of living a while in his sweet companionship. What is too
+often the sequel of so distempered a procedure may be best known by
+those who best know the Indian. Upon the whole, the judge, by two and
+thirty good and sufficient reasons, would maintain that there was no
+known vocation whose consistent following calls for such
+self-containings as that of the Indian-hater _par excellence_. In the
+highest view, he considered such a soul one peeping out but once an age.
+
+"For the diluted Indian-hater, although the vacations he permits himself
+impair the keeping of the character, yet, it should not be overlooked
+that this is the man who, by his very infirmity, enables us to form
+surmises, however inadequate, of what Indian-hating in its perfection
+is."
+
+"One moment," gently interrupted the cosmopolitan here, "and let me
+refill my calumet."
+
+Which being done, the other proceeded:--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+SOME ACCOUNT OF A MAN OF QUESTIONABLE MORALITY, BUT WHO, NEVERTHELESS,
+WOULD SEEM ENTITLED TO THE ESTEEM OF THAT EMINENT ENGLISH MORALIST WHO
+SAID HE LIKED A GOOD HATER.
+
+
+"Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus far said was but the
+introduction, the judge, who, like you, was a great smoker, would insist
+upon all the company taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one
+himself, rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice,
+say--'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'
+when, after several whiffs taken standing in deep silence and deeper
+reverie, he would resume his seat and his discourse, something in these
+words:
+
+"'Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater _par excellence_,
+he yet cherished a kind of sentiment towards the red man, and in that
+degree, and so acted out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the
+tribute just rendered to his memory.
+
+"'John Moredock was the son of a woman married thrice, and thrice
+widowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had
+been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
+wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last
+found herself at a little clearing, afterwards Vincennes. There she
+joined a company about to remove to the new country of Illinois. On the
+eastern side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on the west
+side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were, near the mouth of the
+Kaskaskia, some old hamlets of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets,
+very innocent and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's party
+was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines, they meant to settle.
+They embarked upon the Wabash in boats, proposing descending that stream
+into the Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
+towards the point to be reached. All went well till they made the rock
+of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where they had to land and drag
+their boats round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party of
+Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered nearly all of them. The
+widow was among the victims with her children, John excepted, who, some
+fifty miles distant, was following with a second party.
+
+"He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left in nature sole
+survivor of his race. Other youngsters might have turned mourners; he
+turned avenger. His nerves were electric wires--sensitive, but steel. He
+was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither to flush nor
+pale. It is said that when the tidings were brought him, he was ashore
+sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison--and as the
+tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but
+slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as
+if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his
+intent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms,
+prevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to
+discover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a
+band of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even among
+Indians, and who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew. No
+opportunity for action being at the time presented, he dismissed his
+friends; told them to go on, thanking them, and saying he would ask
+their aid at some future day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds,
+he watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable chance having
+occurred--it being midwinter, and the savages encamped, apparently to
+remain so--he anew mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,
+getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in such panic that
+everything was left behind but their weapons. During the winter, much
+the same thing happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next year he
+sought them at the head of a party pledged to serve him for forty days.
+At last the hour came. It was on the shore of the Mississippi. From
+their covert, Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains in
+the red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled island in
+mid-stream, there the more securely to lodge; for Moredock's retributive
+spirit in the wilderness spoke ever to their trepidations now, like the
+voice calling through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the
+whites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden with their arms.
+On landing, Moredock cut the fastenings of the enemy's canoes, and
+turned them, with his own raft, adrift; resolved that there should be
+neither escape for the Indians, nor safety, except in victory, for the
+whites. Victorious the whites were; but three of the Indians saved
+themselves by taking to the stream. Moredock's band lost not a man.
+
+"'Three of the murderers survived. He knew their names and persons. In
+the course of three years each successively fell by his own hand. All
+were now dead. But this did not suffice. He made no avowal, but to kill
+Indians had become his passion. As an athlete, he had few equals; as a
+shot, none; in single combat, not to be beaten. Master of that
+woodland-cunning enabling the adept to subsist where the tyro would
+perish, and expert in all those arts by which an enemy is pursued for
+weeks, perhaps months, without once suspecting it, he kept to the
+forest. The solitary Indian that met him, died. When a murder was
+descried, he would either secretly pursue their track for some chance to
+strike at least one blow; or if, while thus engaged, he himself was
+discovered, he would elude them by superior skill.
+
+"'Many years he spent thus; and though after a time he was, in a degree,
+restored to the ordinary life of the region and period, yet it is
+believed that John Moredock never let pass an opportunity of quenching
+an Indian. Sins of commission in that kind may have been his, but none
+of omission.
+
+"'It were to err to suppose,' the judge would say, 'that this gentleman
+was naturally ferocious, or peculiarly possessed of those qualities,
+which, unhelped by provocation of events, tend to withdraw man from
+social life. On the contrary, Moredock was an example of something
+apparently self-contradicting, certainly curious, but, at the same time,
+undeniable: namely, that nearly all Indian-haters have at bottom loving
+hearts; at any rate, hearts, if anything, more generous than the
+average. Certain it is, that, to the degree in which he mingled in the
+life of the settlements, Moredock showed himself not without humane
+feelings. No cold husband or colder father, he; and, though often and
+long away from his household, bore its needs in mind, and provided for
+them. He could be very convivial; told a good story (though never of his
+more private exploits), and sung a capital song. Hospitable, not
+backward to help a neighbor; by report, benevolent, as retributive, in
+secret; while, in a general manner, though sometimes grave--as is not
+unusual with men of his complexion, a sultry and tragical brown--yet
+with nobody, Indians excepted, otherwise than courteous in a manly
+fashion; a moccasined gentleman, admired and loved. In fact, no one more
+popular, as an incident to follow may prove.
+
+"'His bravery, whether in Indian fight or any other, was unquestionable.
+An officer in the ranging service during the war of 1812, he acquitted
+himself with more than credit. Of his soldierly character, this anecdote
+is told: Not long after Hull's dubious surrender at Detroit, Moredock
+with some of his rangers rode up at night to a log-house, there to rest
+till morning. The horses being attended to, supper over, and
+sleeping-places assigned the troop, the host showed the colonel his
+best bed, not on the ground like the rest, but a bed that stood on legs.
+But out of delicacy, the guest declined to monopolize it, or, indeed, to
+occupy it at all; when, to increase the inducement, as the host thought,
+he was told that a general officer had once slept in that bed. "Who,
+pray?" asked the colonel. "General Hull." "Then you must not take
+offense," said the colonel, buttoning up his coat, "but, really, no
+coward's bed, for me, however comfortable." Accordingly he took up with
+valor's bed--a cold one on the ground.
+
+"'At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial council of
+Illinois, and at the formation of the state government, was pressed to
+become candidate for governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he
+declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those who best knew
+him the cause was not wholly unsurmised. In his official capacity he
+might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes,
+a thing not to be thought of. And even did no such contingecy arise, yet
+he felt there would be an impropriety in the Governor of Illinois
+stealing out now and then, during a recess of the legislative bodies,
+for a few days' shooting at human beings, within the limits of his
+paternal chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large honors,
+from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These were incompatibles.
+In short, he was not unaware that to be a consistent Indian-hater
+involves the renunciation of ambition, with its objects--the pomps and
+glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing such things
+vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them, therefore, so far as this
+goes, Indian-hating, whatever may be thought of it in other respects,
+may be regarded as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout
+sentiment.'"
+
+Here the narrator paused. Then, after his long and irksome sitting,
+started to his feet, and regulating his disordered shirt-frill, and at
+the same time adjustingly shaking his legs down in his rumpled
+pantaloons, concluded: "There, I have done; having given you, not my
+story, mind, or my thoughts, but another's. And now, for your friend
+Coonskins, I doubt not, that, if the judge were here, he would pronounce
+him a sort of comprehensive Colonel Moredock, who, too much spreading
+his passion, shallows it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
+
+
+"Charity, charity!" exclaimed the cosmopolitan, "never a sound judgment
+without charity. When man judges man, charity is less a bounty from our
+mercy than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of human
+fallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should be what you
+hint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly. His outside deceived you;
+at first it came near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,
+owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself a little open;
+I seized that lucky chance, I say, to inspect his heart, and found it an
+inviting oyster in a forbidding shell. His outside is but put on.
+Ashamed of his own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange old
+uncles in romances do their nephews--snapping at them all the time and
+yet loving them as the apple of their eye."
+
+"Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is not what I took him
+for. Yes, for aught I know, you may be right."
+
+"Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only
+for its being graceful. And now, since you have renounced your notion,
+I should be happy, would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too.
+That, story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder. To me
+some parts don't hang together. If the man of hate, how could John
+Moredock be also the man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulous
+as Hercules'; or else, those being true, what was thrown in about his
+geniality is but garnish. In short, if ever there was such a man as
+Moredock, he, in my way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;
+and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused on one race of
+men. Though, like suicide, man-hatred would seem peculiarly a Roman and
+a Grecian passion--that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome nor
+Greece can produce the equal in man-hatred of Colonel Moredock, as the
+judge and you have painted him. As for this Indian-hating in general, I
+can only say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbon
+earthquake: 'Sir, I don't believe it.'"
+
+"Didn't believe it? Why not? Clashed with any little prejudice of his?"
+
+"Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain other person,"
+with an ingenuous smile, "he had sensibilities, and those were pained."
+
+"Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn't he?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"Suppose he had been something else."
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake."
+
+"Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?"
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders alleged to have
+been perpetrated under the pall of smoke and ashes. The infidels of the
+time were quick to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,
+while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certain
+cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claims
+to despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it."
+
+"You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity."
+
+"I do not jumble them; they are coordinates. For misanthropy, springing
+from the same root with disbelief of religion, is twin with that. It
+springs from the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and what
+is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a
+ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not,
+or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't you see?
+In either case the vice consists in a want of confidence."
+
+"What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?"
+
+"Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is hydrophobia. Don't know;
+never had it. But I have often wondered what it can be like. Can a
+misanthrope feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable with
+himself? Can a misanthrope smoke a cigar and muse? How fares he in
+solitude? Has the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a peach
+refresh him? The effervescence of champagne, with what eye does he
+behold it? Is summer good to him? Of long winters how much can he
+sleep? What are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, when
+suddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades of thunder?"
+
+"Like you," said the stranger, "I can't understand the misanthrope. So
+far as my experience goes, either mankind is worthy one's best love, or
+else I have been lucky. Never has it been my lot to have been wronged,
+though but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting,
+superciliousness, disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that brood, I know
+but by report. Cold regards tossed over the sinister shoulder of a
+former friend, ingratitude in a beneficiary, treachery in a
+confidant--such things may be; but I must take somebody's word for it.
+Now the bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not praise it?"
+
+"Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so. Man is a noble fellow,
+and in an age of satirists, I am not displeased to find one who has
+confidence in him, and bravely stands up for him."
+
+"Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what is more, am always
+ready to do a good deed for him."
+
+"You are a man after my own heart," responded the cosmopolitan, with a
+candor which lost nothing by its calmness. "Indeed," he added, "our
+sentiments agree so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,
+few but the nicest critics might determine."
+
+"Since we are thus joined in mind," said the stranger, "why not be
+joined in hand?"
+
+"My hand is always at the service of virtue," frankly extending it to
+him as to virtue personified.
+
+"And now," said the stranger, cordially retaining his hand, "you know
+our fashion here at the West. It may be a little low, but it is kind.
+Briefly, we being newly-made friends must drink together. What say you?"
+
+"Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so many old friends, all
+free-hearted, convivial gentlemen, that really, really, though for the
+present I succeed in mastering it, I am at bottom almost in the
+condition of a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, ere
+night reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity than his
+heart."
+
+At the allusion to old friends, the stranger's countenance a little
+fell, as a jealous lover's might at hearing from his sweetheart of
+former ones. But rallying, he said: "No doubt they treated you to
+something strong; but wine--surely, that gentle creature, wine; come,
+let us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables here.
+Come, come." Then essaying to roll about like a full pipe in the sea,
+sang in a voice which had had more of good-fellowship, had there been
+less of a latent squeak to it:
+
+    "Let us drink of the wine of the vine benign,
+    That sparkles warm in Zansovine."
+
+The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood as sorely tempted and
+wavering a moment; then, abruptly stepping towards him, with a look of
+dissolved surrender, said: "When mermaid songs move figure-heads, then
+may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments on me. But a good
+fellow, singing a good song, he woos forth my every spike, so that my
+whole hull, like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with
+acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain sort, it is in
+vain trying to be resolute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE BOON COMPANIONS.
+
+
+The wine, port, being called for, and the two seated at the little
+table, a natural pause of convivial expectancy ensued; the stranger's
+eye turned towards the bar near by, watching the red-cheeked,
+white-aproned man there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly
+arranging the salver and glasses; when, with a sudden impulse turning
+round his head towards his companion, he said, "Ours is friendship at
+first sight, ain't it?"
+
+"It is," was the placidly pleased reply: "and the same may be said of
+friendship at first sight as of love at first sight: it is the only true
+one, the only noble one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding
+his way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by night, into an
+enemy's harbor?"
+
+"Right. Boldly in before the wind. Agreeable, how we always agree.
+By-the-way, though but a formality, friends should know each other's
+names. What is yours, pray?"
+
+"Francis Goodman. But those who love me, call me Frank. And yours?"
+
+"Charles Arnold Noble. But do you call me Charlie."
+
+"I will, Charlie; nothing like preserving in manhood the fraternal
+familiarities of youth. It proves the heart a rosy boy to the last."
+
+"My sentiments again. Ah!"
+
+It was a smiling waiter, with the smiling bottle, the cork drawn; a
+common quart bottle, but for the occasion fitted at bottom into a little
+bark basket, braided with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian
+fashion. This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it with
+affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend
+not to, a handsome red label pasted on the bottle, bearing the capital
+letters, P. W.
+
+"P. W.," said he at last, perplexedly eying the pleasing poser, "now
+what does P. W. mean?"
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said the cosmopolitan gravely, "if it stood for port
+wine. You called for port wine, didn't you?"
+
+"Why so it is, so it is!"
+
+"I find some little mysteries not very hard to clear up," said the
+other, quietly crossing his legs.
+
+This commonplace seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of
+his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a
+strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good
+wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both
+glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air
+of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that
+now-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; that almost every variety on sale
+is less the vintage of vineyards than laboratories; that most
+bar-keepers are but a set of male Brinvilliarses, with complaisant arts
+practicing against the lives of their best friends, their customers."
+
+A shade passed over the cosmopolitan. After a few minutes' down-cast
+musing, he lifted his eyes and said: "I have long thought, my dear
+Charlie, that the spirit in which wine is regarded by too many in these
+days is one of the most painful examples of want of confidence. Look at
+these glasses. He who could mistrust poison in this wine would mistrust
+consumption in Hebe's cheek. While, as for suspicions against the
+dealers in wine and sellers of it, those who cherish such suspicions can
+have but limited trust in the human heart. Each human heart they must
+think to be much like each bottle of port, not such port as this, but
+such port as they hold to. Strange traducers, who see good faith in
+nothing, however sacred. Not medicines, not the wine in sacraments, has
+escaped them. The doctor with his phial, and the priest with his
+chalice, they deem equally the unconscious dispensers of bogus cordials
+to the dying."
+
+"Dreadful!"
+
+"Dreadful indeed," said the cosmopolitan solemnly. "These distrusters
+stab at the very soul of confidence. If this wine," impressively holding
+up his full glass, "if this wine with its bright promise be not true,
+how shall man be, whose promise can be no brighter? But if wine be
+false, while men are true, whither shall fly convivial geniality? To
+think of sincerely-genial souls drinking each other's health at unawares
+in perfidious and murderous drugs!"
+
+"Horrible!"
+
+"Much too much so to be true, Charlie. Let us forget it. Come, you are
+my entertainer on this occasion, and yet you don't pledge me. I have
+been waiting for it."
+
+"Pardon, pardon," half confusedly and half ostentatiously lifting his
+glass. "I pledge you, Frank, with my whole heart, believe me," taking a
+draught too decorous to be large, but which, small though it was, was
+followed by a slight involuntary wryness to the mouth.
+
+"And I return you the pledge, Charlie, heart-warm as it came to me, and
+honest as this wine I drink it in," reciprocated the cosmopolitan with
+princely kindliness in his gesture, taking a generous swallow,
+concluding in a smack, which, though audible, was not so much so as to
+be unpleasing.
+
+"Talking of alleged spuriousness of wines," said he, tranquilly setting
+down his glass, and then sloping back his head and with friendly
+fixedness eying the wine, "perhaps the strangest part of those allegings
+is, that there is, as claimed, a kind of man who, while convinced that
+on this continent most wines are shams, yet still drinks away at them;
+accounting wine so fine a thing, that even the sham article is better
+than none at all. And if the temperance people urge that, by this
+course, he will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers,
+'And do you think I don't know that? But health without cheer I hold a
+bore; and cheer, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am
+willing to pay.'"
+
+"Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably bacchanalian."
+
+"Yes, if such a man there be, which I don't credit. It is a fable, but a
+fable from which I once heard a person of less genius than grotesqueness
+draw a moral even more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that
+it illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition
+ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly associate with men,
+though, at the same time, he believed the greater part of men
+false-hearted--accounting society so sweet a thing that even the
+spurious sort was better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites
+urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in
+security, he answers, 'And do you think I don't know that? But security
+without society I hold a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort,
+has its price, which I am willing to pay.'"
+
+"A most singular theory," said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying
+his companion with some inquisitiveness, "indeed, Frank, a most
+slanderous thought," he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary
+look almost of being personally aggrieved.
+
+"In one sense it merits all you say, and more," rejoined the other with
+wonted mildness, "but, for a kind of drollery in it, charity might,
+perhaps, overlook something of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so
+blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human
+mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are
+clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all
+the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any
+rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of
+beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm--nearly all men
+agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else--and in
+its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world,
+that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man
+capable of a good loud laugh--seem how he may in other things--can
+hardly be a heartless scamp."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale
+pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it
+were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some
+mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and
+curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"I see," said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a
+kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in
+this case accompanied it, "I see; and the way in which it moves you,
+Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of.
+Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so.
+For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a
+sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and
+smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may
+laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!--no no, no no."
+
+"Why Charlie, your explosions illustrate my remarks almost as aptly as
+the chemist's imitation volcano did his lectures. But even if experience
+did not sanction the proverb, that a good laugher cannot be a bad man, I
+should yet feel bound in confidence to believe it, since it is a saying
+current among the people, and I doubt not originated among them, and
+hence _must_ be true; for the voice of the people is the voice of truth.
+Don't you think so?"
+
+"Of course I do. If Truth don't speak through the people, it never
+speaks at all; so I heard one say."
+
+"A true saying. But we stray. The popular notion of humor, considered as
+index to the heart, would seem curiously confirmed by Aristotle--I
+think, in his 'Politics,' (a work, by-the-by, which, however it may be
+viewed upon the whole, yet, from the tenor of certain sections, should
+not, without precaution, be placed in the hands of youth)--who remarks
+that the least lovable men in history seem to have had for humor not
+only a disrelish, but a hatred; and this, in some cases, along with an
+extraordinary dry taste for practical punning. I remember it is related
+of Phalaris, the capricious tyrant of Sicily, that he once caused a poor
+fellow to be beheaded on a horse-block, for no other cause than having a
+horse-laugh."
+
+"Funny Phalaris!"
+
+"Cruel Phalaris!"
+
+As after fire-crackers, there was a pause, both looking downward on the
+table as if mutually struck by the contrast of exclamations, and
+pondering upon its significance, if any. So, at least, it seemed; but on
+one side it might have been otherwise: for presently glancing up, the
+cosmopolitan said: "In the instance of the moral, drolly cynic, drawn
+from the queer bacchanalian fellow we were speaking of, who had his
+reasons for still drinking spurious wine, though knowing it to be
+such--there, I say, we have an example of what is certainly a wicked
+thought, but conceived in humor. I will now give you one of a wicked
+thought conceived in wickedness. You shall compare the two, and answer,
+whether in the one case the sting is not neutralized by the humor, and
+whether in the other the absence of humor does not leave the sting free
+play. I once heard a wit, a mere wit, mind, an irreligious Parisian wit,
+say, with regard to the temperance movement, that none, to their
+personal benefit, joined it sooner than niggards and knaves; because, as
+he affirmed, the one by it saved money and the other made money, as in
+ship-owners cutting off the spirit ration without giving its equivalent,
+and gamblers and all sorts of subtle tricksters sticking to cold water,
+the better to keep a cool head for business."
+
+"A wicked thought, indeed!" cried the stranger, feelingly.
+
+"Yes," leaning over the table on his elbow and genially gesturing at him
+with his forefinger: "yes, and, as I said, you don't remark the sting of
+it?"
+
+"I do, indeed. Most calumnious thought, Frank!"
+
+"No humor in it?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"Well now, Charlie," eying him with moist regard, "let us drink. It
+appears to me you don't drink freely."
+
+"Oh, oh--indeed, indeed--I am not backward there. I protest, a freer
+drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal
+snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it.
+"By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention
+from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital
+thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me so, I got it by heart at
+two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in
+something the same relation to blank verse which that does to rhyme. A
+sort of free-and-easy chant with refrains to it. Shall I recite it?"
+
+"Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to hear," rejoined the
+cosmopolitan, "the more so," he gravely proceeded, "as of late I have
+observed in some quarters a disposition to disparage the press."
+
+"Disparage the press?"
+
+"Even so; some gloomy souls affirming that it is proving with that great
+invention as with brandy or eau-de-vie, which, upon its first discovery,
+was believed by the doctors to be, as its French name implies, a
+panacea--a notion which experience, it may be thought, has not fully
+verified."
+
+"You surprise me, Frank. Are there really those who so decry the press?
+Tell me more. Their reasons."
+
+"Reasons they have none, but affirmations they have many; among other
+things affirming that, while under dynastic despotisms, the press is to
+the people little but an improvisatore, under popular ones it is too apt
+to be their Jack Cade. In fine, these sour sages regard the press in the
+light of a Colt's revolver, pledged to no cause but his in whose chance
+hands it may be; deeming the one invention an improvement upon the pen,
+much akin to what the other is upon the pistol; involving, along with
+the multiplication of the barrel, no consecration of the aim. The term
+'freedom of the press' they consider on a par with _freedom of Colt's
+revolver_. Hence, for truth and the right, they hold, to indulge hopes
+from the one is little more sensible than for Kossuth and Mazzini to
+indulge hopes from the other. Heart-breaking views enough, you think;
+but their refutation is in every true reformer's contempt. Is it not
+so?"
+
+"Without doubt. But go on, go on. I like to hear you," flatteringly
+brimming up his glass for him.
+
+"For one," continued the cosmopolitan, grandly swelling his chest, "I
+hold the press to be neither the people's improvisatore, nor Jack Cade;
+neither their paid fool, nor conceited drudge. I think interest never
+prevails with it over duty. The press still speaks for truth though
+impaled, in the teeth of lies though intrenched. Disdaining for it the
+poor name of cheap diffuser of news, I claim for it the independent
+apostleship of Advancer of Knowledge:--the iron Paul! Paul, I say; for
+not only does the press advance knowledge, but righteousness. In the
+press, as in the sun, resides, my dear Charlie, a dedicated principle of
+beneficent force and light. For the Satanic press, by its coappearance
+with the apostolic, it is no more an aspersion to that, than to the true
+sun is the coappearance of the mock one. For all the baleful-looking
+parhelion, god Apollo dispenses the day. In a word, Charlie, what the
+sovereign of England is titularly, I hold the press to be
+actually--Defender of the Faith!--defender of the faith in the final
+triumph of truth over error, metaphysics over superstition, theory over
+falsehood, machinery over nature, and the good man over the bad. Such
+are my views, which, if stated at some length, you, Charlie, must
+pardon, for it is a theme upon which I cannot speak with cold brevity.
+And now I am impatient for your panegyric, which, I doubt not, will put
+mine to the blush."
+
+"It is rather in the blush-giving vein," smiled the other; "but such as
+it is, Frank, you shall have it."
+
+"Tell me when you are about to begin," said the cosmopolitan, "for, when
+at public dinners the press is toasted, I always drink the toast
+standing, and shall stand while you pronounce the panegyric."
+
+"Very good, Frank; you may stand up now."
+
+He accordingly did so, when the stranger likewise rose, and uplifting
+the ruby wine-flask, began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+OPENING WITH A POETICAL EULOGY OF THE PRESS AND CONTINUING WITH TALK
+INSPIRED BY THE SAME.
+
+
+"'Praise be unto the press, not Faust's, but Noah's; let us extol and
+magnify the press, the true press of Noah, from which breaketh the true
+morning. Praise be unto the press, not the black press but the red; let
+us extol and magnify the press, the red press of Noah, from which cometh
+inspiration. Ye pressmen of the Rhineland and the Rhine, join in with
+all ye who tread out the glad tidings on isle Madeira or Mitylene.--Who
+giveth redness of eyes by making men long to tarry at the fine
+print?--Praise be unto the press, the rosy press of Noah, which giveth
+rosiness of hearts, by making men long to tarry at the rosy wine.--Who
+hath babblings and contentions? Who, without cause, inflicteth wounds?
+Praise be unto the press, the kindly press of Noah, which knitteth
+friends, which fuseth foes.--Who may be bribed?--Who may be
+bound?--Praise be unto the press, the free press of Noah, which will not
+lie for tyrants, but make tyrants speak the truth.--Then praise be unto
+the press, the frank old press of Noah; then let us extol and magnify
+the press, the brave old press of Noah; then let us with roses garland
+and enwreath the press, the grand old press of Noah, from which flow
+streams of knowledge which give man a bliss no more unreal than his
+pain.'"
+
+"You deceived me," smiled the cosmopolitan, as both now resumed their
+seats; "you roguishly took advantage of my simplicity; you archly played
+upon my enthusiasm. But never mind; the offense, if any, was so
+charming, I almost wish you would offend again. As for certain poetic
+left-handers in your panegyric, those I cheerfully concede to the
+indefinite privileges of the poet. Upon the whole, it was quite in the
+lyric style--a style I always admire on account of that spirit of
+Sibyllic confidence and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime
+ingredient. But come," glancing at his companion's glass, "for a lyrist,
+you let the bottle stay with you too long."
+
+"The lyre and the vine forever!" cried the other in his rapture, or what
+seemed such, heedless of the hint, "the vine, the vine! is it not the
+most graceful and bounteous of all growths? And, by its being such, is
+not something meant--divinely meant? As I live, a vine, a Catawba vine,
+shall be planted on my grave!"
+
+"A genial thought; but your glass there."
+
+"Oh, oh," taking a moderate sip, "but you, why don't you drink?"
+
+"You have forgotten, my dear Charlie, what I told you of my previous
+convivialities to-day."
+
+"Oh," cried the other, now in manner quite abandoned to the lyric mood,
+not without contrast to the easy sociability of his companion. "Oh, one
+can't drink too much of good old wine--the genuine, mellow old port.
+Pooh, pooh! drink away."
+
+"Then keep me company."
+
+"Of course," with a flourish, taking another sip--"suppose we have
+cigars. Never mind your pipe there; a pipe is best when alone. I say,
+waiter, bring some cigars--your best."
+
+They were brought in a pretty little bit of western pottery,
+representing some kind of Indian utensil, mummy-colored, set down in a
+mass of tobacco leaves, whose long, green fans, fancifully grouped,
+formed with peeps of red the sides of the receptacle.
+
+Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of pottery, but smaller,
+both globes; one in guise of an apple flushed with red and gold to the
+life, and, through a cleft at top, you saw it was hollow. This was for
+the ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a
+wasp's nest, was the match-box. "There," said the stranger, pushing over
+the cigar-stand, "help yourself, and I will touch you off," taking a
+match. "Nothing like tobacco," he added, when the fumes of the cigar
+began to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, "I will have
+a Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the Catawba vine."
+
+"Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself was good--but you
+don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently--let me fill your glass again. You don't drink."
+
+"Thank you; but no more just now. Fill _your_ glass."
+
+"Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it
+strikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or
+fanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious
+abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron
+boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain
+revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists
+must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the
+cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still,
+after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good
+goads him on to his fierce misery once more--poor eunuch!"
+
+"I agree with you," said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, "but
+you don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was saying about----"
+
+"But _why_ don't you smoke--come. You don't think that tobacco, when in
+league with wine, too much enhances the latter's vinous quality--in
+short, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do
+you?"
+
+"To think that, were treason to good fellowship," was the warm
+disclaimer. "No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in
+my mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't
+smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But
+smoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink. By-the-way, while we
+sit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing,
+your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought
+to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real
+heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind."
+
+"Why," with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, "I thought
+I had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better
+understanding of my eccentric friend."
+
+"Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know.
+In truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance
+things which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had
+with him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West
+here, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less
+to make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles
+sometimes effect great results, I shouldn't wonder, if his history were
+probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias
+to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of
+Polonius to Laertes--advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is
+almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of
+money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small
+retail traders in New England."
+
+"I do hope now, my dear fellow," said the cosmopolitan with an air of
+bland protest, "that, in my presence at least, you will throw out
+nothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans."
+
+"Hey-day and high times indeed," exclaimed the other, nettled, "sons of
+the Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must
+do them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom
+Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies."
+
+"Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius," observed
+the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a
+superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; "how do you
+characterize his advice to Laertes?"
+
+"As false, fatal, and calumnious," exclaimed the other, with a degree of
+ardor befitting one resenting a stigma upon the family escutcheon, "and
+for a father to give his son--monstrous. The case you see is this: The
+son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke
+God's blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams
+him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France,
+with maxims of Italy."
+
+"No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not among other things
+say:--
+
+    'The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+    Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel'?
+
+Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?"
+
+"Yes it is, Frank. Don't you see? Laertes is to take the best of care of
+his friends--his proved friends, on the same principle that a
+wine-corker takes the best of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle
+gets a sharp knock and don't break, he says, 'Ah, I'll keep that
+bottle.' Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular use for it."
+
+"Dear, dear!" appealingly turning in distress, "that--that kind of
+criticism is--is--in fact--it won't do."
+
+"Won't truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with everybody, do but
+consider the tone of the speech. Now I put it to you, Frank; is there
+anything in it hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything
+like 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor?' And, in other points,
+what desire seems most in the father's mind, that his son should cherish
+nobleness for himself, or be on his guard against the contrary thing in
+others? An irreligious warner, Frank--no devout counselor, is Polonius.
+I hate him. Nor can I bear to hear your veterans of the world affirm,
+that he who steers through life by the advice of old Polonius will not
+steer among the breakers."
+
+"No, no--I hope nobody affirms that," rejoined the cosmopolitan, with
+tranquil abandonment; sideways reposing his arm at full length upon the
+table. "I hope nobody affirms that; because, if Polonius' advice be
+taken in your sense, then the recommendation of it by men of experience
+would appear to involve more or less of an unhandsome sort of reflection
+upon human nature. And yet," with a perplexed air, "your suggestions
+have put things in such a strange light to me as in fact a little to
+disturb my previous notions of Polonius and what he says. To be frank,
+by your ingenuity you have unsettled me there, to that degree that were
+it not for our coincidence of opinion in general, I should almost think
+I was now at length beginning to feel the ill effect of an immature
+mind, too much consorting with a mature one, except on the ground of
+first principles in common."
+
+"Really and truly," cried the other with a kind of tickled modesty and
+pleased concern, "mine is an understanding too weak to throw out
+grapnels and hug another to it. I have indeed heard of some great
+scholars in these days, whose boast is less that they have made
+disciples than victims. But for me, had I the power to do such things, I
+have not the heart to desire."
+
+"I believe you, my dear Charlie. And yet, I repeat, by your commentaries
+on Polonius you have, I know not how, unsettled me; so that now I don't
+exactly see how Shakespeare meant the words he puts in Polonius' mouth."
+
+"Some say that he meant them to open people's eyes; but I don't think
+so."
+
+"Open their eyes?" echoed the cosmopolitan, slowly expanding his; "what
+is there in this world for one to open his eyes to? I mean in the sort
+of invidious sense you cite?"
+
+"Well, others say he meant to corrupt people's morals; and still others,
+that he had no express intention at all, but in effect opens their eyes
+and corrupts their morals in one operation. All of which I reject."
+
+"Of course you reject so crude an hypothesis; and yet, to confess, in
+reading Shakespeare in my closet, struck by some passage, I have laid
+down the volume, and said: 'This Shakespeare is a queer man.' At times
+seeming irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There appears
+to be a certain--what shall I call it?--hidden sun, say, about him, at
+once enlightening and mystifying. Now, I should be afraid to say what I
+have sometimes thought that hidden sun might be."
+
+"Do you think it was the true light?" with clandestine geniality again
+filling the other's glass.
+
+"I would prefer to decline answering a categorical question there.
+Shakespeare has got to be a kind of deity. Prudent minds, having certain
+latent thoughts concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of
+lasting probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations, we are
+permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to be adored, not arraigned;
+but, so we do it with humility, we may a little canvass his characters.
+There's his Autolycus now, a fellow that always puzzled me. How is one
+to take Autolycus? A rogue so happy, so lucky, so triumphant, of so
+almost captivatingly vicious a career that a virtuous man reduced to the
+poor-house (were such a contingency conceivable), might almost long to
+change sides with him. And yet, see the words put into his mouth: 'Oh,'
+cries Autolycus, as he comes galloping, gay as a buck, upon the stage,
+'oh,' he laughs, 'oh what a fool is Honesty, and Trust, his sworn
+brother, a very simple gentleman.' Think of that. Trust, that is,
+confidence--that is, the thing in this universe the sacredest--is
+rattlingly pronounced just the simplest. And the scenes in which the
+rogue figures seem purposely devised for verification of his principles.
+Mind, Charlie, I do not say it _is_ so, far from it; but I _do_ say it
+seems so. Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon the
+persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets than picking
+them, more to be made by an expert knave than a bungling beggar; and for
+this reason, as he thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft
+hearts. The devil's drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore
+the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one
+thus wicked and thus happy, my sole consolation is in the fact that no
+such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which
+evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he is, though only a
+poet was his maker. It may be, that in that paper-and-ink investiture of
+his, Autolycus acts more effectively upon mankind than he would in a
+flesh-and-blood one. Can his influence be salutary? True, in Autolycus
+there is humor; but though, according to my principle, humor is in
+general to be held a saving quality, yet the case of Autolycus is an
+exception; because it is his humor which, so to speak, oils his
+mischievousness. The bravadoing mischievousness of Autolycus is slid
+into the world on humor, as a pirate schooner, with colors flying, is
+launched into the sea on greased ways."
+
+"I approve of Autolycus as little as you," said the stranger, who,
+during his companion's commonplaces, had seemed less attentive to them
+than to maturing with in his own mind the original conceptions destined
+to eclipse them. "But I cannot believe that Autolycus, mischievous as he
+must prove upon the stage, can be near so much so as such a character as
+Polonius."
+
+"I don't know about that," bluntly, and yet not impolitely, returned the
+cosmopolitan; "to be sure, accepting your view of the old courtier,
+then if between him and Autolycus you raise the question of
+unprepossessingness, I grant you the latter comes off best. For a moist
+rogue may tickle the midriff, while a dry worldling may but wrinkle the
+spleen."
+
+"But Polonius is not dry," said the other excitedly; "he drules. One
+sees the fly-blown old fop drule and look wise. His vile wisdom is made
+the viler by his vile rheuminess. The bowing and cringing, time-serving
+old sinner--is such an one to give manly precepts to youth? The
+discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state; senile prudence; fatuous
+soullessness! The ribanded old dog is paralytic all down one side, and
+that the side of nobleness. His soul is gone out. Only nature's
+automatonism keeps him on his legs. As with some old trees, the bark
+survives the pith, and will still stand stiffly up, though but to rim
+round punk, so the body of old Polonius has outlived his soul."
+
+"Come, come," said the cosmopolitan with serious air, almost displeased;
+"though I yield to none in admiration of earnestness, yet, I think, even
+earnestness may have limits. To human minds, strong language is always
+more or less distressing. Besides, Polonius is an old man--as I remember
+him upon the stage--with snowy locks. Now charity requires that such a
+figure--think of it how you will--should at least be treated with
+civility. Moreover, old age is ripeness, and I once heard say, 'Better
+ripe than raw.'"
+
+"But not better rotten than raw!" bringing down his hand with energy on
+the table.
+
+"Why, bless me," in mild surprise contemplating his heated comrade, "how
+you fly out against this unfortunate Polonius--a being that never was,
+nor will be. And yet, viewed in a Christian light," he added pensively,
+"I don't know that anger against this man of straw is a whit less wise
+than anger against a man of flesh, Madness, to be mad with anything."
+
+"That may be, or may not be," returned the other, a little testily,
+perhaps; "but I stick to what I said, that it is better to be raw than
+rotten. And what is to be feared on that head, may be known from this:
+that it is with the best of hearts as with the best of pears--a
+dangerous experiment to linger too long upon the scene. This did
+Polonius. Thank fortune, Frank, I am young, every tooth sound in my
+head, and if good wine can keep me where I am, long shall I remain so."
+
+"True," with a smile. "But wine, to do good, must be drunk. You have
+talked much and well, Charlie; but drunk little and indifferently--fill
+up."
+
+"Presently, presently," with a hasty and preoccupied air. "If I remember
+right, Polonius hints as much as that one should, under no
+circumstances, commit the indiscretion of aiding in a pecuniary way an
+unfortunate friend. He drules out some stale stuff about 'loan losing
+both itself and friend,' don't he? But our bottle; is it glued fast?
+Keep it moving, my dear Frank. Good wine, and upon my soul I begin to
+feel it, and through me old Polonius--yes, this wine, I fear, is what
+excites me so against that detestable old dog without a tooth."
+
+Upon this, the cosmopolitan, cigar in mouth, slowly raised the bottle,
+and brought it slowly to the light, looking at it steadfastly, as one
+might at a thermometer in August, to see not how low it was, but how
+high. Then whiffing out a puff, set it down, and said: "Well, Charlie,
+if what wine you have drunk came out of this bottle, in that case I
+should say that if--supposing a case--that if one fellow had an object
+in getting another fellow fuddled, and this fellow to be fuddled was of
+your capacity, the operation would be comparatively inexpensive. What do
+you think, Charlie?"
+
+"Why, I think I don't much admire the supposition," said Charlie, with a
+look of resentment; "it ain't safe, depend upon it, Frank, to venture
+upon too jocose suppositions with one's friends."
+
+"Why, bless you, Frank, my supposition wasn't personal, but general. You
+mustn't be so touchy."
+
+"If I am touchy it is the wine. Sometimes, when I freely drink, it has a
+touchy effect on me, I have observed."
+
+"Freely drink? you haven't drunk the perfect measure of one glass, yet.
+While for me, this must be my fourth or fifth, thanks to your
+importunity; not to speak of all I drank this morning, for old
+acquaintance' sake. Drink, drink; you must drink."
+
+"Oh, I drink while you are talking," laughed the other; "you have not
+noticed it, but I have drunk my share. Have a queer way I learned from a
+sedate old uncle, who used to tip off his glass-unperceived. Do you fill
+up, and my glass, too. There! Now away with that stump, and have a new
+cigar. Good fellowship forever!" again in the lyric mood, "Say, Frank,
+are we not men? I say are we not human? Tell me, were they not human who
+engendered us, as before heaven I believe they shall be whom we shall
+engender? Fill up, up, up, my friend. Let the ruby tide aspire, and all
+ruby aspirations with it! Up, fill up! Be we convivial. And
+conviviality, what is it? The word, I mean; what expresses it? A living
+together. But bats live together, and did you ever hear of convivial
+bats?"
+
+"If I ever did," observed the cosmopolitan, "it has quite slipped my
+recollection."
+
+"But _why_ did you never hear of convivial bats, nor anybody else?
+Because bats, though they live together, live not together genially.
+Bats are not genial souls. But men are; and how delightful to think that
+the word which among men signifies the highest pitch of geniality,
+implies, as indispensable auxiliary, the cheery benediction of the
+bottle. Yes, Frank, to live together in the finest sense, we must drink
+together. And so, what wonder that he who loves not wine, that sober
+wretch has a lean heart--a heart like a wrung-out old bluing-bag, and
+loves not his kind? Out upon him, to the rag-house with him, hang
+him--the ungenial soul!"
+
+"Oh, now, now, can't you be convivial without being censorious? I like
+easy, unexcited conviviality. For the sober man, really, though for my
+part I naturally love a cheerful glass, I will not prescribe my nature
+as the law to other natures. So don't abuse the sober man. Conviviality
+is one good thing, and sobriety is another good thing. So don't be
+one-sided."
+
+"Well, if I am one-sided, it is the wine. Indeed, indeed, I have
+indulged too genially. My excitement upon slight provocation shows it.
+But yours is a stronger head; drink you. By the way, talking of
+geniality, it is much on the increase in these days, ain't it?"
+
+"It is, and I hail the fact. Nothing better attests the advance of the
+humanitarian spirit. In former and less humanitarian ages--the ages of
+amphitheatres and gladiators--geniality was mostly confined to the
+fireside and table. But in our age--the age of joint-stock companies and
+free-and-easies--it is with this precious quality as with precious gold
+in old Peru, which Pizarro found making up the scullion's sauce-pot as
+the Inca's crown. Yes, we golden boys, the moderns, have geniality
+everywhere--a bounty broadcast like noonlight."
+
+"True, true; my sentiments again. Geniality has invaded each department
+and profession. We have genial senators, genial authors, genial
+lecturers, genial doctors, genial clergymen, genial surgeons, and the
+next thing we shall have genial hangmen."
+
+"As to the last-named sort of person," said the cosmopolitan, "I trust
+that the advancing spirit of geniality will at last enable us to
+dispense with him. No murderers--no hangmen. And surely, when the whole
+world shall have been genialized, it will be as out of place to talk of
+murderers, as in a Christianized world to talk of sinners."
+
+"To pursue the thought," said the other, "every blessing is attended
+with some evil, and----"
+
+"Stay," said the cosmopolitan, "that may be better let pass for a loose
+saying, than for hopeful doctrine."
+
+"Well, assuming the saying's truth, it would apply to the future
+supremacy of the genial spirit, since then it will fare with the hangman
+as it did with the weaver when the spinning-jenny whizzed into the
+ascendant. Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch turn his hand
+to? Butchering?"
+
+"That he could turn his hand to it seems probable; but that, under the
+circumstances, it would be appropriate, might in some minds admit of a
+question. For one, I am inclined to think--and I trust it will not be
+held fastidiousness--that it would hardly be suitable to the dignity of
+our nature, that an individual, once employed in attending the last
+hours of human unfortunates, should, that office being extinct, transfer
+himself to the business of attending the last hours of unfortunate
+cattle. I would suggest that the individual turn valet--a vocation to
+which he would, perhaps, appear not wholly inadapted by his familiar
+dexterity about the person. In particular, for giving a finishing tie to
+a gentleman's cravat, I know few who would, in all likelihood, be, from
+previous occupation, better fitted than the professional person in
+question."
+
+"Are you in earnest?" regarding the serene speaker with unaffected
+curiosity; "are you really in earnest?"
+
+"I trust I am never otherwise," was the mildly earnest reply; "but
+talking of the advance of geniality, I am not without hopes that it
+will eventually exert its influence even upon so difficult a subject as
+the misanthrope."
+
+"A genial misanthrope! I thought I had stretched the rope pretty hard in
+talking of genial hangmen. A genial misanthrope is no more conceivable
+than a surly philanthropist."
+
+"True," lightly depositing in an unbroken little cylinder the ashes of
+his cigar, "true, the two you name are well opposed."
+
+"Why, you talk as if there _was_ such a being as a surly
+philanthropist."
+
+"I do. My eccentric friend, whom you call Coonskins, is an example. Does
+he not, as I explained to you, hide under a surly air a philanthropic
+heart? Now, the genial misanthrope, when, in the process of eras, he
+shall turn up, will be the converse of this; under an affable air, he
+will hide a misanthropical heart. In short, the genial misanthrope will
+be a new kind of monster, but still no small improvement upon the
+original one, since, instead of making faces and throwing stones at
+people, like that poor old crazy man, Timon, he will take steps, fiddle
+in hand, and set the tickled world a'dancing. In a word, as the progress
+of Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind,
+much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so,
+thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish
+address, will take on refinement and softness--to so genial a degree,
+indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the
+coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to
+say, some philanthropists of the present time would seem not to be, as
+witness my eccentric friend named before."
+
+"Well," cried the other, a little weary, perhaps, of a speculation so
+abstract, "well, however it may be with the century to come, certainly
+in the century which is, whatever else one may be, he must be genial or
+he is nothing. So fill up, fill up, and be genial!"
+
+"I am trying my best," said the cosmopolitan, still calmly
+companionable. "A moment since, we talked of Pizarro, gold, and Peru; no
+doubt, now, you remember that when the Spaniard first entered Atahalpa's
+treasure-chamber, and saw such profusion of plate stacked up, right and
+left, with the wantonness of old barrels in a brewer's yard, the needy
+fellow felt a twinge of misgiving, of want of confidence, as to the
+genuineness of an opulence so profuse. He went about rapping the shining
+vases with his knuckles. But it was all gold, pure gold, good gold,
+sterling gold, which how cheerfully would have been stamped such at
+Goldsmiths' Hall. And just so those needy minds, which, through their
+own insincerity, having no confidence in mankind, doubt lest the liberal
+geniality of this age be spurious. They are small Pizarros in their
+way--by the very princeliness of men's geniality stunned into distrust
+of it."
+
+"Far be such distrust from you and me, my genial friend," cried the
+other fervently; "fill up, fill up!"
+
+"Well, this all along seems a division of labor," smiled the
+cosmopolitan. "I do about all the drinking, and you do about all--the
+genial. But yours is a nature competent to do that to a large
+population. And now, my friend," with a peculiarly grave air, evidently
+foreshadowing something not unimportant, and very likely of close
+personal interest; "wine, you know, opens the heart, and----"
+
+"Opens it!" with exultation, "it thaws it right out. Every heart is
+ice-bound till wine melt it, and reveal the tender grass and sweet
+herbage budding below, with every dear secret, hidden before like a
+dropped jewel in a snow-bank, lying there unsuspected through winter
+till spring."
+
+"And just in that way, my dear Charlie, is one of my little secrets now
+to be shown forth."
+
+"Ah!" eagerly moving round his chair, "what is it?"
+
+"Be not so impetuous, my dear Charlie. Let me explain. You see,
+naturally, I am a man not overgifted with assurance; in general, I am,
+if anything, diffidently reserved; so, if I shall presently seem
+otherwise, the reason is, that you, by the geniality you have evinced in
+all your talk, and especially the noble way in which, while affirming
+your good opinion of men, you intimated that you never could prove false
+to any man, but most by your indignation at a particularly illiberal
+passage in Polonius' advice--in short, in short," with extreme
+embarrassment, "how shall I express what I mean, unless I add that by
+your whole character you impel me to throw myself upon your nobleness;
+in one word, put confidence in you, a generous confidence?"
+
+"I see, I see," with heightened interest, "something of moment you wish
+to confide. Now, what is it, Frank? Love affair?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"What, then, my _dear_ Frank? Speak--depend upon me to the last. Out
+with it."
+
+"Out it shall come, then," said the cosmopolitan. "I am in want, urgent
+want, of money."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A METAMORPHOSIS MORE SURPRISING THAN ANY IN OVID.
+
+
+"In want of money!" pushing back his chair as from a suddenly-disclosed
+man-trap or crater.
+
+"Yes," naïvely assented the cosmopolitan, "and you are going to loan me
+fifty dollars. I could almost wish I was in need of more, only for your
+sake. Yes, my dear Charlie, for your sake; that you might the better
+prove your noble, kindliness, my dear Charlie."
+
+"None of your dear Charlies," cried the other, springing to his feet,
+and buttoning up his coat, as if hastily to depart upon a long journey.
+
+"Why, why, why?" painfully looking up.
+
+"None of your why, why, whys!" tossing out a foot, "go to the devil,
+sir! Beggar, impostor!--never so deceived in a man in my life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+SHOWING THAT THE AGE OF MAGIC AND MAGICIANS IS NOT YET OVER.
+
+
+While speaking or rather hissing those words, the boon companion
+underwent much such a change as one reads of in fairy-books. Out of old
+materials sprang a new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake.
+
+The cosmopolitan rose, the traces of previous feeling vanished; looked
+steadfastly at his transformed friend a moment, then, taking ten
+half-eagles from his pocket, stooped down, and laid them, one by one, in
+a circle round him; and, retiring a pace, waved his long tasseled pipe
+with the air of a necromancer, an air heightened by his costume,
+accompanying each wave with a solemn murmur of cabalistical words.
+
+Meantime, he within the magic-ring stood suddenly rapt, exhibiting every
+symptom of a successful charm--a turned cheek, a fixed attitude, a
+frozen eye; spellbound, not more by the waving wand than by the ten
+invincible talismans on the floor.
+
+"Reappear, reappear, reappear, oh, my former friend! Replace this
+hideous apparition with thy blest shape, and be the token of thy return
+the words, 'My dear Frank.'"
+
+"My dear Frank," now cried the restored friend, cordially stepping out
+of the ring, with regained self-possession regaining lost identity, "My
+dear Frank, what a funny man you are; full of fun as an egg of meat. How
+could you tell me that absurd story of your being in need? But I relish
+a good joke too well to spoil it by letting on. Of course, I humored the
+thing; and, on my side, put on all the cruel airs you would have me.
+Come, this little episode of fictitious estrangement will but enhance
+the delightful reality. Let us sit down again, and finish our bottle."
+
+"With all my heart," said the cosmopolitan, dropping the necromancer
+with the same facility with which he had assumed it. "Yes," he added,
+soberly picking up the gold pieces, and returning them with a chink to
+his pocket, "yes, I am something of a funny man now and then; while for
+you, Charlie," eying him in tenderness, "what you say about your
+humoring the thing is true enough; never did man second a joke better
+than you did just now. You played your part better than I did mine; you
+played it, Charlie, to the life."
+
+"You see, I once belonged to an amateur play company; that accounts for
+it. But come, fill up, and let's talk of something else."
+
+"Well," acquiesced the cosmopolitan, seating himself, and quietly
+brimming his glass, "what shall we talk about?"
+
+"Oh, anything you please," a sort of nervously accommodating.
+
+"Well, suppose we talk about Charlemont?"
+
+"Charlemont? What's Charlemont? Who's Charlemont?"
+
+"You shall hear, my dear Charlie," answered the cosmopolitan. "I will
+tell you the story of Charlemont, the gentleman-madman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+WHICH MAY PASS FOR WHATEVER IT MAY PROVE TO BE WORTH.
+
+
+But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont, a reply must in
+civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view
+of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics
+appear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like
+your cosmopolitan? And who, it might be returned, did ever dress or act
+like harlequin?
+
+Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real life
+should be exacted by any one, who, by taking up such a work,
+sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn,
+for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any
+one should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, for
+any cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is to
+divert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.
+
+There is another class, and with this class we side, who sit down to a
+work of amusement tolerantly as they sit at a play, and with much the
+same expectations and feelings. They look that fancy shall evoke scenes
+different from those of the same old crowd round the custom-house
+counter, and same old dishes on the boardinghouse table, with characters
+unlike those of the same old acquaintances they meet in the same old way
+every day in the same old street. And as, in real life, the proprieties
+will not allow people to act out themselves with that unreserve
+permitted to the stage; so, in books of fiction, they look not only for
+more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real
+life itself can show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want nature,
+too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed. In this
+way of thinking, the people in a fiction, like the people in a play,
+must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act
+as nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion: it should
+present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
+
+If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely a
+little is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does but
+seek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish of
+the more indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin can
+never appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut capers too fantastic.
+
+One word more. Though every one knows how bootless it is to be in all
+cases vindicating one's self, never mind how convinced one may be that
+he is never in the wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation of
+his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied to
+but a work of imagination, is no easy thing. The mention of this
+weakness will explain why such readers as may think they perceive
+something harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitan
+with the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with the
+boon-companion, are now referred to that chapter where some similar
+apparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles,
+modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN TELLS THE STORY OF THE GENTLEMAN MADMAN.
+
+
+"Charlemont was a young merchant of French descent, living in St.
+Louis--a man not deficient in mind, and possessed of that sterling and
+captivating kindliness, seldom in perfection seen but in youthful
+bachelors, united at times to a remarkable sort of gracefully
+devil-may-care and witty good-humor. Of course, he was admired by
+everybody, and loved, as only mankind can love, by not a few. But in his
+twenty-ninth year a change came over him. Like one whose hair turns gray
+in a night, so in a day Charlemont turned from affable to morose. His
+acquaintances were passed without greeting; while, as for his
+confidential friends, them he pointedly, unscrupulously, and with a kind
+of fierceness, cut dead.
+
+"One, provoked by such conduct, would fain have resented it with words
+as disdainful; while another, shocked by the change, and, in concern for
+a friend, magnanimously overlooking affronts, implored to know what
+sudden, secret grief had distempered him. But from resentment and from
+tenderness Charlemont alike turned away.
+
+"Ere long, to the general surprise, the merchant Charlemont was
+gazetted, and the same day it was reported that he had withdrawn from
+town, but not before placing his entire property in the hands of
+responsible assignees for the benefit of creditors.
+
+"Whither he had vanished, none could guess. At length, nothing being
+heard, it was surmised that he must have made away with himself--a
+surmise, doubtless, originating in the remembrance of the change some
+months previous to his bankruptcy--a change of a sort only to be
+ascribed to a mind suddenly thrown from its balance.
+
+"Years passed. It was spring-time, and lo, one bright morning,
+Charlemont lounged into the St. Louis coffee-houses--gay, polite,
+humane, companionable, and dressed in the height of costly elegance. Not
+only was he alive, but he was himself again. Upon meeting with old
+acquaintances, he made the first advances, and in such a manner that it
+was impossible not to meet him half-way. Upon other old friends, whom he
+did not chance casually to meet, he either personally called, or left
+his card and compliments for them; and to several, sent presents of game
+or hampers of wine.
+
+"They say the world is sometimes harshly unforgiving, but it was not so
+to Charlemont. The world feels a return of love for one who returns to
+it as he did. Expressive of its renewed interest was a whisper, an
+inquiring whisper, how now, exactly, so long after his bankruptcy, it
+fared with Charlemont's purse. Rumor, seldom at a loss for answers,
+replied that he had spent nine years in Marseilles in France, and there
+acquiring a second fortune, had returned with it, a man devoted
+henceforth to genial friendships.
+
+"Added years went by, and the restored wanderer still the same; or
+rather, by his noble qualities, grew up like golden maize in the
+encouraging sun of good opinions. But still the latent wonder was, what
+had caused that change in him at a period when, pretty much as now, he
+was, to all appearance, in the possession of the same fortune, the same
+friends, the same popularity. But nobody thought it would be the thing
+to question him here.
+
+"At last, at a dinner at his house, when all the guests but one had
+successively departed; this remaining guest, an old acquaintance, being
+just enough under the influence of wine to set aside the fear of
+touching upon a delicate point, ventured, in a way which perhaps spoke
+more favorably for his heart than his tact, to beg of his host to
+explain the one enigma of his life. Deep melancholy overspread the
+before cheery face of Charlemont; he sat for some moments tremulously
+silent; then pushing a full decanter towards the guest, in a choked
+voice, said: 'No, no! when by art, and care, and time, flowers are made
+to bloom over a grave, who would seek to dig all up again only to know
+the mystery?--The wine.' When both glasses were filled, Charlemont took
+his, and lifting it, added lowly: 'If ever, in days to come, you shall
+see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble
+for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and, partly through
+love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand
+with the world, and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin
+to yourself, then will you do as one I now dream of once did, and like
+him will you suffer; but how fortunate and how grateful should you be,
+if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy
+again.'
+
+"When the guest went away, it was with the persuasion, that though
+outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of
+Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends
+to touch one dangerous string."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN STRIKINGLY EVINCES THE ARTLESSNESS OF HIS
+NATURE.
+
+
+"Well, what do you think of the story of Charlemont?" mildly asked he
+who had told it.
+
+"A very strange one," answered the auditor, who had been such not with
+perfect ease, "but is it true?"
+
+"Of course not; it is a story which I told with the purpose of every
+story-teller--to amuse. Hence, if it seem strange to you, that
+strangeness is the romance; it is what contrasts it with real life; it
+is the invention, in brief, the fiction as opposed to the fact. For do
+but ask yourself, my dear Charlie," lovingly leaning over towards him,
+"I rest it with your own heart now, whether such a forereaching motive
+as Charlemont hinted he had acted on in his change--whether such a
+motive, I say, were a sort of one at all justified by the nature of
+human society? Would you, for one, turn the cold shoulder to a friend--a
+convivial one, say, whose pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to
+you?"
+
+"How can you ask me, my dear Frank? You know I would scorn such
+meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted--"really, early as it is, I
+think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels
+unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of
+it, has played the deuce with me."
+
+"Little as you drank of this elixir of logwood? Why, Charlie, you are
+losing your mind. To talk so of the genuine, mellow old port. Yes, I
+think that by all means you had better away, and sleep it off.
+There--don't apologize--don't explain--go, go--I understand you exactly.
+I will see you to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON ENSUES
+PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.
+
+
+As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew, a stranger
+advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan, said: "I think I heard you say
+you would see that man again. Be warned; don't you do so."
+
+He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man, sandy-haired, and
+Saxon-looking; perhaps five and forty; tall, and, but for a certain
+angularity, well made; little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a
+look of plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
+dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow, placidly thoughtful,
+than by his general aspect, which had that look of youthfulness in
+maturity, peculiar sometimes to habitual health of body, the original
+gift of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance of
+the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution as much as morality. A
+neat, comely, almost ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red
+clover-blossom at coolish dawn--the color of warmth preserved by the
+virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what of
+shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled; in that way, he seemed a
+kind of cross between a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it
+seemed as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability play
+second fiddle to the last.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I
+cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just
+been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
+disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone
+have prompted such an intimation. My friend, whose seat is still warm,
+has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here.
+Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if you choose
+to hint aught further unfavorable to the man, the genial warmth of whose
+person in part passes into yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders
+through you--be it so."
+
+"Quite beautiful conceits," said the stranger, now scholastically and
+artistically eying the picturesque speaker, as if he were a statue in
+the Pitti Palace; "very beautiful:" then with the gravest interest,
+"yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul--one full of all
+love and truth; for where beauty is, there must those be."
+
+"A pleasing belief," rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning with an even
+air, "and to confess, long ago it pleased me. Yes, with you and
+Schiller, I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible
+with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the
+latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose
+lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft
+in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"
+
+As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit--as
+some earnest descriptive speakers will--as unconsciously to wreathe his
+form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature
+described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise,
+apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and
+presently said:
+
+"When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to
+change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to
+glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole
+beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish
+never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and
+conscience, and revel for a while in the carefree, joyous life of a
+perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"
+
+"Such a wish," replied the other, not perceptibly disturbed, "I must
+confess, never consciously was mine. Such a wish, indeed, could hardly
+occur to ordinary imaginations, and mine I cannot think much above the
+average."
+
+"But now that the idea is suggested," said the stranger, with infantile
+intellectuality, "does it not raise the desire?"
+
+"Hardly. For though I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice
+against the rattle-snake, still, I should not like to be one. If I were
+a rattle-snake now, there would be no such thing as being genial with
+men--men would be afraid of me, and then I should be a very lonesome and
+miserable rattle-snake."
+
+"True, men would be afraid of you. And why? Because of your rattle, your
+hollow rattle--a sound, as I have been told, like the shaking together
+of small, dry skulls in a tune of the Waltz of Death. And here we have
+another beautiful truth. When any creature is by its make inimical to
+other creatures, nature in effect labels that creature, much as an
+apothecary does a poison. So that whoever is destroyed by a
+rattle-snake, or other harmful agent, it is his own fault. He should
+have respected the label. Hence that significant passage in Scripture,
+'Who will pity the charmer that is bitten with a serpent?'"
+
+"_I_ would pity him," said the cosmopolitan, a little bluntly, perhaps.
+
+"But don't you think," rejoined the other, still maintaining his
+passionless air, "don't you think, that for a man to pity where nature
+is pitiless, is a little presuming?"
+
+"Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion the heart decides
+for itself. But, sir," deepening in seriousness, "as I now for the first
+realize, you but a moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a
+way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of a tolerant spirit, as I
+hope, I try my best never to be frightened at any speculation, so long
+as it is pursued in honesty, yet, for once, I must acknowledge that you
+do really, in the point cited, cause me uneasiness; because a proper
+view of the universe, that view which is suited to breed a proper
+confidence, teaches, if I err not, that since all things are justly
+presided over, not very many living agents but must be some way
+accountable."
+
+"Is a rattle-snake accountable?" asked the stranger with such a
+preternaturally cold, gemmy glance out of his pellucid blue eye, that he
+seemed more a metaphysical merman than a feeling man; "is a rattle-snake
+accountable?"
+
+"If I will not affirm that it is," returned the other, with the caution
+of no inexperienced thinker, "neither will I deny it. But if we suppose
+it so, I need not say that such accountability is neither to you, nor
+me, nor the Court of Common Pleas, but to something superior."
+
+He was proceeding, when the stranger would have interrupted him; but as
+reading his argument in his eye, the cosmopolitan, without waiting for
+it to be put into words, at once spoke to it: "You object to my
+supposition, for but such it is, that the rattle-snake's accountability
+is not by nature manifest; but might not much the same thing be urged
+against man's? A _reductio ad absurdum_, proving the objection vain. But
+if now," he continued, "you consider what capacity for mischief there is
+in a rattle-snake (observe, I do not charge it with being mischievous, I
+but say it has the capacity), could you well avoid admitting that that
+would be no symmetrical view of the universe which should maintain that,
+while to man it is forbidden to kill, without judicial cause, his
+fellow, yet the rattle-snake has an implied permit of unaccountability
+to murder any creature it takes capricious umbrage at--man
+included?--But," with a wearied air, "this is no genial talk; at least
+it is not so to me. Zeal at unawares embarked me in it. I regret it.
+Pray, sit down, and take some of this wine."
+
+"Your suggestions are new to me," said the other, with a kind of
+condescending appreciativeness, as of one who, out of devotion to
+knowledge, disdains not to appropriate the least crumb of it, even from
+a pauper's board; "and, as I am a very Athenian in hailing a new
+thought, I cannot consent to let it drop so abruptly. Now, the
+rattle-snake----"
+
+"Nothing more about rattle-snakes, I beseech," in distress; "I must
+positively decline to reenter upon that subject. Sit down, sir, I beg,
+and take some of this wine."
+
+"To invite me to sit down with you is hospitable," collectedly
+acquiescing now in the change of topics; "and hospitality being fabled
+to be of oriental origin, and forming, as it does, the subject of a
+pleasing Arabian romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in
+itself--hence I always hear the expressions of hospitality with
+pleasure. But, as for the wine, my regard for that beverage is so
+extreme, and I am so fearful of letting it sate me, that I keep my love
+for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I
+quaff immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but wine from a
+cup I seldom as much as sip."
+
+The cosmopolitan turned a mild glance upon the speaker, who, now
+occupying the chair opposite him, sat there purely and coldly radiant as
+a prism. It seemed as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and
+ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting with a sign, the
+cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of ice-water. "Ice it well, waiter,"
+said he; "and now," turning to the stranger, "will you, if you please,
+give me your reason for the warning words you first addressed to me?"
+
+"I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings are," said the
+stranger; "warnings which do not forewarn, but in mockery come after the
+fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent
+design your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains
+unaccomplished. You read his label."
+
+"And what did it say? 'This is a genial soul,' So you see you must
+either give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against
+my friend. But tell me," with renewed earnestness, "what do you take him
+for? What is he?"
+
+"What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which
+life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as
+insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to
+determine the triangle."
+
+"But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent with your
+doctrine of labels?"
+
+"Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a
+philosophical view, consistency is a certain level at all times,
+maintained in all the thoughts of one's mind. But, since nature is
+nearly all hill and dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in
+knowledge without submitting to the natural inequalities in the
+progress? Advance into knowledge is just like advance upon the grand
+Erie canal, where, from the character of the country, change of level is
+inevitable; you are locked up and locked down with perpetual
+inconsistencies, and yet all the time you get on; while the dullest part
+of the whole route is what the boatmen call the 'long level'--a
+consistently-flat surface of sixty miles through stagnant swamps."
+
+"In one particular," rejoined the cosmopolitan, "your simile is,
+perhaps, unfortunate. For, after all these weary lockings-up and
+lockings-down, upon how much of a higher plain do you finally stand?
+Enough to make it an object? Having from youth been taught reverence for
+knowledge, you must pardon me if, on but this one account, I reject your
+analogy. But really you someway bewitch me with your tempting discourse,
+so that I keep straying from my point unawares. You tell me you cannot
+certainly know who or what my friend is; pray, what do you conjecture
+him to be?"
+
+"I conjecture him to be what, among the ancient Egyptians, was called a
+----" using some unknown word.
+
+"A ----! And what is that?"
+
+"A ---- is what Proclus, in a little note to his third book on the
+theology of Plato, defines as ---- ----" coming out with a sentence of
+Greek.
+
+Holding up his glass, and steadily looking through its transparency, the
+cosmopolitan rejoined: "That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it
+to modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible
+of, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in
+words suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for a favor.
+
+"A favor!" slightly lifting his cool eyebrows; "a bridal favor I
+understand, a knot of white ribands, a very beautiful type of the purity
+of true marriage; but of other favors I am yet to learn; and still, in a
+vague way, the word, as you employ it, strikes me as unpleasingly
+significant in general of some poor, unheroic submission to being done
+good to."
+
+Here the goblet of iced-water was brought, and, in compliance with a
+sign from the cosmopolitan, was placed before the stranger, who, not
+before expressing acknowledgments, took a draught, apparently
+refreshing--its very coldness, as with some is the case, proving not
+entirely uncongenial.
+
+At last, setting down the goblet, and gently wiping from his lips the
+beads of water freshly clinging there as to the valve of a coral-shell
+upon a reef, he turned upon the cosmopolitan, and, in a manner the most
+cool, self-possessed, and matter-of-fact possible, said: "I hold to the
+metempsychosis; and whoever I may be now, I feel that I was once the
+stoic Arrian, and have inklings of having been equally puzzled by a word
+in the current language of that former time, very probably answering to
+your word _favor_."
+
+"Would you favor me by explaining?" said the cosmopolitan, blandly.
+
+"Sir," responded the stranger, with a very slight degree of severity, "I
+like lucidity, of all things, and am afraid I shall hardly be able to
+converse satisfactorily with you, unless you bear it in mind."
+
+The cosmopolitan ruminatingly eyed him awhile, then said: "The best way,
+as I have heard, to get out of a labyrinth, is to retrace one's steps. I
+will accordingly retrace mine, and beg you will accompany me. In short,
+once again to return to the point: for what reason did you warn me
+against my friend?"
+
+"Briefly, then, and clearly, because, as before said, I conjecture him
+to be what, among the ancient Egyptians----"
+
+"Pray, now," earnestly deprecated the cosmopolitan, "pray, now, why
+disturb the repose of those ancient Egyptians? What to us are their
+words or their thoughts? Are we pauper Arabs, without a house of our
+own, that, with the mummies, we must turn squatters among the dust of
+the Catacombs?"
+
+"Pharaoh's poorest brick-maker lies proudlier in his rags than the
+Emperor of all the Russias in his hollands," oracularly said the
+stranger; "for death, though in a worm, is majestic; while life, though
+in a king, is contemptible. So talk not against mummies. It is a part of
+my mission to teach mankind a due reverence for mummies."
+
+Fortunately, to arrest these incoherencies, or rather, to vary them, a
+haggard, inspired-looking man now approached--a crazy beggar, asking
+alms under the form of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by
+himself, and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship.
+Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for,
+by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared
+the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over
+with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge
+upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed
+his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by
+what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him
+any lasting good, but enough, perhaps, to suggest a torment of latent
+doubts at times, whether his addled dream of glory were true.
+
+Accepting the tract offered him, the cosmopolitan glanced over it, and,
+seeming to see just what it was, closed it, put it in his pocket, eyed
+the man a moment, then, leaning over and presenting him with a shilling,
+said to him, in tones kind and considerate: "I am sorry, my friend, that
+I happen to be engaged just now; but, having purchased your work, I
+promise myself much satisfaction in its perusal at my earliest leisure."
+
+In his tattered, single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned meagerly up to his
+chin, the shutter-brain made him a bow, which, for courtesy, would not
+have misbecome a viscount, then turned with silent appeal to the
+stranger. But the stranger sat more like a cold prism than ever, while
+an expression of keen Yankee cuteness, now replacing his former mystical
+one, lent added icicles to his aspect. His whole air said: "Nothing
+from me." The repulsed petitioner threw a look full of resentful pride
+and cracked disdain upon him, and went his way.
+
+"Come, now," said the cosmopolitan, a little reproachfully, "you ought
+to have sympathized with that man; tell me, did you feel no
+fellow-feeling? Look at his tract here, quite in the transcendental
+vein."
+
+"Excuse me," said the stranger, declining the tract, "I never patronize
+scoundrels."
+
+"Scoundrels?"
+
+"I detected in him, sir, a damning peep of sense--damning, I say; for
+sense in a seeming madman is scoundrelism. I take him for a cunning
+vagabond, who picks up a vagabond living by adroitly playing the madman.
+Did you not remark how he flinched under my eye?'
+
+"Really?" drawing a long, astonished breath, "I could hardly have
+divined in you a temper so subtlely distrustful. Flinched? to be sure he
+did, poor fellow; you received him with so lame a welcome. As for his
+adroitly playing the madman, invidious critics might object the same to
+some one or two strolling magi of these days. But that is a matter I
+know nothing about. But, once more, and for the last time, to return to
+the point: why sir, did you warn me against my friend? I shall rejoice,
+if, as I think it will prove, your want of confidence in my friend rests
+upon a basis equally slender with your distrust of the lunatic. Come,
+why did you warn me? Put it, I beseech, in few words, and those
+English."
+
+"I warned you against him because he is suspected for what on these
+boats is known--so they tell me--as a Mississippi operator."
+
+"An operator, ah? he operates, does he? My friend, then, is something
+like what the Indians call a Great Medicine, is he? He operates, he
+purges, he drains off the repletions."
+
+"I perceive, sir," said the stranger, constitutionally obtuse to the
+pleasant drollery, "that your notion, of what is called a Great
+Medicine, needs correction. The Great Medicine among the Indians is less
+a bolus than a man in grave esteem for his politic sagacity."
+
+"And is not my friend politic? Is not my friend sagacious? By your own
+definition, is not my friend a Great Medicine?"
+
+"No, he is an operator, a Mississippi operator; an equivocal character.
+That he is such, I little doubt, having had him pointed out to me as
+such by one desirous of initiating me into any little novelty of this
+western region, where I never before traveled. And, sir, if I am not
+mistaken, you also are a stranger here (but, indeed, where in this
+strange universe is not one a stranger?) and that is a reason why I felt
+moved to warn you against a companion who could not be otherwise than
+perilous to one of a free and trustful disposition. But I repeat the
+hope, that, thus far at least, he has not succeeded with you, and trust
+that, for the future, he will not."
+
+"Thank you for your concern; but hardly can I equally thank you for so
+steadily maintaining the hypothesis of my friend's objectionableness.
+True, I but made his acquaintance for the first to-day, and know little
+of his antecedents; but that would seem no just reason why a nature like
+his should not of itself inspire confidence. And since your own
+knowledge of the gentleman is not, by your account, so exact as it might
+be, you will pardon me if I decline to welcome any further suggestions
+unflattering to him. Indeed, sir," with friendly decision, "let us
+change the subject."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE MYSTICAL MASTER INTRODUCES THE PRACTICAL DISCIPLE.
+
+
+"Both, the subject and the interlocutor," replied the stranger rising,
+and waiting the return towards him of a promenader, that moment turning
+at the further end of his walk.
+
+"Egbert!" said he, calling.
+
+Egbert, a well-dressed, commercial-looking gentleman of about thirty,
+responded in a way strikingly deferential, and in a moment stood near,
+in the attitude less of an equal companion apparently than a
+confidential follower.
+
+"This," said the stranger, taking Egbert by the hand and leading him to
+the cosmopolitan, "this is Egbert, a disciple. I wish you to know
+Egbert. Egbert was the first among mankind to reduce to practice the
+principles of Mark Winsome--principles previously accounted as less
+adapted to life than the closet. Egbert," turning to the disciple, who,
+with seeming modesty, a little shrank under these compliments, "Egbert,
+this," with a salute towards the cosmopolitan, "is, like all of us, a
+stranger. I wish you, Egbert, to know this brother stranger; be
+communicative with him. Particularly if, by anything hitherto dropped,
+his curiosity has been roused as to the precise nature of my philosophy,
+I trust you will not leave such curiosity ungratified. You, Egbert, by
+simply setting forth your practice, can do more to enlighten one as to
+my theory, than I myself can by mere speech. Indeed, it is by you that I
+myself best understand myself. For to every philosophy are certain rear
+parts, very important parts, and these, like the rear of one's head, are
+best seen by reflection. Now, as in a glass, you, Egbert, in your life,
+reflect to me the more important part of my system. He, who approves
+you, approves the philosophy of Mark Winsome."
+
+Though portions of this harangue may, perhaps, in the phraseology seem
+self-complaisant, yet no trace of self-complacency was perceptible in
+the speaker's manner, which throughout was plain, unassuming, dignified,
+and manly; the teacher and prophet seemed to lurk more in the idea, so
+to speak, than in the mere bearing of him who was the vehicle of it.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, who seemed not a little interested in this
+new aspect of matters, "you speak of a certain philosophy, and a more or
+less occult one it may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life;
+pray, tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the same
+formation of character with the experiences of the world?"
+
+"It does; and that is the test of its truth; for any philosophy that,
+being in operation contradictory to the ways of the world, tends to
+produce a character at odds with it, such a philosophy must necessarily
+be but a cheat and a dream."
+
+"You a little surprise me," answered the cosmopolitan; "for, from an
+occasional profundity in you, and also from your allusions to a profound
+work on the theology of Plato, it would seem but natural to surmise
+that, if you are the originator of any philosophy, it must needs so
+partake of the abstruse, as to exalt it above the comparatively vile
+uses of life."
+
+"No uncommon mistake with regard to me," rejoined the other. Then meekly
+standing like a Raphael: "If still in golden accents old Memnon murmurs
+his riddle, none the less does the balance-sheet of every man's ledger
+unriddle the profit or loss of life. Sir," with calm energy, "man came
+into this world, not to sit down and muse, not to befog himself with
+vain subtleties, but to gird up his loins and to work. Mystery is in the
+morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is
+everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must
+be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be
+undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers
+before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg,
+though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the
+main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a
+man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know me for such.
+And as for my disciple here," turning towards him, "if you look to find
+any soft Utopianisms and last year's sunsets in him, I smile to think
+how he will set you right. The doctrines I have taught him will, I
+trust, lead him neither to the mad-house nor the poor-house, as so many
+other doctrines have served credulous sticklers. Furthermore," glancing
+upon him paternally, "Egbert is both my disciple and my poet. For poetry
+is not a thing of ink and rhyme, but of thought and act, and, in the
+latter way, is by any one to be found anywhere, when in useful action
+sought. In a word, my disciple here is a thriving young merchant, a
+practical poet in the West India trade. There," presenting Egbert's hand
+to the cosmopolitan, "I join you, and leave you." With which words, and
+without bowing, the master withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE DISCIPLE UNBENDS, AND CONSENTS TO ACT A SOCIAL PART.
+
+
+In the master's presence the disciple had stood as one not ignorant of
+his place; modesty was in his expression, with a sort of reverential
+depression. But the presence of the superior withdrawn, he seemed
+lithely to shoot up erect from beneath it, like one of those wire men
+from a toy snuff-box.
+
+He was, as before said, a young man of about thirty. His countenance of
+that neuter sort, which, in repose, is neither prepossessing nor
+disagreeable; so that it seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out.
+His dress was neat, with just enough of the mode to save it from the
+reproach of originality; in which general respect, though with a
+readjustment of details, his costume seemed modeled upon his master's.
+But, upon the whole, he was, to all appearances, the last person in the
+world that one would take for the disciple of any transcendental
+philosophy; though, indeed, something about his sharp nose and shaved
+chin seemed to hint that if mysticism, as a lesson, ever came in his
+way, he might, with the characteristic knack of a true New-Englander,
+turn even so profitless a thing to some profitable account.
+
+"Well" said he, now familiarly seating himself in the vacated chair,
+"what do you think of Mark? Sublime fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"That each member of the human guild is worthy respect my friend,"
+rejoined the cosmopolitan, "is a fact which no admirer of that guild
+will question; but that, in view of higher natures, the word sublime, so
+frequently applied to them, can, without confusion, be also applied to
+man, is a point which man will decide for himself; though, indeed, if he
+decide it in the affirmative, it is not for me to object. But I am
+curious to know more of that philosophy of which, at present, I have but
+inklings. You, its first disciple among men, it seems, are peculiarly
+qualified to expound it. Have you any objections to begin now?"
+
+"None at all," squaring himself to the table. "Where shall I begin? At
+first principles?"
+
+"You remember that it was in a practical way that you were represented
+as being fitted for the clear exposition. Now, what you call first
+principles, I have, in some things, found to be more or less vague.
+Permit me, then, in a plain way, to suppose some common case in real
+life, and that done, I would like you to tell me how you, the practical
+disciple of the philosophy I wish to know about, would, in that case,
+conduct."
+
+"A business-like view. Propose the case."
+
+"Not only the case, but the persons. The case is this: There are two
+friends, friends from childhood, bosom-friends; one of whom, for the
+first time, being in need, for the first time seeks a loan from the
+other, who, so far as fortune goes, is more than competent to grant it.
+And the persons are to be you and I: you, the friend from whom the loan
+is sought--I, the friend who seeks it; you, the disciple of the
+philosophy in question--I, a common man, with no more philosophy than to
+know that when I am comfortably warm I don't feel cold, and when I have
+the ague I shake. Mind, now, you must work up your imagination, and, as
+much as possible, talk and behave just as if the case supposed were a
+fact. For brevity, you shall call me Frank, and I will call you Charlie.
+Are you agreed?"
+
+"Perfectly. You begin."
+
+The cosmopolitan paused a moment, then, assuming a serious and care-worn
+air, suitable to the part to be enacted, addressed his hypothesized
+friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.
+
+
+"Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you."
+
+"You always have, and with reason. What is it Frank?"
+
+"Charlie, I am in want--urgent want of money."
+
+"That's not well."
+
+"But it _will_ be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. I
+would not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have so
+long shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side,
+that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the same
+inequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor won't
+you?"
+
+"Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do you a favor?"
+
+"Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so."
+
+"Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to talk so."
+
+"But won't you loan me the money?"
+
+"No, Frank."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but never loan it; and of
+course the man who calls himself my friend is above receiving alms. The
+negotiation of a loan is a business transaction. And I will transact no
+business with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially and
+intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too high
+to degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure
+there are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is,
+commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-ink
+line between them and my friends in the true sense--my friends social
+and intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
+he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such unfriendly
+accommodations as are to be had from the soulless corporation of a bank,
+by giving the regular security and paying the regular discount."
+
+"An _unfriendly_ accommodation? Do those words go together handsomely?"
+
+"Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and a cow--not handsomely,
+but to the purpose. Look, Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale
+of money on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an accommodation,
+but where is the friendliness? Few men in their senses, except
+operators, borrow money on interest, except upon a necessity akin to
+starvation. Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
+starving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of flour upon the
+condition that, on a given day, he shall let me have the money's worth
+of a barrel and a half of flour; especially if I add this further
+proviso, that if he fail so to do, I shall then, to secure to myself
+the money's worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up at
+public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families, throw in his
+wife's and children's?"
+
+"I understand," with a pathetic shudder; "but even did it come to that,
+such a step on the creditor's part, let us, for the honor of human
+nature, hope, were less the intention than the contingency."
+
+"But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in the taking beforehand
+of due securities."
+
+"Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a friend's act?"
+
+"And the auction in the last place an enemy's act. Don't you see? The
+enmity lies couched in the friendship, just as the ruin in the relief."
+
+"I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really, I can't understand
+this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but it strikes me that in going into
+the philosophy of the subject, you go somewhat out of your depth."
+
+"So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but the ocean replied:
+'It is just the other way, my wet friend,' and drowned him."
+
+"That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of
+Æsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would
+scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
+But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship,
+and ruin in relief."
+
+"I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train slipped off the
+rail. He who loans him money on interest is the one who, by way of
+accommodation, helps get the train back where it belongs; but then, by
+way of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an agent,
+thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just there, on his account,
+a beam across the track. Your needy man's principle-and-interest friend
+is, I say again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my dear
+friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest."
+
+"Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me without interest."
+
+"That would be alms again."
+
+"Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?"
+
+"Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest."
+
+"Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the alms. Seeing that it
+is you, Charlie, gratefully will I accept the alms of the interest. No
+humiliation between friends."
+
+"Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you suffer yourself to
+talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me. For though I am not of the sour
+mind of Solomon, that, in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a
+brother; yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his Essay
+on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a terrestrial convenience,
+not to his friend celestial (or friend social and intellectual) would he
+go; no: for his terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or
+humbler business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the reason:
+Because, for the superior nature, which on no account can ever descend
+to do good, to be annoyed with requests to do it, when the inferior
+one, which by no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands
+always inclined to it--this is unsuitable."
+
+"Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial, but as the other."
+
+"It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I'll do it. We are
+business friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan.
+Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where is
+your security?"
+
+"Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your old
+schoolmate--him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves of
+Academe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in
+kindliness--and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being
+fellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security."
+
+"Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst of
+securities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just no
+security at all. You forget we are now business friends."
+
+"And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend I
+can give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get an
+indorser."
+
+"No indorser, then, no business loan."
+
+"Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friend
+you have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, I
+sue as both?"
+
+"Are you a centaur?"
+
+"When all is said then, what good have I of your friendship, regarded in
+what light you will?"
+
+"The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome, as reduced to
+practice by a practical disciple."
+
+"And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy of Mark Winsome do
+me? Ah," turning invokingly, "what is friendship, if it be not the
+helping hand and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out at
+need the purse as the vial!"
+
+"Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through tears never did man see
+his way in the dark. I should hold you unworthy that sincere friendship
+I bear you, could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
+you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank, that you would
+seriously shake the foundations of our love, if ever again you should
+repeat the present scene. The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest
+way, teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most suitable
+time, candidly disclose certain circumstances you seem in ignorance of.
+Though our friendship began in boyhood, think not that, on my side at
+least, it began injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
+juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable points at the
+time; not the least of which were your good manners, handsome dress, and
+your parents' rank and repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man,
+boy though I was, I went into the market and chose me my mutton, not for
+its leanness, but its fatness. In other words, there seemed in you, the
+schoolboy who always had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probability
+that you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if my early
+impression has not been verified by the event, it is only because of
+the caprice of fortune producing a fallibility of human expectations,
+however discreet.'"
+
+"Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!"
+
+"A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear Frank, wouldn't do
+you any harm, let me tell you. Cold-blooded? You say that, because my
+disclosure seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not so. My
+reason for choosing you in part for the points I have mentioned, was
+solely with a view of preserving inviolate the delicacy of the
+connection. For--do but think of it--what more distressing to delicate
+friendship, formed early, than your friend's eventually, in manhood,
+dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five dollars or so?
+Can delicate friendship stand that? And, on the other side, would
+delicate friendship, so long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Would
+you not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry, 'I have
+been deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this man; he is no true friend
+that, in platonic love to demand love-rites?'"
+
+"And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!"
+
+"Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately claiming
+those rights, as you call them, you shake those foundations I hinted of.
+For though, as it turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fair
+house on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished on that
+house, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I would not lose the sweet
+boon of your friendship, Frank. But beware."
+
+"And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie! you talk not to a god, a
+being who in himself holds his own estate, but to a man who, being a
+man, is the sport of fate's wind and wave, and who mounts towards heaven
+or sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough or on crest."
+
+"Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that comes to--no poor
+drifting sea-weed of the universe. Man has a soul; which, if he will,
+puts him beyond fortune's finger and the future's spite. Don't whine
+like fortune's whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true friend, I
+will cut ye."
+
+"Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the quick. Call to mind
+the days we went nutting, the times we walked in the woods, arms
+wreathed about each other, showing trunks invined like the trees:--oh,
+Charlie!"
+
+"Pish! we were boys."
+
+"Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold in the grave ere
+maturity struck them with a sharper frost.--Charlie?"
+
+"Fie! you're a girl."
+
+"Help, help, Charlie, I want help!"
+
+"Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something wrong about the
+man who wants help. There is somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a
+need, a crying need, somewhere about that man."
+
+"So there is, Charlie.--Help, Help!"
+
+"How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself the proof of
+undesert of it."
+
+"Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some ventriloquist who
+usurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome that speaks, not Charlie."
+
+"If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is not alien but
+congenial to my larynx. If the philosophy of that illustrious teacher
+find little response among mankind at large, it is less that they do not
+possess teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate as not
+to have natures predisposed to accord with him.
+
+"Welcome, that compliment to humanity," exclaimed Frank with energy,
+"the truer because unintended. And long in this respect may humanity
+remain what you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardly
+feeling how subject it is to straits, and hence how precious is help,
+will, for selfishness' sake, if no other, long postpone ratifying a
+philosophy that banishes help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie!
+speak as you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case reversed,
+not less freely would I loan you the money than you would ask me to loan
+it.
+
+"_I_ ask? _I_ ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstances
+would I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. The
+experience of China Aster might warn me."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace
+of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace
+vanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do
+so in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller here has so
+tyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat his
+incidents without sliding into his style. I forewarn you of this, that
+you may not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story would seem
+to make its narrator. It is too bad that any intellect, especially in so
+small a matter, should have such power to impose itself upon another,
+against its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to know
+that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully approve. But, to
+begin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+IN WHICH THE STORY OF CHINA ASTER IS AT SECOND-HAND TOLD BY ONE WHO,
+WHILE NOT DISAPPROVING THE MORAL, DISCLAIMS THE SPIRIT OF THE STYLE.
+
+
+"China Aster was a young candle-maker of Marietta, at the mouth of the
+Muskingum--one whose trade would seem a kind of subordinate branch of
+that parent craft and mystery of the hosts of heaven, to be the means,
+effectively or otherwise, of shedding some light through the darkness of
+a planet benighted. But he made little money by the business. Much ado
+had poor China Aster and his family to live; he could, if he chose,
+light up from his stores a whole street, but not so easily could he
+light up with prosperity the hearts of his household.
+
+"Now, China Aster, it so happened, had a friend, Orchis, a shoemaker;
+one whose calling it is to defend the understandings of men from naked
+contact with the substance of things: a very useful vocation, and which,
+spite of all the wiseacres may prophesy, will hardly go out of fashion
+so long as rocks are hard and flints will gall. All at once, by a
+capital prize in a lottery, this useful shoemaker was raised from a
+bench to a sofa. A small nabob was the shoemaker now, and the
+understandings of men, let them shift for themselves. Not that Orchis
+was, by prosperity, elated into heartlessness. Not at all. Because, in
+his fine apparel, strolling one morning into the candlery, and gayly
+switching about at the candle-boxes with his gold-headed cane--while
+poor China Aster, with his greasy paper cap and leather apron, was
+selling one candle for one penny to a poor orange-woman, who, with the
+patronizing coolness of a liberal customer, required it to be carefully
+rolled up and tied in a half sheet of paper--lively Orchis, the woman
+being gone, discontinued his gay switchings and said: 'This is poor
+business for you, friend China Aster; your capital is too small. You
+must drop this vile tallow and hold up pure spermaceti to the world. I
+tell you what it is, you shall have one thousand dollars to extend with.
+In fact, you must make money, China Aster. I don't like to see your
+little boy paddling about without shoes, as he does.'
+
+"'Heaven bless your goodness, friend Orchis,' replied the candle-maker,
+'but don't take it illy if I call to mind the word of my uncle, the
+blacksmith, who, when a loan was offered him, declined it, saying: "To
+ply my own hammer, light though it be, I think best, rather than piece
+it out heavier by welding to it a bit off a neighbor's hammer, though
+that may have some weight to spare; otherwise, were the borrowed bit
+suddenly wanted again, it might not split off at the welding, but too
+much to one side or the other."'
+
+"'Nonsense, friend China Aster, don't be so honest; your boy is
+barefoot. Besides, a rich man lose by a poor man? Or a friend be the
+worse by a friend? China Aster, I am afraid that, in leaning over into
+your vats here, this, morning, you have spilled out your wisdom. Hush! I
+won't hear any more. Where's your desk? Oh, here.' With that, Orchis
+dashed off a check on his bank, and off-handedly presenting it, said:
+'There, friend China Aster, is your one thousand dollars; when you make
+it ten thousand, as you soon enough will (for experience, the only true
+knowledge, teaches me that, for every one, good luck is in store), then,
+China Aster, why, then you can return me the money or not, just as you
+please. But, in any event, give yourself no concern, for I shall never
+demand payment.'
+
+"Now, as kind heaven will so have it that to a hungry man bread is a
+great temptation, and, therefore, he is not too harshly to be blamed,
+if, when freely offered, he take it, even though it be uncertain whether
+he shall ever be able to reciprocate; so, to a poor man, proffered money
+is equally enticing, and the worst that can be said of him, if he accept
+it, is just what can be said in the other case of the hungry man. In
+short, the poor candle-maker's scrupulous morality succumbed to his
+unscrupulous necessity, as is now and then apt to be the case. He took
+the check, and was about carefully putting it away for the present, when
+Orchis, switching about again with his gold-headed cane, said:
+'By-the-way, China Aster, it don't mean anything, but suppose you make a
+little memorandum of this; won't do any harm, you know.' So China Aster
+gave Orchis his note for one thousand dollars on demand. Orchis took it,
+and looked at it a moment, 'Pooh, I told you, friend China Aster, I
+wasn't going ever to make any _demand_.' Then tearing up the note, and
+switching away again at the candle-boxes, said, carelessly; 'Put it at
+four years.' So China Aster gave Orchis his note for one thousand
+dollars at four years. 'You see I'll never trouble you about this,' said
+Orchis, slipping it in his pocket-book, 'give yourself no further
+thought, friend China Aster, than how best to invest your money. And
+don't forget my hint about spermaceti. Go into that, and I'll buy all my
+light of you,' with which encouraging words, he, with wonted, rattling
+kindness, took leave.
+
+"China Aster remained standing just where Orchis had left him; when,
+suddenly, two elderly friends, having nothing better to do, dropped in
+for a chat. The chat over, China Aster, in greasy cap and apron, ran
+after Orchis, and said: 'Friend Orchis, heaven will reward you for your
+good intentions, but here is your check, and now give me my note.'
+
+"'Your honesty is a bore, China Aster,' said Orchis, not without
+displeasure. 'I won't take the check from you.'
+
+"'Then you must take it from the pavement, Orchis,' said China Aster;
+and, picking up a stone, he placed the check under it on the walk.
+
+"'China Aster,' said Orchis, inquisitively eying him, after my leaving
+the candlery just now, what asses dropped in there to advise with you,
+that now you hurry after me, and act so like a fool? Shouldn't wonder if
+it was those two old asses that the boys nickname Old Plain Talk and Old
+Prudence.'
+
+"'Yes, it was those two, Orchis, but don't call them names.'
+
+"'A brace of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a
+wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke
+down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better
+sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out
+his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands by, leaning on his staff,
+wagging his frosty old pow, and chiming in at every clause.'
+
+"'How can you speak so, friend Orchis, of those who were my father's
+friends?'"
+
+"'Save me from my friends, if those old croakers were Old Honesty's
+friends. I call your father so, for every one used to. Why did they let
+him go in his old age on the town? Why, China Aster, I've often heard
+from my mother, the chronicler, that those two old fellows, with Old
+Conscience--as the boys called the crabbed old quaker, that's dead
+now--they three used to go to the poor-house when your father was there,
+and get round his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz,
+Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes, Job's comforters
+were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence, and Old Conscience, to your poor
+old father. Friends? I should like to know who you call foes? With their
+everlasting croaking and reproaching they tormented poor Old Honesty,
+your father, to death.'
+
+"At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy parent, China Aster
+could not restrain some tears. Upon which Orchis said: 'Why, China
+Aster, you are the dolefulest creature. Why don't you, China Aster,
+take a bright view of life? You will never get on in your business or
+anything else, if you don't take the bright view of life. It's the
+ruination of a man to take the dismal one.' Then, gayly poking at him
+with his gold-headed cane, 'Why don't you, then? Why don't you be bright
+and hopeful, like me? Why don't you have confidence, China Aster?
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, friend Orchis,' soberly replied China Aster,
+'but may be my not having drawn a lottery-prize, like you, may make some
+difference.'
+
+"Nonsense! before I knew anything about the prize I was gay as a lark,
+just as gay as I am now. In fact, it has always been a principle with me
+to hold to the bright view.'
+
+"Upon this, China Aster looked a little hard at Orchis, because the
+truth was, that until the lucky prize came to him, Orchis had gone under
+the nickname of Doleful Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a
+hypochondriac turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars of
+his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to groan so much
+about.
+
+"I tell you what it is, now, friend China Aster,' said Orchis, pointing
+down to the check under the stone, and then slapping his pocket, 'the
+check shall lie there if you say so, but your note shan't keep it
+company. In fact, China Aster, I am too sincerely your friend to take
+advantage of a passing fit of the blues in you. You _shall_ reap the
+benefit of my friendship.' With which, buttoning up his coat in a
+jiffy, away he ran, leaving the check behind.
+
+"At first, China Aster was going to tear it up, but thinking that this
+ought not to be done except in the presence of the drawer of the check,
+he mused a while, and picking it up, trudged back to the candlery, fully
+resolved to call upon Orchis soon as his day's work was over, and
+destroy the check before his eyes. But it so happened that when China
+Aster called, Orchis was out, and, having waited for him a weary time in
+vain, China Aster went home, still with the check, but still resolved
+not to keep it another day. Bright and early next morning he would a
+second time go after Orchis, and would, no doubt, make a sure thing of
+it, by finding him in his bed; for since the lottery-prize came to him,
+Orchis, besides becoming more cheery, had also grown a little lazy. But
+as destiny would have it, that same night China Aster had a dream, in
+which a being in the guise of a smiling angel, and holding a kind of
+cornucopia in her hand, hovered over him, pouring down showers of small
+gold dollars, thick as kernels of corn. 'I am Bright Future, friend
+China Aster,' said the angel, 'and if you do what friend Orchis would
+have you do, just see what will come of it.' With which Bright Future,
+with another swing of her cornucopia, poured such another shower of
+small gold dollars upon him, that it seemed to bank him up all round,
+and he waded about in it like a maltster in malt.
+
+"Now, dreams are wonderful things, as everybody knows--so wonderful,
+indeed, that some people stop not short of ascribing them directly to
+heaven; and China Aster, who was of a proper turn of mind in everything,
+thought that in consideration of the dream, it would be but well to wait
+a little, ere seeking Orchis again. During the day, China Aster's mind
+dwelling continually upon the dream, he was so full of it, that when Old
+Plain Talk dropped in to see him, just before dinnertime, as he often
+did, out of the interest he took in Old Honesty's son, China Aster told
+all about his vision, adding that he could not think that so radiant an
+angel could deceive; and, indeed, talked at such a rate that one would
+have thought he believed the angel some beautiful human philanthropist.
+Something in this sort Old Plain Talk understood him, and, accordingly,
+in his plain way, said: 'China Aster, you tell me that an angel appeared
+to you in a dream. Now, what does that amount to but this, that you
+dreamed an angel appeared to you? Go right away, China Aster, and return
+the check, as I advised you before. If friend Prudence were here, he
+would say just the same thing.' With which words Old Plain Talk went off
+to find friend Prudence, but not succeeding, was returning to the
+candlery himself, when, at distance mistaking him for a dun who had long
+annoyed him, China Aster in a panic barred all his doors, and ran to the
+back part of the candlery, where no knock could be heard.
+
+"By this sad mistake, being left with no friend to argue the other side
+of the question, China Aster was so worked upon at last, by musing over
+his dream, that nothing would do but he must get the check cashed, and
+lay out the money the very same day in buying a good lot of spermaceti
+to make into candles, by which operation he counted upon turning a
+better penny than he ever had before in his life; in fact, this he
+believed would prove the foundation of that famous fortune which the
+angel had promised him.
+
+"Now, in using the money, China Aster was resolved punctually to pay the
+interest every six months till the principal should be returned, howbeit
+not a word about such a thing had been breathed by Orchis; though,
+indeed, according to custom, as well as law, in such matters, interest
+would legitimately accrue on the loan, nothing to the contrary having
+been put in the bond. Whether Orchis at the time had this in mind or
+not, there is no sure telling; but, to all appearance, he never so much
+as cared to think about the matter, one way or other.
+
+"Though the spermaceti venture rather disappointed China Aster's
+sanguine expectations, yet he made out to pay the first six months'
+interest, and though his next venture turned out still less
+prosperously, yet by pinching his family in the matter of fresh meat,
+and, what pained him still more, his boys' schooling, he contrived to
+pay the second six months' interest, sincerely grieved that integrity,
+as well as its opposite, though not in an equal degree, costs something,
+sometimes.
+
+"Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by advice of a
+physician; it so happening that, since the lottery-prize came to him, it
+had been discovered to Orchis that his health was not very firm, though
+he had never complained of anything before but a slight ailing of the
+spleen, scarce worth talking about at the time. So Orchis, being abroad,
+could not help China Aster's paying his interest as he did, however much
+he might have been opposed to it; for China Aster paid it to Orchis's
+agent, who was of too business-like a turn to decline interest regularly
+paid in on a loan.
+
+"But overmuch to trouble the agent on that score was not again to be the
+fate of China Aster; for, not being of that skeptical spirit which
+refuses to trust customers, his third venture resulted, through bad
+debts, in almost a total loss--a bad blow for the candle-maker. Neither
+did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect the opportunity to read him
+an uncheerful enough lesson upon the consequences of his disregarding
+their advice in the matter of having nothing to do with borrowed money.
+'It's all just as I predicted,' said Old Plain Talk, blowing his old
+nose with his old bandana. 'Yea, indeed is it,' chimed in Old Prudence,
+rapping his staff on the floor, and then leaning upon it, looking with
+solemn forebodings upon China Aster. Low-spirited enough felt the poor
+candle-maker; till all at once who should come with a bright face to him
+but his bright friend, the angel, in another dream. Again the cornucopia
+poured out its treasure, and promised still more. Revived by the vision,
+he resolved not to be down-hearted, but up and at it once more--contrary
+to the advice of Old Plain Talk, backed as usual by his crony, which was
+to the effect, that, under present circumstances, the best thing China
+Aster could do, would be to wind up his business, settle, if he could,
+all his liabilities, and then go to work as a journeyman, by which he
+could earn good wages, and give up, from that time henceforth, all
+thoughts of rising above being a paid subordinate to men more able than
+himself, for China Aster's career thus far plainly proved him the
+legitimate son of Old Honesty, who, as every one knew, had never shown
+much business-talent, so little, in fact, that many said of him that he
+had no business to be in business. And just this plain saying Plain Talk
+now plainly applied to China Aster, and Old Prudence never disagreed
+with him. But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain Talk, put
+quite other notions into the candle-maker.
+
+"He considered what he should do towards reëstablishing himself.
+Doubtless, had Orchis been in the country, he would have aided him in
+this strait. As it was, he applied to others; and as in the world, much
+as some may hint to the contrary, an honest man in misfortune still can
+find friends to stay by him and help him, even so it proved with China
+Aster, who at last succeeded in borrowing from a rich old farmer the sum
+of six hundred dollars, at the usual interest of money-lenders, upon the
+security of a secret bond signed by China Aster's wife and himself, to
+the effect that all such right and title to any property that should be
+left her by a well-to-do childless uncle, an invalid tanner, such
+property should, in the event of China Aster's failing to return the
+borrowed sum on the given day, be the lawful possession of the
+money-lender. True, it was just as much as China Aster could possibly do
+to induce his wife, a careful woman, to sign this bond; because she had
+always regarded her promised share in her uncle's estate as an anchor
+well to windward of the hard times in which China Aster had always been
+more or less involved, and from which, in her bosom, she never had seen
+much chance of his freeing himself. Some notion may be had of China
+Aster's standing in the heart and head of his wife, by a short sentence
+commonly used in reply to such persons as happened to sound her on the
+point. 'China Aster,' she would say, 'is a good husband, but a bad
+business man!' Indeed, she was a connection on the maternal side of Old
+Plain Talk's. But had not China Aster taken good care not to let Old
+Plain Talk and Old Prudence hear of his dealings with the old farmer,
+ten to one they would, in some way, have interfered with his success in
+that quarter.
+
+"It has been hinted that the honesty of China Aster was what mainly
+induced the money-lender to befriend him in his misfortune, and this
+must be apparent; for, had China Aster been a different man, the
+money-lender might have dreaded lest, in the event of his failing to
+meet his note, he might some way prove slippery--more especially as, in
+the hour of distress, worked upon by remorse for so jeopardizing his
+wife's money, his heart might prove a traitor to his bond, not to hint
+that it was more than doubtful how such a secret security and claim, as
+in the last resort would be the old farmer's, would stand in a court of
+law. But though one inference from all this may be, that had China Aster
+been something else than what he was, he would not have been trusted,
+and, therefore, he would have been effectually shut out from running his
+own and wife's head into the usurer's noose; yet those who, when
+everything at last came out, maintained that, in this view and to this
+extent, the honesty of the candle-maker was no advantage to him, in so
+saying, such persons said what every good heart must deplore, and no
+prudent tongue will admit.
+
+"It may be mentioned, that the old farmer made China Aster take part of
+his loan in three old dried-up cows and one lame horse, not improved by
+the glanders. These were thrown in at a pretty high figure, the old
+money-lender having a singular prejudice in regard to the high value of
+any sort of stock raised on his farm. With a great deal of difficulty,
+and at more loss, China Aster disposed of his cattle at public auction,
+no private purchaser being found who could be prevailed upon to invest.
+And now, raking and scraping in every way, and working early and late,
+China Aster at last started afresh, nor without again largely and
+confidently extending himself. However, he did not try his hand at the
+spermaceti again, but, admonished by experience, returned to tallow.
+But, having bought a good lot of it, by the time he got it into candles,
+tallow fell so low, and candles with it, that his candles per pound
+barely sold for what he had paid for the tallow. Meantime, a year's
+unpaid interest had accrued on Orchis' loan, but China Aster gave
+himself not so much concern about that as about the interest now due to
+the old farmer. But he was glad that the principal there had yet some
+time to run. However, the skinny old fellow gave him some trouble by
+coming after him every day or two on a scraggy old white horse,
+furnished with a musty old saddle, and goaded into his shambling old
+paces with a withered old raw hide. All the neighbors said that surely
+Death himself on the pale horse was after poor China Aster now. And
+something so it proved; for, ere long, China Aster found himself
+involved in troubles mortal enough.
+
+At this juncture Orchis was heard of. Orchis, it seemed had returned
+from his travels, and clandestinely married, and, in a kind of queer
+way, was living in Pennsylvania among his wife's relations, who, among
+other things, had induced him to join a church, or rather semi-religious
+school, of Come-Outers; and what was still more, Orchis, without coming
+to the spot himself, had sent word to his agent to dispose of some of
+his property in Marietta, and remit him the proceeds. Within a year
+after, China Aster received a letter from Orchis, commending him for his
+punctuality in paying the first year's interest, and regretting the
+necessity that he (Orchis) was now under of using all his dividends; so
+he relied upon China Aster's paying the next six months' interest, and
+of course with the back interest. Not more surprised than alarmed, China
+Aster thought of taking steamboat to go and see Orchis, but he was saved
+that expense by the unexpected arrival in Marietta of Orchis in person,
+suddenly called there by that strange kind of capriciousness lately
+characterizing him. No sooner did China Aster hear of his old friend's
+arrival than he hurried to call upon him. He found him curiously rusty
+in dress, sallow in cheek, and decidedly less gay and cordial in manner,
+which the more surprised China Aster, because, in former days, he had
+more than once heard Orchis, in his light rattling way, declare that all
+he (Orchis) wanted to make him a perfectly happy, hilarious, and
+benignant man, was a voyage to Europe and a wife, with a free
+development of his inmost nature.
+
+"Upon China Aster's stating his case, his trusted friend was silent for
+a time; then, in an odd way, said that he would not crowd China Aster,
+but still his (Orchis') necessities were urgent. Could not China Aster
+mortgage the candlery? He was honest, and must have moneyed friends; and
+could he not press his sales of candles? Could not the market be forced
+a little in that particular? The profits on candles must be very great.
+Seeing, now, that Orchis had the notion that the candle-making business
+was a very profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an error was
+here, China Aster tried to undeceive him. But he could not drive the
+truth into Orchis--Orchis being very obtuse here, and, at the same time,
+strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis glanced off from so
+unpleasing a subject into the most unexpected reflections, taken from a
+religious point of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of the
+human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced something of that
+sort of thing, China Aster did not take exception to his friend's
+observations, but still refrained from so doing, almost as much for the
+sake of sympathetic sociality as anything else. Presently, Orchis,
+without much ceremony, rose, and saying he must write a letter to his
+wife, bade his friend good-bye, but without warmly shaking him by the
+hand as of old.
+
+"In much concern at the change, China Aster made earnest inquiries in
+suitable quarters, as to what things, as yet unheard of, had befallen
+Orchis, to bring about such a revolution; and learned at last that,
+besides traveling, and getting married, and joining the sect of
+Come-Outers, Orchis had somehow got a bad dyspepsia, and lost
+considerable property through a breach of trust on the part of a factor
+in New York. Telling these things to Old Plain Talk, that man of some
+knowledge of the world shook his old head, and told China Aster that,
+though he hoped it might prove otherwise, yet it seemed to him that all
+he had communicated about Orchis worked together for bad omens as to his
+future forbearance--especially, he added with a grim sort of smile, in
+view of his joining the sect of Come-Outers; for, if some men knew what
+was their inmost natures, instead of coming out with it, they would try
+their best to keep it in, which, indeed, was the way with the prudent
+sort. In all which sour notions Old Prudence, as usual, chimed in.
+
+"When interest-day came again, China Aster, by the utmost exertions,
+could only pay Orchis' agent a small part of what was due, and a part of
+that was made up by his children's gift money (bright tenpenny pieces
+and new quarters, kept in their little money-boxes), and pawning his
+best clothes, with those of his wife and children, so that all were
+subjected to the hardship of staying away from church. And the old
+usurer, too, now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid him his
+interest and some other pressing debts with money got by, at last,
+mortgaging the candlery.
+
+"When next interest-day came round for Orchis, not a penny could be
+raised. With much grief of heart, China Aster so informed Orchis' agent.
+Meantime, the note to the old usurer fell due, and nothing from China
+Aster was ready to meet it; yet, as heaven sends its rain on the just
+and unjust alike, by a coincidence not unfavorable to the old farmer,
+the well-to-do uncle, the tanner, having died, the usurer entered upon
+possession of such part of his property left by will to the wife of
+China Aster. When still the next interest-day for Orchis came round, it
+found China Aster worse off than ever; for, besides his other troubles,
+he was now weak with sickness. Feebly dragging himself to Orchis' agent,
+he met him in the street, told him just how it was; upon which the
+agent, with a grave enough face, said that he had instructions from his
+employer not to crowd him about the interest at present, but to say to
+him that about the time the note would mature, Orchis would have heavy
+liabilities to meet, and therefore the note must at that time be
+certainly paid, and, of course, the back interest with it; and not only
+so, but, as Orchis had had to allow the interest for good part of the
+time, he hoped that, for the back interest, China Aster would, in
+reciprocation, have no objections to allowing interest on the interest
+annually. To be sure, this was not the law; but, between friends who
+accommodate each other, it was the custom.
+
+"Just then, Old Plain Talk with Old Prudence turned the corner, coming
+plump upon China Aster as the agent left him; and whether it was a
+sun-stroke, or whether they accidentally ran against him, or whether it
+was his being so weak, or whether it was everything together, or how it
+was exactly, there is no telling, but poor China Aster fell to the
+earth, and, striking his head sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a
+day in July; such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of the
+inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home on a door; lingered a few
+days with a wandering mind, and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead
+of night, when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into the other
+world.
+
+"Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom ever omitted attending
+any funeral, which, indeed, was their chief exercise--these two were
+among the sincerest mourners who followed the remains of the son of
+their ancient friend to the grave.
+
+"It is needless to tell of the executions that followed; how that the
+candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how Orchis never got a penny for his
+loan; and how, in the case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered
+with mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
+childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of complaint, at
+what she impatiently called the bitterness of her lot and the hardness
+of the world, so preyed upon her, as ere long to hurry her from the
+obscurity of indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.
+
+"But though the straits in which China Aster had left his family had,
+besides apparently dimming the world's regard, likewise seemed to dim
+its sense of the probity of its deceased head, and though this, as some
+thought, did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this case,
+as in others, that, though the world may for a time seem insensible to
+that merit which lies under a cloud, yet, sooner or later, it always
+renders honor where honor is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the
+freemen of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and an
+expression of their conviction of his high moral worth, passed a
+resolution, that, until they attained maturity, his children should be
+considered the town's guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of
+some public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were officially
+installed in that hospitable edifice where their worthy grandfather, the
+town's guest before them, had breathed his last breath.
+
+"But sometimes honor maybe paid to the memory of an honest man, and
+still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the
+candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
+and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two to place upon it,
+when there was discovered, in China Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an
+epitaph, written, probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended
+with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent with him for
+some months prior to his end. A memorandum on the back expressed the
+wish that it might be placed over his grave. Though with the sentiment
+of the epitaph Plain Talk did not disagree, he himself being at times of
+a hypochondriac turn--at least, so many said--yet the language struck
+him as too much drawn out; so, after consultation with Old Prudence, he
+decided upon making use of the epitaph, yet not without verbal
+retrenchments. And though, when these were made, the thing still
+appeared wordy to him, nevertheless, thinking that, since a dead man was
+to be spoken about, it was but just to let him speak for himself,
+especially when he spoke sincerely, and when, by so doing, the more
+salutary lesson would be given, he had the retrenched inscription
+chiseled as follows upon the stone.
+
+  'HERE LIE
+  THE REMAINS OF
+  CHINA ASTER THE CANDLE-MAKER,
+  WHOSE CAREER
+  WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE, AS FOUND
+  IN THE
+  SOBER PHILOSOPHY
+  OF
+  SOLOMON THE WISE;
+  FOR HE WAS RUINED BY ALLOWING HIMSELF TO BE PERSUADED,
+  AGAINST HIS BETTER SENSE,
+  INTO THE FREE INDULGENCE OF CONFIDENCE,
+  AND
+  AN ARDENTLY BRIGHT VIEW OF LIFE,
+  TO THE EXCLUSION
+  OF
+  THAT COUNSEL WHICH COMES BY HEEDING
+  THE
+  OPPOSITE VIEW.'
+
+"This inscription raised some talk in the town, and was rather severely
+criticised by the capitalist--one of a very cheerful turn--who had
+secured his loan to China Aster by the mortgage; and though it also
+proved obnoxious to the man who, in town-meeting, had first moved for
+the compliment to China Aster's memory, and, indeed, was deemed by him a
+sort of slur upon the candle-maker, to that degree that he refused to
+believe that the candle-maker himself had composed it, charging Old
+Plain Talk with the authorship, alleging that the internal evidence
+showed that none but that veteran old croaker could have penned such a
+jeremiade--yet, for all this, the stone stood. In everything, of course,
+Old Plain Talk was seconded by Old Prudence; who, one day going to the
+grave-yard, in great-coat and over-shoes--for, though it was a sunshiny
+morning, he thought that, owing to heavy dews, dampness might lurk in
+the ground--long stood before the stone, sharply leaning over on his
+staff, spectacles on nose, spelling out the epitaph word by word; and,
+afterwards meeting Old Plain Talk in the street, gave a great rap with
+his stick, and said: 'Friend, Plain Talk, that epitaph will do very
+well. Nevertheless, one short sentence is wanting.' Upon which, Plain
+Talk said it was too late, the chiseled words being so arranged, after
+the usual manner of such inscriptions, that nothing could be interlined.
+Then,' said Old Prudence, 'I will put it in the shape of a postscript.'
+Accordingly, with the approbation of Old Plain Talk, he had the
+following words chiseled at the left-hand corner of the stone, and
+pretty low down:
+
+  'The root of all was a friendly loan.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.
+
+
+"With what heart," cried Frank, still in character, "have you told me
+this story? A story I can no way approve; for its moral, if accepted,
+would drain me of all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my
+last courage in life. For, what was that bright view of China Aster but
+a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up a brave heart, worked hard, and
+ever hoped for the best, all at last would go well? If your purpose,
+Charlie, in telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you have
+succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence, I praise God
+you have not."
+
+"Confidence?" cried Charlie, who, on his side, seemed with his whole
+heart to enter into the spirit of the thing, "what has confidence to do
+with the matter? That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
+you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping a friend.
+For was not that loan of Orchis to China Aster the first step towards
+their estrangement? And did it not bring about what in effect was the
+enmity of Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
+precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And what more
+meddlesome between friends than a loan? A regular marplot. For how can
+you help that the helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
+friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most lenient case; since,
+out of lenity to forego one's claim, is less to be a friendly creditor
+than to cease to be a creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon
+this lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the worst, is
+subject to all mortal contingencies. He may travel, he may marry, he may
+join the Come-Outers, or some equally untoward school or sect, not to
+speak of other things that more or less tend to new-cast the character.
+And were there nothing else, who shall answer for his digestion, upon
+which so much depends?"
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie----"
+
+"Nay, wait.--You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see
+that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is
+no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain
+personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may
+hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
+from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in your present need, be
+willing to accept a loan from a friend, securing him by a mortgage on
+your homestead, and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel
+satisfied that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred into the
+hands of a foe? Yet the difference between this man and that man is not
+so great as the difference between what the same man be to-day and what
+he may be in days to come. For there is no bent of heart or turn of
+thought which any man holds by virtue of an unalterable nature or will.
+Even those feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
+right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal persuasions,
+they may in reality be but the result of some chance tip of Fate's elbow
+in throwing her dice. For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and
+passing by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that habit
+of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you change this man's
+experiences or that man's books, will wisdom go surety for his unchanged
+convictions? As particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
+experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I will hear nothing
+of that fine babble about development and its laws; there is no
+development in opinion and feeling but the developments of time and
+tide. You may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids me
+show you how fundamental the reasons for treating you as I do."
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are these? I thought that
+man was no poor drifting weed of the universe, as you phrased it; that,
+if so minded, he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of his
+own? But now you have turned everything upside down again, with an
+inconsistency that amazes and shocks me."
+
+"Inconsistency? Bah!"
+
+"There speaks the ventriloquist again," sighed Frank, in bitterness.
+
+Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion little
+flattering to his originality, however much so to his docility, the
+disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming: "Yes, I turn over day and
+night, with indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master, and
+unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing _there_ that leads
+me to think otherwise than I do. But enough: in this matter the
+experience of China Aster teaches a moral more to the point than
+anything Mark Winsome can offer, or I either."
+
+"I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China Aster, nor do I
+stand in his position. The loan to China Aster was to extend his
+business with; the loan I seek is to relieve my necessities."
+
+"Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your cheek is not gaunt. Why
+talk of necessities when nakedness and starvation beget the only real
+necessities?"
+
+"But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now conjure you to
+forget that I was ever your friend, while I apply to you only as a
+fellow-being, whom, surely, you will not turn away."
+
+"That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to the ground, and
+supplicate an alms of me in the way of London streets, and you shall not
+be a sturdy beggar in vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
+friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for the honor of
+noble friendship, I turn stranger."
+
+"Enough," cried the other, rising, and with a toss of his shoulders
+seeming disdainfully to throw off the character he had assumed.
+"Enough. I have had my fill of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put
+into action. And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
+philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself engaged I should find.
+But, miserable for my race should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when
+he claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that the study of
+it tended to much the same formation of character with the experiences
+of the world.--Apt disciple! Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil
+both of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool by the
+under ice of the heart? What your illustrious magian has taught you, any
+poor, old, broken-down, heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray,
+leave me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman philosophy.
+And here, take this shilling, and at the first wood-landing buy yourself
+a few chips to warm the frozen natures of you and your philosopher by."
+
+With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan turned on his heel,
+leaving his companion at a loss to determine where exactly the
+fictitious character had been dropped, and the real one, if any,
+resumed. If any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to him,
+as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar lines:
+
+                  "All the world's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players,
+    Who have their exits and their entrances,
+    And one man in his time plays many parts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S
+SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.
+
+
+"Bless you, barber!"
+
+Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber had been all alone
+until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather
+dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with
+Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two
+very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an
+arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man
+would believe under oath.
+
+In short, with back presented to the glare of his lamps, and so to the
+door, the honest barber was taking what are called cat-naps, and
+dreaming in his chair; so that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction
+above, pronounced in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake, he
+stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger stood behind. What
+with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments, therefore, the voice seemed a
+sort of spiritual manifestation to him; so that, for the moment, he
+stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the air.
+
+"Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds there with salt?"
+
+"Ah!" turning round disenchanted, "it is only a man, then."
+
+"_Only_ a man? As if to be but a man were nothing. But don't be too sure
+what I am. You call me _man_, just as the townsfolk called the angels
+who, in man's form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
+the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs. You can conclude
+nothing absolute from the human form, barber."
+
+"But I can conclude something from that sort of talk, with that sort of
+dress," shrewdly thought the barber, eying him with regained
+self-possession, and not without some latent touch of apprehension at
+being alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed divined by the
+other, who now, more rationally and gravely, and as if he expected it
+should be attended to, said: "Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
+my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave," at the same time
+loosening his neck-cloth. "Are you competent to a good shave, barber?"
+
+"No broker more so, sir," answered the barber, whom the business-like
+proposition instinctively made confine to business-ends his views of the
+visitor.
+
+"Broker? What has a broker to do with lather? A broker I have always
+understood to be a worthy dealer in certain papers and metals."
+
+"He, he!" taking him now for some dry sort of joker, whose jokes, he
+being a customer, it might be as well to appreciate, "he, he! You
+understand well enough, sir. Take this seat, sir," laying his hand on a
+great stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered, and
+raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed but to lack a canopy and
+quarterings, to make it in aspect quite a throne, "take this seat, sir."
+
+"Thank you," sitting down; "and now, pray, explain that about the
+broker. But look, look--what's this?" suddenly rising, and pointing,
+with his long pipe, towards a gilt notification swinging among colored
+fly-papers from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, "_No Trust?_" "No trust
+means distrust; distrust means no confidence. Barber," turning upon him
+excitedly, "what fell suspiciousness prompts this scandalous confession?
+My life!" stamping his foot, "if but to tell a dog that you have no
+confidence in him be matter for affront to the dog, what an insult to
+take that way the whole haughty race of man by the beard! By my heart,
+sir! but at least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites with
+the pluck of Agamemnon."
+
+"Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line," said the barber,
+rather ruefully, being now again hopeless of his customer, and not
+without return of uneasiness; "not in my line, sir," he emphatically
+repeated.
+
+"But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit, barber, which I
+sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a disrespect for man. For how,
+indeed, may respectful conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual
+habit of taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too, clearly
+see the import of your notification, I do not, as yet, perceive the
+object. What is it?"
+
+"Now you speak a little in my line, sir," said the barber, not
+unrelieved at this return to plain talk; "that notification I find very
+useful, sparing me much work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good
+deal, off and on, before putting that up," gratefully glancing towards
+it.
+
+"But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to say, in so many
+words, that you have no confidence? For instance, now," flinging aside
+his neck-cloth, throwing back his blouse, and reseating himself on the
+tonsorial throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber mechanically
+filled a cup with hot water from a copper vessel over a spirit-lamp,
+"for instance, now, suppose I say to you, 'Barber, my dear barber,
+unhappily I have no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
+depend upon your money to-morrow'--suppose I should say that now, you
+would put trust in me, wouldn't you? You would have confidence?"
+
+"Seeing that it is you, sir," with complaisance replied the barber, now
+mixing the lather, "seeing that it is _you_ sir, I won't answer that
+question. No need to."
+
+"Of course, of course--in that view. But, as a supposition--you would
+have confidence in me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Why--yes, yes."
+
+"Then why that sign?"
+
+"Ah, sir, all people ain't like you," was the smooth reply, at the same
+time, as if smoothly to close the debate, beginning smoothly to apply
+the lather, which operation, however, was, by a motion, protested
+against by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which was
+done in these words:
+
+"All people ain't like me. Then I must be either better or worse than
+most people. Worse, you could not mean; no, barber, you could not mean
+that; hardly that. It remains, then, that you think me better than most
+people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe; though, from vanity, I
+confess, I could never yet, by my best wrestlings, entirely free myself;
+nor, indeed, to be frank, am I at bottom over anxious to--this same
+vanity, barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
+pleasingly preposterous a passion."
+
+"Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk very well. But the
+lather is getting a little cold, sir."
+
+"Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why that cold sign? Ah,
+I don't wonder you try to shirk the confession. You feel in your soul
+how ungenerous a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
+your eyes--which somehow speak to me of the mother that must have so
+often looked into them before me--I dare say, though you may not think
+it, that the spirit of that notification is not one with your nature.
+For look now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing in an
+abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber; supposing, I say,
+you see a stranger, his face accidentally averted, but his visible part
+very respectable-looking; what now, barber--I put it to your conscience,
+to your charity--what would be your impression of that man, in a moral
+point of view? Being in a signal sense a stranger, would you, for that,
+signally set him down for a knave?"
+
+"Certainly not, sir; by no means," cried the barber, humanely resentful.
+
+"You would upon the face of him----"
+
+"Hold, sir," said the barber, "nothing about the face; you remember,
+sir, that is out of sight."
+
+"I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the _back_ of him, conclude
+him to be, not improbably, some worthy sort of person; in short, an
+honest man: wouldn't you?"
+
+"Not unlikely I should, sir."
+
+"Well now--don't be so impatient with your brush, barber--suppose that
+honest man meet you by night in some dark corner of the boat where his
+face would still remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave--how
+then?"
+
+"Wouldn't trust him, sir."
+
+"But is not an honest man to be trusted?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir."
+
+"There! don't you see, now?"
+
+"See what?" asked the disconcerted barber, rather vexedly.
+
+"Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't you?"
+
+"No," doggedly.
+
+"Barber," gravely, and after a pause of concern, "the enemies of our
+race have a saying that insincerity is the most universal and
+inveterate vice of man--the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of
+individuals or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
+on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?"
+
+"Hity-tity!" cried the barber, losing patience, and with it respect;
+"stubbornness?" Then clattering round the brush in the cup, "Will you be
+shaved, or won't you?"
+
+"Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise
+your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your
+teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you will have."
+
+"I take as much comfort in this world as you or any other man," cried
+the barber, whom the other's sweetness of temper seemed rather to
+exasperate than soothe.
+
+"To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness I have often
+observed to be peculiar to certain orders of men," said the other
+pensively, and half to himself, "just as to be indifferent to that
+imputation, from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
+grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to other kinds of men.
+Pray, barber," innocently looking up, "which think you is the superior
+creature?"
+
+"All this sort of talk," cried the barber, still unmollified, "is, as I
+told you once before, not in my line. In a few minutes I shall shut up
+this shop. Will you be shaved?"
+
+"Shave away, barber. What hinders?" turning up his face like a flower.
+
+The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at length it became
+necessary to prepare to relather a little--affording an opportunity for
+resuming the subject, which, on one side, was not let slip.
+
+"Barber," with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling his way, "barber,
+now have a little patience with me; do; trust me, I wish not to offend.
+I have been thinking over that supposed case of the man with the averted
+face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that, by your opposite
+replies to my questions at the time, you showed yourself much of a piece
+with a good many other men--that is, you have confidence, and then
+again, you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you think it sensible
+standing for a sensible man, one foot on confidence and the other on
+suspicion? Don't you think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
+think consistency requires that you should either say 'I have confidence
+in all men,' and take down your notification; or else say, 'I suspect
+all men,' and keep it up."
+
+This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting the case, did not
+fail to impress the barber, and proportionately conciliate him.
+Likewise, from its pointedness, it served to make him thoughtful; for,
+instead of going to the copper vessel for more water, as he had
+purposed, he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
+hand, said: "Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice. I don't say, and
+can't say, and wouldn't say, that I suspect all men; but I _do_ say that
+strangers are not to be trusted, and so," pointing up to the sign, "no
+trust."
+
+"But look, now, I beg, barber," rejoined the other deprecatingly, not
+presuming too much upon the barber's changed temper; "look, now; to say
+that strangers are not to be trusted, does not that imply something like
+saying that mankind is not to be trusted; for the mass of mankind, are
+they not necessarily strangers to each individual man? Come, come, my
+friend," winningly, "you are no Timon to hold the mass of mankind
+untrustworthy. Take down your notification; it is misanthropical; much
+the same sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of a skull
+stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber; take it down to-night. Trust
+men. Just try the experiment of trusting men for this one little trip.
+Come now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against losing a
+cent."
+
+The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, "Sir, you must excuse me.
+I have a family."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+VERY CHARMING.
+
+
+"So you are a philanthropist, sir," added the barber with an illuminated
+look; "that accounts, then, for all. Very odd sort of man the
+philanthropist. You are the second one, sir, I have seen. Very odd sort
+of man, indeed, the philanthropist. Ah, sir," again meditatively
+stirring in the shaving-cup, "I sadly fear, lest you philanthropists
+know better what goodness is, than what men are." Then, eying him as if
+he were some strange creature behind cage-bars, "So you are a
+philanthropist, sir."
+
+"I am Philanthropos, and love mankind. And, what is more than you do,
+barber, I trust them."
+
+Here the barber, casually recalled to his business, would have
+replenished his shaving-cup, but finding now that on his last visit to
+the water-vessel he had not replaced it over the lamp, he did so now;
+and, while waiting for it to heat again, became almost as sociable as if
+the heating water were meant for whisky-punch; and almost as pleasantly
+garrulous as the pleasant barbers in romances.
+
+"Sir," said he, taking a throne beside his customer (for in a row there
+were three thrones on the dais, as for the three kings of Cologne, those
+patron saints of the barber), "sir, you say you trust men. Well, I
+suppose I might share some of your trust, were it not for this trade,
+that I follow, too much letting me in behind the scenes."
+
+"I think I understand," with a saddened look; "and much the same thing I
+have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours--from the
+lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others,
+each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his
+vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the
+conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which
+testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some
+disturbance in a good man's mind. But no, no; it is a mistake--all a
+mistake."
+
+"True, sir, very true," assented the barber.
+
+"Glad to hear that," brightening up.
+
+"Not so fast, sir," said the barber; "I agree with you in thinking that
+the lawyer, and the congressman, and the editor, are in error, but only
+in so far as each claims peculiar facilities for the sort of knowledge
+in question; because, you see, sir, the truth is, that every trade or
+pursuit which brings one into contact with the facts, sir, such trade or
+pursuit is equally an avenue to those facts."
+
+"_How_ exactly is that?"
+
+"Why, sir, in my opinion--and for the last twenty years I have, at odd
+times, turned the matter over some in my mind--he who comes to know
+man, will not remain in ignorance of man. I think I am not rash in
+saying that; am I, sir?"
+
+"Barber, you talk like an oracle--obscurely, barber, obscurely."
+
+"Well, sir," with some self-complacency, "the barber has always been
+held an oracle, but as for the obscurity, that I don't admit."
+
+"But pray, now, by your account, what precisely may be this mysterious
+knowledge gained in your trade? I grant you, indeed, as before hinted,
+that your trade, imposing on you the necessity of functionally tweaking
+the noses of mankind, is, in that respect, unfortunate, very much so;
+nevertheless, a well-regulated imagination should be proof even to such
+a provocation to improper conceits. But what I want to learn from you,
+barber, is, how does the mere handling of the outside of men's heads
+lead you to distrust the inside of their hearts?
+
+"What, sir, to say nothing more, can one be forever dealing in macassar
+oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches, wigs, and toupees, and
+still believe that men are wholly what they look to be? What think you,
+sir, are a thoughtful barber's reflections, when, behind a careful
+curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and then dismisses
+it to the world, radiant in curling auburn? To contrast the shamefaced
+air behind the curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly
+discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the cheerful assurance
+and challenging pride with which the same man steps forth again, a gay
+deception, into the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow
+humbly gives him the wall! Ah, sir, they may talk of the courage of
+truth, but my trade teaches me that truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies,
+lies, sir, brave lies are the lions!"
+
+"You twist the moral, barber; you sadly twist it. Look, now; take it
+this way: A modest man thrust out naked into the street, would he not be
+abashed? Take him in and clothe him; would not his confidence be
+restored? And in either case, is any reproach involved? Now, what is
+true of the whole, holds proportionably true of the part. The bald head
+is a nakedness which the wig is a coat to. To feel uneasy at the
+possibility of the exposure of one's nakedness at top, and to feel
+comforted by the consciousness of having it clothed--these feelings,
+instead of being dishonorable to a bold man, do, in fact, but attest a
+proper respect for himself and his fellows. And as for the deception,
+you may as well call the fine roof of a fine chateau a deception, since,
+like a fine wig, it also is an artificial cover to the head, and
+equally, in the common eye, decorates the wearer.--I have confuted you,
+my dear barber; I have confounded you."
+
+"Pardon," said the barber, "but I do not see that you have. His coat and
+his roof no man pretends to palm off as a part of himself, but the bald
+man palms off hair, not his, for his own."
+
+"Not _his_, barber? If he have fairly purchased his hair, the law will
+protect him in its ownership, even against the claims of the head on
+which it grew. But it cannot be that you believe what you say, barber;
+you talk merely for the humor. I could not think so of you as to suppose
+that you would contentedly deal in the impostures you condemn."
+
+"Ah, sir, I must live."
+
+"And can't you do that without sinning against your conscience, as you
+believe? Take up some other calling."
+
+"Wouldn't mend the matter much, sir."
+
+"Do you think, then, barber, that, in a certain point, all the trades
+and callings of men are much on a par? Fatal, indeed," raising his hand,
+"inexpressibly dreadful, the trade of the barber, if to such conclusions
+it necessarily leads. Barber," eying him not without emotion, "you
+appear to me not so much a misbeliever, as a man misled. Now, let me set
+you on the right track; let me restore you to trust in human nature, and
+by no other means than the very trade that has brought you to suspect
+it."
+
+"You mean, sir, you would have me try the experiment of taking down that
+notification," again pointing to it with his brush; "but, dear me, while
+I sit chatting here, the water boils over."
+
+With which words, and such a well-pleased, sly, snug, expression, as
+they say some men have when they think their little stratagem has
+succeeded, he hurried to the copper vessel, and soon had his cup foaming
+up with white bubbles, as if it were a mug of new ale.
+
+Meantime, the other would have fain gone on with the discourse; but the
+cunning barber lathered him with so generous a brush, so piled up the
+foam on him, that his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and
+vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea
+to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must
+keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative
+way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last
+removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his
+face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last,
+addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly so, from his
+previous one. Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any more than to
+hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign way, not wholly unlike the
+manner, fabled or otherwise, of certain creatures in nature, which have
+the power of persuasive fascination--the power of holding another
+creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite the serious
+disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest, of the victim. With this
+manner the conclusion of the matter was not out of keeping; for, in the
+end, all argument and expostulation proved vain, the barber being
+irresistibly persuaded to agree to try, for the remainder of the present
+trip, the experiment of trusting men, as both phrased it. True, to save
+his credit as a free agent, he was loud in averring that it was only for
+the novelty of the thing that he so agreed, and he required the other,
+as before volunteered, to go security to him against any loss that might
+ensue; but still the fact remained, that he engaged to trust men, a
+thing he had before said he would not do, at least not unreservedly.
+Still the more to save his credit, he now insisted upon it, as a last
+point, that the agreement should be put in black and white, especially
+the security part. The other made no demur; pen, ink, and paper were
+provided, and grave as any notary the cosmopolitan sat down, but, ere
+taking the pen, glanced up at the notification, and said: "First down
+with that sign, barber--Timon's sign, there; down with it."
+
+This, being in the agreement, was done--though a little
+reluctantly--with an eye to the future, the sign being carefully put
+away in a drawer.
+
+"Now, then, for the writing," said the cosmopolitan, squaring himself.
+"Ah," with a sigh, "I shall make a poor lawyer, I fear. Ain't used, you
+see, barber, to a business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds
+no nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber," taking up the blank paper,
+"that such flimsy stuff as this should make such strong hawsers; vile
+hawsers, too. Barber," starting up, "I won't put it in black and white.
+It were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your word, and
+you shall take mine."
+
+"But your memory may be none of the best, sir. Well for you, on your
+side, to have it in black and white, just for a memorandum like, you
+know."
+
+"That, indeed! Yes, and it would help _your_ memory, too, wouldn't it,
+barber? Yours, on your side, being a little weak, too, I dare say. Ah,
+barber! how ingenious we human beings are; and how kindly we reciprocate
+each other's little delicacies, don't we? What better proof, now, that
+we are kind, considerate fellows, with responsive fellow-feelings--eh,
+barber? But to business. Let me see. What's your name, barber?"
+
+"William Cream, sir."
+
+Pondering a moment, he began to write; and, after some corrections,
+leaned back, and read aloud the following:
+
+     "AGREEMENT
+     Between
+     FRANK GOODMAN, Philanthropist, and Citizen of the World,
+     and
+     WILLIAM CREAM, Barber of the Mississippi steamer, Fidèle.
+
+     "The first hereby agrees to make good to the last any loss that may
+     come from his trusting mankind, in the way of his vocation, for the
+     residue of the present trip; PROVIDED that William Cream keep out
+     of sight, for the given term, his notification of NO TRUST, and by
+     no other mode convey any, the least hint or intimation, tending to
+     discourage men from soliciting trust from him, in the way of his
+     vocation, for the time above specified; but, on the contrary, he
+     do, by all proper and reasonable words, gestures, manners, and
+     looks, evince a perfect confidence in all men, especially
+     strangers; otherwise, this agreement to be void.
+
+     "Done, in good faith, this 1st day of April 18--, at a quarter to
+     twelve o'clock, P. M., in the shop of said William Cream, on board
+     the said boat, Fidèle."
+
+"There, barber; will that do?"
+
+"That will do," said the barber, "only now put down your name."
+
+Both signatures being affixed, the question was started by the barber,
+who should have custody of the instrument; which point, however, he
+settled for himself, by proposing that both should go together to the
+captain, and give the document into his hands--the barber hinting that
+this would be a safe proceeding, because the captain was necessarily a
+party disinterested, and, what was more, could not, from the nature of
+the present case, make anything by a breach of trust. All of which was
+listened to with some surprise and concern.
+
+"Why, barber," said the cosmopolitan, "this don't show the right spirit;
+for me, I have confidence in the captain purely because he is a man; but
+he shall have nothing to do with our affair; for if you have no
+confidence in me, barber, I have in you. There, keep the paper
+yourself," handing it magnanimously.
+
+"Very good," said the barber, "and now nothing remains but for me to
+receive the cash."
+
+Though the mention of that word, or any of its singularly numerous
+equivalents, in serious neighborhood to a requisition upon one's purse,
+is attended with a more or less noteworthy effect upon the human
+countenance, producing in many an abrupt fall of it--in others, a
+writhing and screwing up of the features to a point not undistressing to
+behold, in some, attended with a blank pallor and fatal
+consternation--yet no trace of any of these symptoms was visible upon
+the countenance of the cosmopolitan, notwithstanding nothing could be
+more sudden and unexpected than the barber's demand.
+
+"You speak of cash, barber; pray in what connection?"
+
+"In a nearer one, sir," answered the barber, less blandly, "than I
+thought the man with the sweet voice stood, who wanted me to trust him
+once for a shave, on the score of being a sort of thirteenth cousin."
+
+"Indeed, and what did you say to him?"
+
+"I said, 'Thank you, sir, but I don't see the connection,'"
+
+"How could you so unsweetly answer one with a sweet voice?"
+
+"Because, I recalled what the son of Sirach says in the True Book: 'An
+enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips;' and so I did what the son of
+Sirach advises in such cases: 'I believed not his many words.'"
+
+"What, barber, do you say that such cynical sort of things are in the
+True Book, by which, of course, you mean the Bible?"
+
+"Yes, and plenty more to the same effect. Read the Book of Proverbs."
+
+"That's strange, now, barber; for I never happen to have met with those
+passages you cite. Before I go to bed this night, I'll inspect the Bible
+I saw on the cabin-table, to-day. But mind, you mustn't quote the True
+Book that way to people coming in here; it would be impliedly a
+violation of the contract. But you don't know how glad I feel that you
+have for one while signed off all that sort of thing."
+
+"No, sir; not unless you down with the cash."
+
+"Cash again! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, in this paper here, you engage, sir, to insure me against a
+certain loss, and----"
+
+"Certain? Is it so _certain_ you are going to lose?"
+
+"Why, that way of taking the word may not be amiss, but I didn't mean
+it so. I meant a _certain_ loss; you understand, a CERTAIN loss; that is
+to say, a certain loss. Now then, sir, what use your mere writing and
+saying you will insure me, unless beforehand you place in my hands a
+money-pledge, sufficient to that end?"
+
+"I see; the material pledge."
+
+"Yes, and I will put it low; say fifty dollars."
+
+"Now what sort of a beginning is this? You, barber, for a given time
+engage to trust man, to put confidence in men, and, for your first step,
+make a demand implying no confidence in the very man you engage with.
+But fifty dollars is nothing, and I would let you have it cheerfully,
+only I unfortunately happen to have but little change with me just now."
+
+"But you have money in your trunk, though?"
+
+"To be sure. But you see--in fact, barber, you must be consistent. No, I
+won't let you have the money now; I won't let you violate the inmost
+spirit of our contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you
+again."
+
+"Stay, sir"--humming and hawing--"you have forgotten something."
+
+"Handkerchief?--gloves? No, forgotten nothing. Good-night."
+
+"Stay, sir--the--the shaving."
+
+"Ah, I _did_ forget that. But now that it strikes me, I shan't pay you
+at present. Look at your agreement; you must trust. Tut! against loss
+you hold the guarantee. Good-night, my dear barber."
+
+With which words he sauntered off, leaving the barber in a maze, staring
+after.
+
+But it holding true in fascination as in natural philosophy, that
+nothing can act where it is not, so the barber was not long now in being
+restored to his self-possession and senses; the first evidence of which
+perhaps was, that, drawing forth his notification from the drawer, he
+put it back where it belonged; while, as for the agreement, that he tore
+up; which he felt the more free to do from the impression that in all
+human probability he would never again see the person who had drawn it.
+Whether that impression proved well-founded or not, does not appear. But
+in after days, telling the night's adventure to his friends, the worthy
+barber always spoke of his queer customer as the man-charmer--as certain
+East Indians are called snake-charmers--and all his friends united in
+thinking him QUITE AN ORIGINAL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF
+DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM
+THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
+
+
+"Quite an original:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the
+young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the
+well-read, or the man who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense
+of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its
+lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences.
+
+As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on
+meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes
+hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score
+such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in
+the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to
+say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel,
+or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.
+
+More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are
+no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is.
+But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
+up?
+
+Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in
+town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the
+novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the
+cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are
+hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters--that
+is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this,
+that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to
+speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.
+
+In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of
+personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there,
+as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or
+the founder of a new religion.
+
+In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works
+of invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of
+the age; which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the
+claim, judged by the principles here suggested.
+
+Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle
+characters in fiction to being deemed original, is but something
+personal--confined to itself. The character sheds not its characteristic
+on its surroundings, whereas, the original character, essentially such,
+is like a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all round
+it--everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is
+with Hamlet), so that, in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate
+conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
+which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things.
+
+For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so
+can there be but one such original character to one work of invention.
+Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more
+than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for
+new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining
+and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To
+produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen
+much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he
+must have had much luck.
+
+There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon
+in fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's
+imagination--it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life
+is from the egg.
+
+In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase,
+_Quite an Original_, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at
+unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps
+upon the smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned to, will be,
+by retiring under cover of it, in good trim as may be, to the story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN INCREASES IN SERIOUSNESS.
+
+
+In the middle of the gentleman's cabin burned a solar lamp, swung from
+the ceiling, and whose shade of ground glass was all round fancifully
+variegated, in transparency, with the image of a horned altar, from
+which flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed man, his head
+encircled by a halo. The light of this lamp, after dazzlingly striking
+on marble, snow-white and round--the slab of a centre-table beneath--on
+all sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness, till,
+like circles from a stone dropped in water, the rays died dimly away in
+the furthest nook of the place.
+
+Here and there, true to their place, but not to their function, swung
+other lamps, barren planets, which had either gone out from exhaustion,
+or been extinguished by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
+or who wanted to sleep, not see.
+
+By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining lamp would have
+been extinguished as well, had not a steward forbade, saying that the
+commands of the captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
+light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who, like many in
+his vocation, was apt to be a little free-spoken at times, had been
+provoked by the man's pertinacity to remind him, not only of the sad
+consequences which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being left
+in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that, in a place full of
+strangers, to show one's self anxious to produce darkness there, such an
+anxiety was, to say the least, not becoming. So the lamp--last survivor
+of many--burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some berths, and
+inwardly execrated by those in others.
+
+Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which lighted his book on
+the table, sat a clean, comely, old man, his head snowy as the marble,
+and a countenance like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
+when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed him and
+departed in peace. From his hale look of greenness in winter, and his
+hands ingrained with the tan, less, apparently, of the present summer,
+than of accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do farmer,
+happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity, from the fields to
+the fireside--one of those who, at three-score-and-ten, are
+fresh-hearted as at fifteen; to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed
+than knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted by the world,
+because ignorant of it; just as a countryman putting up at a London inn,
+and never stirring out of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last
+without once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.
+
+Redolent from the barber's shop, as any bridegroom tripping to the
+bridal chamber might come, and by his look of cheeriness seeming to
+dispense a sort of morning through the night, in came the cosmopolitan;
+but marking the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned himself down,
+and trod softly, and took a seat on the other side of the table, and
+said nothing. Still, there was a kind of waiting expression about him.
+
+"Sir," said the old man, after looking up puzzled at him a moment,
+"sir," said he, "one would think this was a coffee-house, and it was
+war-time, and I had a newspaper here with great news, and the only copy
+to be had, you sit there looking at me so eager."
+
+"And so you _have_ good news there, sir--the very best of good news."
+
+"Too good to be true," here came from one of the curtained berths.
+
+"Hark!" said the cosmopolitan. "Some one talks in his sleep."
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "and you--_you_ seem to be talking in a dream.
+Why speak you, sir, of news, and all that, when you must see this is a
+book I have here--the Bible, not a newspaper?"
+
+"I know that; and when you are through with it--but not a moment
+sooner--I will thank you for it. It belongs to the boat, I believe--a
+present from a society."
+
+"Oh, take it, take it!"
+
+"Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I simply stated the fact
+in explanation of my waiting here--nothing more. Read on, sir, or you
+will distress me."
+
+This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his spectacles, and
+saying he had about finished his chapter, the old man kindly presented
+the volume, which was received with thanks equally kind. After reading
+for some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness into
+seriousness, and from that into a kind of pain, the cosmopolitan slowly
+laid down the book, and turning to the old man, who thus far had been
+watching him with benign curiosity, said: "Can you, my aged friend,
+resolve me a doubt--a disturbing doubt?"
+
+"There are doubts, sir," replied the old man, with a changed
+countenance, "there are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not
+man that can solve them."
+
+"True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one who thinks well of man.
+I love man. I have confidence in man. But what was told me not a
+half-hour since? I was told that I would find it written--'Believe not
+his many words--an enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips'--and also I was
+told that I would find a good deal more to the same effect, and all in
+this book. I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself,
+what do I read? Not only just what was quoted, but also, as was engaged,
+more to the same purpose, such as this: 'With much communication he will
+tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair, and say What
+wantest thou? If thou be for his profit he will use thee; he will make
+thee bear, and will not be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed.
+When thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.'"
+
+"Who's that describing the confidence-man?" here came from the berth
+again.
+
+"Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan,
+again looking off in surprise. "Same voice as before, ain't it? Strange
+sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?"
+
+"Never mind _him_, sir," said the old man anxiously, "but tell me truly,
+did you, indeed, read from the book just now?"
+
+"I did," with changed air, "and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster
+in man; to me, a philanthropist."
+
+"Why," moved, "you don't mean to say, that what you repeated is really
+down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years,
+and don't remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it," rising
+earnestly, and going round to him.
+
+"There it is; and there--and there"--turning over the leaves, and
+pointing to the sentences one by one; "there--all down in the 'Wisdom of
+Jesus, the Son of Sirach.'"
+
+"Ah!" cried the old man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the
+leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one
+side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers
+he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the
+right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but
+all I hold in my hand here is apocrypha."
+
+"Apocrypha?"
+
+"Yes; and there's the word in black and white," pointing to it. "And
+what says the word? It says as much as 'not warranted;' for what do
+college men say of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal. The
+word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies something of uncertain
+credit. So if your disturbance be raised from aught in this apocrypha,"
+again taking up the pages, "in that case, think no more of it, for it's
+apocrypha."
+
+"What's that about the Apocalypse?" here, a third time, came from the
+berth.
+
+"He's seeing visions now, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan, once more
+looking in the direction of the interruption. "But, sir," resuming, "I
+cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the
+apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when
+all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part
+should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did
+those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I
+never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man.
+This son of Sirach even says--I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy
+friends;' not, observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends,
+thy false friends, but thy _friends_, thy real friends--that is to say,
+not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly trusted. Can
+Rochefoucault equal that? I should not wonder if his view of human
+nature, like Machiavelli's, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And to
+call it wisdom--the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach! Wisdom, indeed! What an
+ugly thing wisdom must be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek,
+say I, rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But no, no; it
+ain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir. For how can that be
+trustworthy that teaches distrust?"
+
+"I tell you what it is," here cried the same voice as before, only more
+in less of mockery, "if you two don't know enough to sleep, don't be
+keeping wiser men awake. And if you want to know what wisdom is, go find
+it under your blankets."
+
+"Wisdom?" cried another voice with a brogue; "arrah and is't wisdom the
+two geese are gabbling about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils,
+and don't be after burning your fingers with the likes of wisdom."
+
+"We must talk lower," said the old man; "I fear we have annoyed these
+good people."
+
+"I should be sorry if wisdom annoyed any one," said the other; "but we
+will lower our voices, as you say. To resume: taking the thing as I did,
+can you be surprised at my uneasiness in reading passages so charged
+with the spirit of distrust?"
+
+"No, sir, I am not surprised," said the old man; then added: "from what
+you say, I see you are something of my way of thinking--you think that
+to distrust the creature, is a kind of distrusting of the Creator. Well,
+my young friend, what is it? This is rather late for you to be about.
+What do you want of me?"
+
+These questions were put to a boy in the fragment of an old linen coat,
+bedraggled and yellow, who, coming in from the deck barefooted on the
+soft carpet, had been unheard. All pointed and fluttering, the rags of
+the little fellow's red-flannel shirt, mixed with those of his yellow
+coat, flamed about him like the painted flames in the robes of a victim
+in _auto-da-fe_. His face, too, wore such a polish of seasoned grime,
+that his sloe-eyes sparkled from out it like lustrous sparks in fresh
+coal. He was a juvenile peddler, or _marchand_, as the polite French
+might have called him, of travelers' conveniences; and, having no
+allotted sleeping-place, had, in his wanderings about the boat, spied,
+through glass doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was,
+thought it might never be too much so for turning a penny.
+
+Among other things, he carried a curious affair--a miniature mahogany
+door, hinged to its frame, and suitably furnished in all respects but
+one, which will shortly appear. This little door he now meaningly held
+before the old man, who, after staring at it a while, said: "Go thy ways
+with thy toys, child."
+
+"Now, may I never get so old and wise as that comes to," laughed the boy
+through his grime; and, by so doing, disclosing leopard-like teeth, like
+those of Murillo's wild beggar-boy's.
+
+"The divils are laughing now, are they?" here came the brogue from the
+berth. "What do the divils find to laugh about in wisdom, begorrah? To
+bed with ye, ye divils, and no more of ye."
+
+"You see, child, you have disturbed that person," said the old man; "you
+mustn't laugh any more."
+
+"Ah, now," said the cosmopolitan, "don't, pray, say that; don't let him
+think that poor Laughter is persecuted for a fool in this world."
+
+"Well," said the old man to the boy, "you must, at any rate, speak very
+low."
+
+"Yes, that wouldn't be amiss, perhaps," said the cosmopolitan; "but, my
+fine fellow, you were about saying something to my aged friend here;
+what was it?"
+
+"Oh," with a lowered voice, coolly opening and shutting his little door,
+"only this: when I kept a toy-stand at the fair in Cincinnati last
+month, I sold more than one old man a child's rattle."
+
+"No doubt of it," said the old man. "I myself often buy such things for
+my little grandchildren."
+
+"But these old men I talk of were old bachelors."
+
+The old man stared at him a moment; then, whispering to the
+cosmopolitan: "Strange boy, this; sort of simple, ain't he? Don't know
+much, hey?"
+
+"Not much," said the boy, "or I wouldn't be so ragged."
+
+"Why, child, what sharp ears you have!" exclaimed the old man.
+
+"If they were duller, I would hear less ill of myself," said the boy.
+
+"You seem pretty wise, my lad," said the cosmopolitan; "why don't you
+sell your wisdom, and buy a coat?"
+
+"Faith," said the boy, "that's what I did to-day, and this is the coat
+that the price of my wisdom bought. But won't you trade? See, now, it
+is not the door I want to sell; I only carry the door round for a
+specimen, like. Look now, sir," standing the thing up on the table,
+"supposing this little door is your state-room door; well," opening it,
+"you go in for the night; you close your door behind you--thus. Now, is
+all safe?"
+
+"I suppose so, child," said the old man.
+
+"Of course it is, my fine fellow," said the cosmopolitan.
+
+"All safe. Well. Now, about two o'clock in the morning, say, a
+soft-handed gentleman comes softly and tries the knob here--thus; in
+creeps my soft-handed gentleman; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft
+cash?"
+
+"I see, I see, child," said the old man; "your fine gentleman is a fine
+thief, and there's no lock to your little door to keep him out;" with
+which words he peered at it more closely than before.
+
+"Well, now," again showing his white teeth, "well, now, some of you old
+folks are knowing 'uns, sure enough; but now comes the great invention,"
+producing a small steel contrivance, very simple but ingenious, and
+which, being clapped on the inside of the little door, secured it as
+with a bolt. "There now," admiringly holding it off at arm's-length,
+"there now, let that soft-handed gentleman come now a' softly trying
+this little knob here, and let him keep a' trying till he finds his head
+as soft as his hand. Buy the traveler's patent lock, sir, only
+twenty-five cents."
+
+"Dear me," cried the old man, "this beats printing. Yes, child, I will
+have one, and use it this very night."
+
+With the phlegm of an old banker pouching the change, the boy now turned
+to the other: "Sell you one, sir?"
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use such blacksmiths' things."
+
+"Those who give the blacksmith most work seldom do," said the boy,
+tipping him a wink expressive of a degree of indefinite knowingness, not
+uninteresting to consider in one of his years. But the wink was not
+marked by the old man, nor, to all appearances, by him for whom it was
+intended.
+
+"Now then," said the boy, again addressing the old man. "With your
+traveler's lock on your door to-night, you will think yourself all safe,
+won't you?"
+
+"I think I will, child."
+
+"But how about the window?"
+
+"Dear me, the window, child. I never thought of that. I must see to
+that."
+
+"Never you mind about the window," said the boy, "nor, to be honor
+bright, about the traveler's lock either, (though I ain't sorry for
+selling one), do you just buy one of these little jokers," producing a
+number of suspender-like objects, which he dangled before the old man;
+"money-belts, sir; only fifty cents."
+
+"Money-belt? never heard of such a thing."
+
+"A sort of pocket-book," said the boy, "only a safer sort. Very good for
+travelers."
+
+"Oh, a pocket-book. Queer looking pocket-books though, seems to me.
+Ain't they rather long and narrow for pocket-books?"
+
+"They go round the waist, sir, inside," said the boy "door open or
+locked, wide awake on your feet or fast asleep in your chair, impossible
+to be robbed with a money-belt."
+
+"I see, I see. It _would_ be hard to rob one's money-belt. And I was
+told to-day the Mississippi is a bad river for pick-pockets. How much
+are they?"
+
+"Only fifty cents, sir."
+
+"I'll take one. There!"
+
+"Thank-ee. And now there's a present for ye," with which, drawing from
+his breast a batch of little papers, he threw one before the old man,
+who, looking at it, read "_Counterfeit Detector_."
+
+"Very good thing," said the boy, "I give it to all my customers who
+trade seventy-five cents' worth; best present can be made them. Sell you
+a money-belt, sir?" turning to the cosmopolitan.
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that sort of thing; my money
+I carry loose."
+
+"Loose bait ain't bad," said the boy, "look a lie and find the truth;
+don't care about a Counterfeit Detector, do ye? or is the wind East,
+d'ye think?"
+
+"Child," said the old man in some concern, "you mustn't sit up any
+longer, it affects your mind; there, go away, go to bed."
+
+"If I had some people's brains to lie on. I would," said the boy, "but
+planks is hard, you know."
+
+"Go, child--go, go!"
+
+"Yes, child,--yes, yes," said the boy, with which roguish parody, by way
+of congé, he scraped back his hard foot on the woven flowers of the
+carpet, much as a mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
+in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat--which, like the
+rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard times, a belonging beyond his
+years, though not beyond his experience, being a grown man's cast-off
+beaver--turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the place.
+
+"That's a strange boy," said the old man, looking after him. "I wonder
+who's his mother; and whether she knows what late hours he keeps?"
+
+"The probability is," observed the other, "that his mother does not
+know. But if you remember, sir, you were saying something, when the boy
+interrupted you with his door."
+
+"So I was.--Let me see," unmindful of his purchases for the moment,
+"what, now, was it? What was that I was saying? Do _you_ remember?"
+
+"Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was something like
+this: you hoped you did not distrust the creature; for that would imply
+distrust of the Creator."
+
+"Yes, that was something like it," mechanically and unintelligently
+letting his eye fall now on his purchases.
+
+"Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?"
+
+"It's best, ain't it?" with a slight start. "Never too late to be
+cautious. 'Beware of pick-pockets' is all over the boat."
+
+"Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or some other morbid
+cynic, who put them there. But that's not to the purpose. Since you are
+minded to it, pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
+between us, we can make a secure thing of it."
+
+"Oh no, no, no!" said the old man, not unperturbed, "no, no, I wouldn't
+trouble you for the world," then, nervously folding up the belt, "and I
+won't be so impolite as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
+now that I think of it," after a pause, carefully taking a little wad
+from a remote corner of his vest pocket, "here are two bills they gave
+me at St. Louis, yesterday. No doubt they are all right; but just to
+pass time, I'll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed boy to make
+me such a present. Public benefactor, that little boy!"
+
+Laying the Detector square before him on the table, he then, with
+something of the air of an officer bringing by the collar a brace of
+culprits to the bar, placed the two bills opposite the Detector, upon
+which, the examination began, lasting some time, prosecuted with no
+small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the right hand proving
+of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out and pointing the evidence,
+whichever way it might go.
+
+After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in a formal voice,
+"Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman; guilty, or not guilty?--Not guilty,
+ain't it?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed, "there's
+so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind of uncertain.
+Here, now, is this bill," touching one, "it looks to be a three dollar
+bill on the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company. Well, the
+Detector says----"
+
+"But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and Insurance! What
+more would you have?"
+
+"No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things, that, if a good
+bill, it must have, thickened here and there into the substance of the
+paper, little wavy spots of red; and it says they must have a kind of
+silky feel, being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred up
+in the paper-maker's vat--the paper being made to order for the
+company."
+
+"Well, and is----"
+
+"Stay. But then it adds, that sign is not always to be relied on; for
+some good bills get so worn, the red marks get rubbed out. And that's
+the case with my bill here--see how old it is--or else it's a
+counterfeit, or else--I don't see right--or else--dear, dear me--I don't
+know what else to think."
+
+"What a peck of trouble that Detector makes for you now; believe me, the
+bill is good; don't be so distrustful. Proves what I've always thought,
+that much of the want of confidence, in these days, is owing to these
+Counterfeit Detectors you see on every desk and counter. Puts people up
+to suspecting good bills. Throw it away, I beg, if only because of the
+trouble it breeds you."
+
+"No; it's troublesome, but I think I'll keep it.--Stay, now, here's
+another sign. It says that, if the bill is good, it must have in one
+corner, mixed in with the vignette, the figure of a goose, very small,
+indeed, all but microscopic; and, for added precaution, like the figure
+of Napoleon outlined by the tree, not observable, even if magnified,
+unless the attention is directed to it. Now, pore over it as I will, I
+can't see this goose."
+
+"Can't see the goose? why, I can; and a famous goose it is. There"
+(reaching over and pointing to a spot in the vignette).
+
+"I don't see it--dear me--I don't see the goose. Is it a real goose?"
+
+"A perfect goose; beautiful goose."
+
+"Dear, dear, I don't see it."
+
+"Then throw that Detector away, I say again; it only makes you purblind;
+don't you see what a wild-goose chase it has led you? The bill is good.
+Throw the Detector away."
+
+"No; it ain't so satisfactory as I thought for, but I must examine this
+other bill."
+
+"As you please, but I can't in conscience assist you any more; pray,
+then, excuse me."
+
+So, while the old man with much painstakings resumed his work, the
+cosmopolitan, to allow him every facility, resumed his reading. At
+length, seeing that he had given up his undertaking as hopeless, and was
+at leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravely interesting
+remarks to him about the book before him, and, presently, becoming more
+and more grave, said, as he turned the large volume slowly over on the
+table, and with much difficulty traced the faded remains of the gilt
+inscription giving the name of the society who had presented it to the
+boat, "Ah, sir, though every one must be pleased at the thought of the
+presence in public places of such a book, yet there is something that
+abates the satisfaction. Look at this volume; on the outside, battered
+as any old valise in the baggage-room; and inside, white and virgin as
+the hearts of lilies in bud."
+
+"So it is, so it is," said the old man sadly, his attention for the
+first directed to the circumstance.
+
+"Nor is this the only time," continued the other, "that I have observed
+these public Bibles in boats and hotels. All much like this--old
+without, and new within. True, this aptly typifies that internal
+freshness, the best mark of truth, however ancient; but then, it speaks
+not so well as could be wished for the good book's esteem in the minds
+of the traveling public. I may err, but it seems to me that if more
+confidence was put in it by the traveling public, it would hardly be
+so."
+
+With an expression very unlike that with which he had bent over the
+Detector, the old man sat meditating upon his companions remarks a
+while; and, at last, with a rapt look, said: "And yet, of all people,
+the traveling public most need to put trust in that guardianship which
+is made known in this book."
+
+"True, true," thoughtfully assented the other. "And one would think they
+would want to, and be glad to," continued the old man kindling; "for,
+in all our wanderings through this vale, how pleasant, not less than
+obligatory, to feel that we need start at no wild alarms, provide for no
+wild perils; trusting in that Power which is alike able and willing to
+protect us when we cannot ourselves."
+
+His manner produced something answering to it in the cosmopolitan, who,
+leaning over towards him, said sadly: "Though this is a theme on which
+travelers seldom talk to each other, yet, to you, sir, I will say, that
+I share something of your sense of security. I have moved much about the
+world, and still keep at it; nevertheless, though in this land, and
+especially in these parts of it, some stories are told about steamboats
+and railroads fitted to make one a little apprehensive, yet, I may say
+that, neither by land nor by water, am I ever seriously disquieted,
+however, at times, transiently uneasy; since, with you, sir, I believe
+in a Committee of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an
+invisible patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose beat lies
+as much through forests as towns, along rivers as streets. In short, I
+never forget that passage of Scripture which says, 'Jehovah shall be thy
+confidence.' The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable
+misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted care must he take
+of himself."
+
+"Even so," said the old man, lowly.
+
+"There is a chapter," continued the other, again taking the book,
+"which, as not amiss, I must read you. But this lamp, solar-lamp as it
+is, begins to burn dimly."
+
+"So it does, so it does," said the old man with changed air, "dear me,
+it must be very late. I must to bed, to bed! Let me see," rising and
+looking wistfully all round, first on the stools and settees, and then
+on the carpet, "let me see, let me see;--is there anything I have
+forgot,--forgot? Something I a sort of dimly remember. Something, my
+son--careful man--told me at starting this morning, this very morning.
+Something about seeing to--something before I got into my berth. What
+could it be? Something for safety. Oh, my poor old memory!"
+
+"Let me give a little guess, sir. Life-preserver?"
+
+"So it was. He told me not to omit seeing I had a life-preserver in my
+state-room; said the boat supplied them, too. But where are they? I
+don't see any. What are they like?"
+
+"They are something like this, sir, I believe," lifting a brown stool
+with a curved tin compartment underneath; "yes, this, I think, is a
+life-preserver, sir; and a very good one, I should say, though I don't
+pretend to know much about such things, never using them myself."
+
+"Why, indeed, now! Who would have thought it? _that_ a life-preserver?
+That's the very stool I was sitting on, ain't it?"
+
+"It is. And that shows that one's life is looked out for, when he ain't
+looking out for it himself. In fact, any of these stools here will float
+you, sir, should the boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But,
+since you want one in your room, pray take this one," handing it to him.
+"I think I can recommend this one; the tin part," rapping it with his
+knuckles, "seems so perfect--sounds so very hollow."
+
+"Sure it's _quite_ perfect, though?" Then, anxiously putting on his
+spectacles, he scrutinized it pretty closely--"well soldered? quite
+tight?"
+
+"I should say so, sir; though, indeed, as I said, I never use this sort
+of thing, myself. Still, I think that in case of a wreck, barring
+sharp-pointed timbers, you could have confidence in that stool for a
+special providence."
+
+"Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have both of us in its
+good keeping."
+
+"Be sure it will," eying the old man with sympathy, as for the moment he
+stood, money-belt in hand, and life-preserver under arm, "be sure it
+will, sir, since in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.
+But, bless me, we are being left in the dark here. Pah! what a smell,
+too."
+
+"Ah, my way now," cried the old man, peering before him, "where lies my
+way to my state-room?"
+
+"I have indifferent eyes, and will show you; but, first, for the good of
+all lungs, let me extinguish this lamp."
+
+The next moment, the waning light expired, and with it the waning flames
+of the horned altar, and the waning halo round the robed man's brow;
+while in the darkness which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old
+man away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note and Errata                                |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following words were seen in both hyphenated and         |
+  | un-hyphenated forms:                                         |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |church-yard (2) |churchyard (1) |                           |
+  | |cross-wise (1)  |crosswise (1)  |                           |
+  | |thread-bare (1) |threadbare (1) |                           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following typographical errors were corrected:           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |Error               |Correction          |                  |
+  | |                    |                    |                  |
+  | |ACQUANTANCE         |ACQUAINTANCE        |                  |
+  | |prevailent          |prevalent           |                  |
+  | |the the             |the                 |                  |
+  | |tranquillity        |tranquility         |                  |
+  | |abox                |a box               |                  |
+  | |acommodates         |accommodates        |                  |
+  | |have have           |have                |                  |
+  | |worldlingg, lutton, |worldling, glutton, |                  |
+  | |backswoods'         |backwoods'          |                  |
+  | |it it               |it is               |                  |
+  | |fellew              |fellow              |                  |
+  | |principal           |principle           |                  |
+  | |it it               |it                  |                  |
+  | |everwhere           |everywhere          |                  |
+  | |SUPRISING           |SURPRISING          |                  |
+  | |freind              |friend              |                  |
+  |                                                              |
+  | One 'oe' ligature was replaced with oe.                      |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFIDENCE-MAN ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville</div>
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+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Confidence-Man</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Herman Melville</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 12, 2007 [eBook #21816]<br />
+[Most recently updated: May 28, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: LN Yaddanapudi and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFIDENCE-MAN ***</div>
+
+<h1><span class='sf50'>THE</span><br /><br />
+CONFIDENCE-MAN:<br /><br />
+
+<span class='sf75'>HIS MASQUERADE.</span><br /><br />
+
+<span class='sf30'>BY</span><br />
+
+<span class='sf50'>HERMAN MELVILLE,</span><br />
+<span class='sf30'>AUTHOR OF &ldquo;PIAZZA TALES,&rdquo; &ldquo;OMOO,&rdquo; &ldquo;TYPEE,&rdquo; ETC., ETC.</span></h1>
+
+<p class='b c noin'>NEW YORK:<br />
+DIX, EDWARDS &amp; CO., 321 BROADWAY<br />
+1857.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class='c mt2 noin'>Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1857, by<br />
+HERMAN MELVILLE,<br />
+In the Clerk&rsquo;s Office of the District Court of the United States for the<br />
+Southern District of New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c mt2 noin'>MILLER &amp; HOLMAN,<br />
+Printers and Stereotypers, N. Y.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A mute goes aboard a boat on the Mississippi.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Showing that many men have many minds.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which a variety of characters appear.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Renewal of old acquaintance.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The man with the weed makes it an even question whether he be a great sage<br />
+or a great simpleton.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>At the outset of which certain passengers prove deaf to the call of charity.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A gentleman with gold sleeve-buttons.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A charitable lady.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Two business men transact a little business.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In the cabin.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Only a page or so.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The story of the unfortunate man, from which may be gathered whether or no<br />
+he has been justly so entitled.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The man with the traveling-cap evinces much humanity, and in a way which<br />
+would seem to show him to be one of the most logical of optimists.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>An old miser, upon suitable representations, is prevailed upon to venture an<br />
+investment.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A sick man, after some impatience, is induced to become a patient.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Towards the end of which the Herb-Doctor proves himself a forgiver of injuries.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Inquest into the true character of the Herb-Doctor.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A soldier of fortune.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Reappearance of one who may be remembered.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A hard case.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In the polite spirit of the Tusculan disputations.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the powerful effect of natural scenery is evinced in the case of the
+Missourian, who, in view of the region round about Cairo, has a return of
+his chilly fit.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A philanthropist undertakes to convert a misanthrope, but does not get beyond<br />
+confuting him.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The Cosmopolitan makes an acquaintance.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the views of one<br />
+evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Some account of a man of questionable morality, but who, nevertheless, would<br />
+seem entitled to the esteem of that eminent English moralist who said he<br />
+liked a good hater.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Moot points touching the late Colonel John Moredock.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The boon companions.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Opening with a poetical eulogy of the Press, and continuing with talk inspired<br />
+by the same.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>A metamorphosis more surprising than any in Ovid.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Showing that the age of music and magicians is not yet over.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the Cosmopolitan tells the story of the gentleman-madman.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the Cosmopolitan strikingly evinces the artlessness of his nature.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the Cosmopolitan is accosted by a mystic, whereupon ensues pretty
+much such talk as might be expected.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The mystical master introduces the practical disciple.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The disciple unbends, and consents to act a social part.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The hypothetical friends.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">CHAPTER XL.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the story of China Aster is, at second-hand, told by one who, while not<br />
+disapproving the moral, disclaims the spirit of the style.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">CHAPTER XLI.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Ending with a rupture of the hypothesis.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">CHAPTER XLII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Upon the heel of the last scene, the Cosmopolitan enters the barber&rsquo;s shop, a<br />
+benediction on his lips.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">CHAPTER XLIII.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>Very charming.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">CHAPTER XLIV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of the discourse,<br />
+which will be sure of receiving more or less attention from those<br />
+readers who do not skip it.</span></p>
+
+<p class='c noin'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">CHAPTER XLV.</a><br />
+<span class='sf75'>The Cosmopolitan increases in seriousness.</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>THE CONFIDENCE-MAN:<br />
+HIS MASQUERADE.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.</span></h2>
+
+<p>At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly
+as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in
+cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis.</p>
+
+<p>His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen,
+his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He
+had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No
+porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by
+friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers,
+wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he
+was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>In the same moment with his advent, he stepped
+aboard the favorite steamer Fidèle, on the point of
+starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but unsaluted,
+with the air of one neither courting nor shunning
+regard, but evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it
+through solitudes or cities, he held on his way along
+the lower deck until he chanced to come to a placard
+nigh the captain&rsquo;s office, offering a reward for the
+capture of a mysterious impostor, supposed to have
+recently arrived from the East; quite an original
+genius in his vocation, as would appear, though wherein
+his originality consisted was not clearly given; but
+what purported to be a careful description of his person
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered
+about the announcement, and among them certain
+chevaliers, whose eyes, it was plain, were on the capitals,
+or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of them from
+behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they
+were enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance
+interval, one of these chevaliers somewhat showed his
+hand in purchasing from another chevalier, ex-officio a
+peddler of money-belts, one of his popular safe-guards,
+while another peddler, who was still another versatile
+chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives
+of Measan, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of
+the Mississippi, and the brothers Harpe, the Thugs
+of the Green River country, in Kentucky&mdash;creatures,
+with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the
+time, and for the most part, like the hunted generations
+of wolves in the same regions, leaving comparatively
+few successors; which would seem cause for unalloyed
+gratulation, and is such to all except those who think
+that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off,
+the foxes increase.</p>
+
+<p>Pausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded
+in threading his way, as at last to plant himself just
+beside the placard, when, producing a small slate and
+tracing some words upon if, he held it up before him
+on a level with the placard, so that they who read the
+one might read the other. The words were these:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;Charity thinketh no evil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As, in gaining his place, some little perseverance, not
+to say persistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been
+unavoidable, it was not with the best relish that the
+crowd regarded his apparent intrusion; and upon a
+more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority
+about him, but rather something quite the contrary&mdash;he
+being of an aspect so singularly innocent;
+an aspect too, which they took to be somehow inappropriate
+to the time and place, and inclining to the
+notion that his writing was of much the same sort: in
+short, taking him for some strange kind of simpleton,
+harmless enough, would he keep to himself, but not
+wholly unobnoxious as an intruder&mdash;they made no
+scruple to jostle him aside; while one, less kind than
+the rest, or more of a wag, by an unobserved stroke,
+dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon his
+head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly
+turned, and writing anew upon the slate, again held
+it up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;Charity suffereth long, and is kind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Illy pleased with his pertinacity, as they thought it,
+the crowd a second time thrust him aside, and not
+without epithets and some buffets, all of which were
+unresented. But, as if at last despairing of so difficult
+an adventure, wherein one, apparently a non-resistant,
+sought to impose his presence upon fighting characters,
+the stranger now moved slowly away, yet not before
+altering his writing to this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;Charity endureth all things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Shield-like bearing his slate before him, amid stares
+and jeers he moved slowly up and down, at his turning
+points again changing his inscription to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;Charity believeth all things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class='noin'>and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;Charity never faileth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The word charity, as originally traced, remained
+throughout uneffaced, not unlike the left-hand numeral
+of a printed date, otherwise left for convenience in
+blank.</p>
+
+<p>To some observers, the singularity, if not lunacy, of
+the stranger was heightened by his muteness, and, perhaps
+also, by the contrast to his proceedings afforded in
+the actions&mdash;quite in the wonted and sensible order of
+things&mdash;of the barber of the boat, whose quarters,
+under a smoking-saloon, and over against a bar-room,
+was next door but two to the captain&rsquo;s office. As if
+the long, wide, covered deck, hereabouts built up on
+both sides with shop-like windowed spaces, were some
+Constantinople arcade or bazaar, where more than one
+trade is plied, this river barber, aproned and slippered,
+but rather crusty-looking for the moment, it may be
+from being newly out of bed, was throwing open his
+premises for the day, and suitably arranging the exterior.
+With business-like dispatch, having rattled down
+his shutters, and at a palm-tree angle set out in the
+iron fixture his little ornamental pole, and this without
+overmuch tenderness for the elbows and toes of the
+crowd, he concluded his operations by bidding people
+stand still more aside, when, jumping on a stool, he
+hung over his door, on the customary nail, a gaudy sort
+of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed by
+himself, gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in
+readiness to shave, and also, for the public benefit, with
+two words not unfrequently seen ashore gracing other
+shops besides barbers&rsquo;:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c smcap sf75'>&ldquo;No trust.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>An inscription which, though in a sense not less intrusive
+than the contrasted ones of the stranger, did
+not, as it seemed, provoke any corresponding derision
+or surprise, much less indignation; and still less, to all
+appearances, did it gain for the inscriber the repute of
+being a simpleton.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he with the slate continued moving
+slowly up and down, not without causing some stares
+to change into jeers, and some jeers into pushes, and
+some pushes into punches; when suddenly, in one of
+his turns, he was hailed from behind by two porters
+carrying a large trunk; but as the summons, though
+loud, was without effect, they accidentally or otherwise
+swung their burden against him, nearly overthrowing
+him; when, by a quick start, a peculiar inarticulate
+moan, and a pathetic telegraphing of his fingers, he
+involuntarily betrayed that he was not alone dumb,
+but also deaf.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as if not wholly unaffected by his reception
+thus far, he went forward, seating himself in a
+retired spot on the forecastle, nigh the foot of a ladder
+there leading to a deck above, up and down which ladder
+some of the boatmen, in discharge of their duties,
+were occasionally going.</p>
+
+<p>From his betaking himself to this humble quarter,
+it was evident that, as a deck-passenger, the stranger,
+simple though he seemed, was not entirely ignorant of
+his place, though his taking a deck-passage might have
+been partly for convenience; as, from his having no
+luggage, it was probable that his destination was one
+of the small wayside landings within a few hours&rsquo; sail.
+But, though he might not have a long way to go, yet he
+seemed already to have come from a very long distance.</p>
+
+<p>Though neither soiled nor slovenly, his cream-colored
+suit had a tossed look, almost linty, as if, traveling
+night and day from some far country beyond the prairies,
+he had long been without the solace of a bed.
+His aspect was at once gentle and jaded, and, from the
+moment of seating himself, increasing in tired abstraction
+and dreaminess. Gradually overtaken by slumber,
+his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like figure
+relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder&rsquo;s foot, lay
+motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly
+stealing down over night, with its white placidity startles
+the brown farmer peering out from his threshold at
+daybreak.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>SHOWING THAT MANY MEN HAVE MANY MINDS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Odd fish!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor fellow!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who can he be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Casper Hauser.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bless my soul!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncommon countenance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Green prophet from Utah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Humbug!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Singular innocence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Means something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spirit-rapper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Moon-calf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Piteous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Trying to enlist interest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Beware of him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fast asleep here, and, doubtless, pick-pockets on
+board.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Kind of daylight Endymion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Escaped convict, worn out with dodging.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jacob dreaming at Luz.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Such the epitaphic comments, conflictingly spoken or
+thought, of a miscellaneous company, who, assembled
+on the overlooking, cross-wise balcony at the forward
+end of the upper deck near by, had not witnessed preceding
+occurrences.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, like some enchanted man in his grave,
+happily oblivious of all gossip, whether chiseled or
+chatted, the deaf and dumb stranger still tranquilly
+slept, while now the boat started on her voyage.</p>
+
+<p>The great ship-canal of Ving-King-Ching, in the
+Flowery Kingdom, seems the Mississippi in parts,
+where, amply flowing between low, vine-tangled
+banks, flat as tow-paths, it bears the huge toppling
+steamers, bedizened and lacquered within like imperial
+junks.</p>
+
+<p>Pierced along its great white bulk with two tiers of
+small embrasure-like windows, well above the waterline,
+the Fiddle, though, might at distance have been
+taken by strangers for some whitewashed fort on a
+floating isle.</p>
+
+<p>Merchants on &rsquo;change seem the passengers that buzz
+on her decks, while, from quarters unseen, comes a murmur
+as of bees in the comb. Fine promenades, domed
+saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential
+passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes,
+and out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers
+in an escritoire, present like facilities for publicity or
+privacy. Auctioneer or coiner, with equal ease, might
+somewhere here drive his trade.</p>
+
+<p>Though her voyage of twelve hundred miles extends
+from apple to orange, from clime to clime, yet, like
+any small ferry-boat, to right and left, at every landing,
+the huge Fidèle still receives additional passengers in
+exchange for those that disembark; so that, though
+always full of strangers, she continually, in some degree,
+adds to, or replaces them with strangers still
+more strange; like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed from the
+Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with
+strange waters, but never with the same strange particles
+in every part.</p>
+
+<p>Though hitherto, as has been seen, the man in
+cream-colors had by no means passed unobserved, yet
+by stealing into retirement, and there going asleep
+and continuing so, he seemed to have courted oblivion,
+a boon not often withheld from so humble an applicant
+as he. Those staring crowds on the shore were now
+left far behind, seen dimly clustering like swallows on
+eaves; while the passengers&rsquo; attention was soon drawn
+away to the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers
+on the Missouri shore, or the bluff-looking Missourians
+and towering Kentuckians among the throngs on the
+decks.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by&mdash;two or three random stoppages having
+been made, and the last transient memory of the slumberer
+vanished, and he himself, not unlikely, waked up
+and landed ere now&mdash;the crowd, as is usual, began in
+all parts to break up from a concourse into various
+clusters or squads, which in some cases disintegrated
+again into quartettes, trios, and couples, or even solitaires;
+involuntarily submitting to that natural law
+which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in
+time to the member.</p>
+
+<p>As among Chaucer&rsquo;s Canterbury pilgrims, or those
+oriental ones crossing the Red Sea towards Mecca in
+the festival month, there was no lack of variety. Natives
+of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and
+men of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen;
+farm-hunters and fame-hunters; heiress-hunters, gold-hunters,
+buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters,
+truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all
+these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined
+squaws; Northern speculators and Eastern philosophers;
+English, Irish, German, Scotch, Danes; Santa
+Fé traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in
+cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen,
+and Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters;
+Quakers in full drab, and United States soldiers in full
+regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto, quadroon; modish
+young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews;
+Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and
+mourners, teetotalers and convivialists, deacons and
+blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists and clay-eaters; grinning
+negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests.
+In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots
+congress of all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species,
+man.</p>
+
+<p>As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock,
+spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in
+the natural wood, so these mortals blended
+their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness;
+a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance.
+Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit
+of the West, whose type is the Mississippi itself, which,
+uniting the streams of the most distant and opposite
+zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan
+and confident tide.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS APPEAR.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive
+object, for a time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in
+tow-cloth attire and an old coal-sifter of a tamborine
+in his hand, who, owing to something wrong about his
+legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a Newfoundland
+dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured,
+honest black face rubbing against the upper
+part of people&rsquo;s thighs as he made shift to shuffle about,
+making music, such as it was, and raising a smile even
+from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his
+very deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily
+endured, raising mirth in some of that crowd, whose
+own purses, hearths, hearts, all their possessions, sound
+limbs included, could not make gay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is your name, old boy?&rdquo; said a purple-faced
+drover, putting his large purple hand on the cripple&rsquo;s
+bushy wool, as if it were the curled forehead of a black
+steer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who is your master, Guinea?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh sar, I am der dog widout massa.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I&rsquo;m sorry
+for that, Guinea. Dogs without masters fare hard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese
+here legs? What ge&rsquo;mman want to own dese here
+legs?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But where do you live?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All &rsquo;long shore, sar; dough now. I&rsquo;se going to
+see brodder at der landing; but chiefly I libs in dey
+city.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of
+nights?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On der floor of der good baker&rsquo;s oven, sar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should
+like to know, bakes such black bread in his oven,
+alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is that
+too charitable baker, pray?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dar he be,&rdquo; with a broad grin lifting his tambourine
+high over his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sun is the baker, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones
+for dis ole darkie when he sleeps out on der pabements
+o&rsquo; nights.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But that must be in the summer only, old boy.
+How about winter, when the cold Cossacks come
+clattering and jingling? How about winter, old
+boy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell
+you, sar. Oh sar, oh! don&rsquo;t speak ob der winter,&rdquo; he
+added, with a reminiscent shiver, shuffling off into the
+thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black sheep
+nudging itself a cozy berth in the heart of the white
+flock.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far not very many pennies had been given him,
+and, used at last to his strange looks, the less polite passengers
+of those in that part of the boat began to get
+their fill of him as a curious object; when suddenly the
+negro more than revived their first interest by an expedient
+which, whether by chance or design, was a singular
+temptation at once to <i>diversion</i> and charity, though,
+even more than his crippled limbs, it put him on a
+canine footing. In short, as in appearance he seemed
+a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to
+be treated. Still shuffling among the crowd, now and
+then he would pause, throwing back his head and,
+opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples
+at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people
+would have a bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny
+game, the cripple&rsquo;s mouth being at once target and
+purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with
+a cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject
+of alms-giving is trying, and to feel in duty bound
+to appear cheerfully grateful under the trial, must be
+still more so; but whatever his secret emotions, he
+swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this
+side the &oelig;sophagus. And nearly always he grinned,
+and only once or twice did he wince, which was when
+certain coins, tossed by more playful almoners, came
+inconveniently nigh to his teeth, an accident whose
+unwelcomeness was not unedged by the circumstance
+that the pennies thus thrown proved buttons.</p>
+
+<p>While this game of charity was yet at its height, a
+limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person&mdash;it may be
+some discharged custom-house officer, who, suddenly
+stripped of convenient means of support, had concluded
+to be avenged on government and humanity
+by making himself miserable for life, either by hating
+or suspecting everything and everybody&mdash;this shallow
+unfortunate, after sundry sorry observations of the negro,
+began to croak out something about his deformity
+being a sham, got up for financial purposes, which immediately
+threw a damp upon the frolic benignities of
+the pitch-penny players.</p>
+
+<p>But that these suspicions came from one who himself
+on a wooden leg went halt, this did not appear to
+strike anybody present. That cripples, above all men
+should be companionable, or, at least, refrain from picking
+a fellow-limper to pieces, in short, should have a
+little sympathy in common misfortune, seemed not to
+occur to the company.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the negro&rsquo;s countenance, before marked
+with even more than patient good-nature, drooped
+into a heavy-hearted expression, full of the most
+painful distress. So far abased beneath its proper
+physical level, that Newfoundland-dog face turned in
+passively hopeless appeal, as if instinct told it that the
+right or the wrong might not have overmuch to do
+with whatever wayward mood superior intelligences
+might yield to.</p>
+
+<p>But instinct, though knowing, is yet a teacher set
+below reason, which itself says, in the grave words of
+Lysander in the comedy, after Puck has made a sage of
+him with his spell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75'>&ldquo;The will of man is by his reason swayed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class='noin'>So that, suddenly change as people may, in their dispositions,
+it is not always waywardness, but improved
+judgment, which, as in Lysander&rsquo;s case, or the present,
+operates with them.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, they began to scrutinize the negro curiously
+enough; when, emboldened by this evidence of the
+efficacy of his words, the wooden-legged man hobbled
+up to the negro, and, with the air of a beadle, would,
+to prove his alleged imposture on the spot, have stripped
+him and then driven him away, but was prevented
+by the crowd&rsquo;s clamor, now taking part with the poor
+fellow, against one who had just before turned nearly
+all minds the other way. So he with the wooden leg
+was forced to retire; when the rest, finding themselves
+left sole judges in the case, could not resist the opportunity
+of acting the part: not because it is a human
+weakness to take pleasure in sitting in judgment upon
+one in a box, as surely this unfortunate negro now
+was, but that it strangely sharpens human perceptions,
+when, instead of standing by and having their
+fellow-feelings touched by the sight of an alleged culprit
+severely handled by some one justiciary, a crowd
+suddenly come to be all justiciaries in the same case
+themselves; as in Arkansas once, a man proved guilty,
+by law, of murder, but whose condemnation was deemed
+unjust by the people, so that they rescued him to try
+him themselves; whereupon, they, as it turned out,
+found him even guiltier than the court had done, and
+forthwith proceeded to execution; so that the gallows
+presented the truly warning spectacle of a man hanged
+by his friends.</p>
+
+<p>But not to such extremities, or anything like them,
+did the present crowd come; they, for the time, being
+content with putting the negro fairly and discreetly to
+the question; among other things, asking him, had he
+any documentary proof, any plain paper about him,
+attesting that his case was not a spurious one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no, dis poor ole darkie haint none o&rsquo; dem waloable
+papers,&rdquo; he wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is there not some one who can speak a good
+word for you?&rdquo; here said a person newly arrived from
+another part of the boat, a young Episcopal clergyman,
+in a long, straight-bodied black coat; small in stature,
+but manly; with a clear face and blue eye; innocence,
+tenderness, and good sense triumvirate in his air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, oh yes, ge&rsquo;mmen,&rdquo; he eagerly answered,
+as if his memory, before suddenly frozen up by cold
+charity, as suddenly thawed back into fluidity at the
+first kindly word. &ldquo;Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here
+a werry nice, good ge&rsquo;mman wid a weed, and a ge&rsquo;mman
+in a gray coat and white tie, what knows all about me;
+and a ge&rsquo;mman wid a big book, too; and a yarb-doctor;
+and a ge&rsquo;mman in a yaller west; and a ge&rsquo;mman wid a
+brass plate; and a ge&rsquo;mman in a wiolet robe; and a
+ge&rsquo;mman as is a sodjer; and ever so many good, kind,
+honest ge&rsquo;mmen more aboard what knows me and will
+speak for me, God bress &rsquo;em; yes, and what knows me
+as well as dis poor old darkie knows hisself, God bress
+him! Oh, find &rsquo;em, find &rsquo;em,&rdquo; he earnestly added, &ldquo;and
+let &rsquo;em come quick, and show you all, ge&rsquo;mmen, dat dis
+poor ole darkie is werry well wordy of all you kind
+ge&rsquo;mmen&rsquo;s kind confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But how are we to find all these people in this
+great crowd?&rdquo; was the question of a bystander, umbrella
+in hand; a middle-aged person, a country merchant
+apparently, whose natural good-feeling had been
+made at least cautious by the unnatural ill-feeling of
+the discharged custom-house officer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where are we to find them?&rdquo; half-rebukefully
+echoed the young Episcopal clergymen. &ldquo;I will go
+find one to begin with,&rdquo; he quickly added, and, with
+kind haste suiting the action to the word, away he
+went.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wild goose chase!&rdquo; croaked he with the wooden
+leg, now again drawing nigh. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe there&rsquo;s
+a soul of them aboard. Did ever beggar have such
+heaps of fine friends? He can walk fast enough when
+he tries, a good deal faster than I; but he can lie yet
+faster. He&rsquo;s some white operator, betwisted and
+painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are all
+humbugs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you no charity, friend?&rdquo; here in self-subdued
+tones, singularly contrasted with his unsubdued person,
+said a Methodist minister, advancing; a tall, muscular,
+martial-looking man, a Tennessean by birth, who in the
+Mexican war had been volunteer chaplain to a volunteer
+rifle-regiment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charity is one thing, and truth is another,&rdquo; rejoined
+he with the wooden leg: &ldquo;he&rsquo;s a rascal, I say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction
+as one can upon the poor fellow?&rdquo; said the soldierlike
+Methodist, with increased difficulty maintaining a
+pacific demeanor towards one whose own asperity
+seemed so little to entitle him to it: &ldquo;he looks honest,
+don&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Looks are one thing, and facts are another,&rdquo; snapped
+out the other perversely; &ldquo;and as to your constructions,
+what construction can you put upon a rascal, but
+that a rascal he is?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be not such a Canada thistle,&rdquo; urged the Methodist,
+with something less of patience than before. &ldquo;Charity,
+man, charity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To where it belongs with your charity! to heaven
+with it!&rdquo; again snapped out the other, diabolically;
+&ldquo;here on earth, true charity dotes, and false charity
+plots. Who betrays a fool with a kiss, the charitable
+fool has the charity to believe is in love with him,
+and the charitable knave on the stand gives charitable
+testimony for his comrade in the box.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surely, friend,&rdquo; returned the noble Methodist, with
+much ado restraining his still waxing indignation&mdash;&ldquo;surely,
+to say the least, you forget yourself. Apply
+it home,&rdquo; he continued, with exterior calmness tremulous
+with inkept emotion. &ldquo;Suppose, now, I should
+exercise no charity in judging your own character by
+the words which have fallen from you; what sort of
+vile, pitiless man do you think I would take you for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt&rdquo;&mdash;with a grin&mdash;&ldquo;some such pitiless man
+as has lost his piety in much the same way that the
+jockey loses his honesty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And how is that, friend?&rdquo; still conscientiously
+holding back the old Adam in him, as if it were a
+mastiff he had by the neck.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never you mind how it is&rdquo;&mdash;with a sneer; &ldquo;but
+all horses aint virtuous, no more than all men kind;
+and come close to, and much dealt with, some things
+are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I
+will find you a benevolent wise man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some insinuation there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;More fool you that are puzzled by it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Reprobate!&rdquo; cried the other, his indignation now
+at last almost boiling over; &ldquo;godless reprobate! if
+charity did not restrain me, I could call you by names
+you deserve.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you, indeed?&rdquo; with an insolent sneer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, and teach you charity on the spot,&rdquo; cried the
+goaded Methodist, suddenly catching this exasperating
+opponent by his shabby coat-collar, and shaking him
+till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a nine-pin.
+&ldquo;You took me for a non-combatant did you?&mdash;thought,
+seedy coward that you are, that you could abuse a
+Christian with impunity. You find your mistake&rdquo;&mdash;with
+another hearty shake.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well said and better done, church militant!&rdquo; cried
+a voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The white cravat against the world!&rdquo; cried another.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bravo, bravo!&rdquo; chorused many voices, with like
+enthusiasm taking sides with the resolute champion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You fools!&rdquo; cried he with the wooden leg, writhing
+himself loose and inflamedly turning upon the
+throng; &ldquo;you flock of fools, under this captain of fools,
+in this ship of fools!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which exclamations, followed by idle threats
+against his admonisher, this condign victim to justice
+hobbled away, as disdaining to hold further argument
+with such a rabble. But his scorn was more than
+repaid by the hisses that chased him, in which the
+brave Methodist, satisfied with the rebuke already
+administered, was, to omit still better reasons, too
+magnanimous to join. All he said was, pointing towards
+the departing recusant, &ldquo;There he shambles off
+on his one lone leg, emblematic of his one-sided view
+of humanity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But trust your painted decoy,&rdquo; retorted the other
+from a distance, pointing back to the black cripple,
+&ldquo;and I have my revenge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But we aint agoing to trust him!&rdquo; shouted back a
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So much the better,&rdquo; he jeered back. &ldquo;Look
+you,&rdquo; he added, coming to a dead halt where he was;
+&ldquo;look you, I have been called a Canada thistle. Very
+good. And a seedy one: still better. And the seedy
+Canada thistle has been pretty well shaken among ye:
+best of all. Dare say some seed has been shaken out;
+and won&rsquo;t it spring though? And when it does spring,
+do you cut down the young thistles, and won&rsquo;t they
+spring the more? It&rsquo;s encouraging and coaxing &rsquo;em.
+Now, when with my thistles your farms shall be well
+stocked, why then&mdash;you may abandon &rsquo;em!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What does all that mean, now?&rdquo; asked the country
+merchant, staring.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing; the foiled wolf&rsquo;s parting howl,&rdquo; said the
+Methodist. &ldquo;Spleen, much spleen, which is the rickety
+child of his evil heart of unbelief: it has made him
+mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh,
+friends,&rdquo; raising his arms as in the pulpit, &ldquo;oh beloved,
+how are we admonished by the melancholy spectacle of
+this raver. Let us profit by the lesson; and is it not
+this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence, there be
+aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting
+his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses
+full of tragic mopers, and seen there the end of suspicion:
+the cynic, in the moody madness muttering in
+the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped
+over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself;
+while, by fits and starts, from the corner opposite came
+the grimace of the idiot at him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What an example,&rdquo; whispered one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Might deter Timon,&rdquo; was the response.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, oh, good ge&rsquo;mmen, have you no confidence in
+dis poor ole darkie?&rdquo; now wailed the returning negro,
+who, during the late scene, had stumped apart in
+alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Confidence in you?&rdquo; echoed he who had whispered,
+with abruptly changed air turning short round; &ldquo;that
+remains to be seen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you what it is, Ebony,&rdquo; in similarly changed
+tones said he who had responded to the whisperer,
+&ldquo;yonder churl,&rdquo; pointing toward the wooden leg in
+the distance, &ldquo;is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough,
+and I would not wish to be like him; but that is no
+reason why you may not be some sort of black Jeremy
+Diddler.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No confidence in dis poor ole darkie, den?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Before giving you our confidence,&rdquo; said a third,
+&ldquo;we will wait the report of the kind gentleman who
+went in search of one of your friends who was to speak
+for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very likely, in that case,&rdquo; said a fourth, &ldquo;we shall
+wait here till Christmas. Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder, did we not
+see that kind gentleman again. After seeking awhile in
+vain, he will conclude he has been made a fool of, and
+so not return to us for pure shame. Fact is, I begin to
+feel a little qualmish about the darkie myself. Something
+queer about this darkie, depend upon it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Once more the negro wailed, and turning in despair
+from the last speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist
+by the skirt of his coat. But a change had come over
+that before impassioned intercessor. With an irresolute
+and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant;
+against whom, somehow, by what seemed instinctive
+influences, the distrusts first set on foot were now generally
+reviving, and, if anything, with added severity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No confidence in dis poor ole darkie,&rdquo; yet again
+wailed the negro, letting go the coat-skirts and turning
+appealingly all round him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, my poor fellow <i>I</i> have confidence in you,&rdquo;
+now exclaimed the country merchant before named,
+whom the negro&rsquo;s appeal, coming so piteously on the
+heel of pitilessness, seemed at last humanely to have
+decided in his favor. &ldquo;And here, here is some proof
+of my trust,&rdquo; with which, tucking his umbrella under
+his arm, and diving down his hand into his pocket, he
+fished forth a purse, and, accidentally, along with it,
+his business card, which, unobserved, dropped to the
+deck. &ldquo;Here, here, my poor fellow,&rdquo; he continued,
+extending a half dollar.</p>
+
+<p>Not more grateful for the coin than the kindness, the
+cripple&rsquo;s face glowed like a polished copper saucepan,
+and shuffling a pace nigher, with one upstretched hand
+he received the alms, while, as unconsciously, his one
+advanced leather stump covered the card.</p>
+
+<p>Done in despite of the general sentiment, the good
+deed of the merchant was not, perhaps, without its
+unwelcome return from the crowd, since that good deed
+seemed somehow to convey to them a sort of reproach.
+Still again, and more pertinaciously than ever, the cry
+arose against the negro, and still again he wailed forth
+his lament and appeal among other things, repeating
+that the friends, of whom already he had partially run
+off the list, would freely speak for him, would anybody
+go find them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you go find &rsquo;em yourself?&rdquo; demanded a
+gruff boatman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can I go find &rsquo;em myself? Dis poor ole
+game-legged darkie&rsquo;s friends must come to him. Oh,
+whar, whar is dat good friend of dis darkie&rsquo;s, dat good
+man wid de weed?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this point, a steward ringing a bell came along,
+summoning all persons who had not got their tickets to
+step to the captain&rsquo;s office; an announcement which
+speedily thinned the throng about the black cripple,
+who himself soon forlornly stumped out of sight,
+probably on much the same errand as the rest.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>RENEWAL OF OLD <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'ACQUANTANCE'.">ACQUAINTANCE</ins>.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. Roberts?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, certainly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The crowd about the captain&rsquo;s office, having in good
+time melted away, the above encounter took place in
+one of the side balconies astern, between a man in
+mourning clean and respectable, but none of the glossiest,
+a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant before-mentioned,
+whom, with the familiarity of an old
+acquaintance, the former had accosted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it possible, my dear sir,&rdquo; resumed he with the
+weed, &ldquo;that you do not recall my countenance? why
+yours I recall distinctly as if but half an hour, instead of
+half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don&rsquo;t you
+recall me, now? Look harder.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In my conscience&mdash;truly&mdash;I protest,&rdquo; honestly
+bewildered, &ldquo;bless my soul, sir, I don&rsquo;t know you&mdash;really,
+really. But stay, stay,&rdquo; he hurriedly added, not
+without gratification, glancing up at the crape on the
+stranger&rsquo;s hat, &ldquo;stay&mdash;yes&mdash;seems to me, though I have
+not the pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am
+pretty sure I have at least <i>heard</i> of you, and recently
+too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard here referred
+to you, among others, for a character, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well.
+They found me. I have said all I could for him. I think
+I abated their distrust. Would I could have been of
+more substantial service. And apropos, sir,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;now that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the
+circumstance of one man, however humble, referring for a
+character to another man, however afflicted, does not
+argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The good merchant looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still you don&rsquo;t recall my countenance?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot,
+despite my best efforts,&rdquo; was the reluctantly-candid reply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who
+am mistaken?&mdash;Are you not, sir, Henry Roberts, forwarding
+merchant, of Wheeling, Pennsylvania? Pray,
+now, if you use the advertisement of business cards,
+and happen to have one with you, just look at it, and see
+whether you are not the man I take you for.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; a bit chafed, perhaps, &ldquo;I hope I know myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so
+easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may
+have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things
+have happened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The good merchant stared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To come to particulars, my dear sir, I met you, now
+some six years back, at Brade Brothers &amp; Co&rsquo;s office, I
+think. I was traveling for a Philadelphia house. The
+senior Brade introduced us, you remember; some business-chat
+followed, then you forced me home with you
+to a family tea, and a family time we had. Have you
+forgotten about the urn, and what I said about Werter&rsquo;s
+Charlotte, and the bread and butter, and that capital
+story you told of the large loaf. A hundred times since,
+I have laughed over it. At least you must recall my
+name&mdash;Ringman, John Ringman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Large loaf? Invited you to tea? Ringman? Ringman?
+Ring? Ring?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah sir,&rdquo; sadly smiling, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t ring the changes that
+way. I see you have a faithless memory, Mr. Roberts.
+But trust in the faithfulness of mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, to tell the truth, in some things my memory
+aint of the very best,&rdquo; was the honest rejoinder. &ldquo;But
+still,&rdquo; he perplexedly added, &ldquo;still I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh sir, suffice it that it is as I say. Doubt not that
+we are all well acquainted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t like this going dead against my
+own memory; I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t you admit, my dear sir, that in some
+things this memory of yours is a little faithless? Now,
+those who have faithless memories, should they not have
+some little confidence in the less faithless memories of
+others?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, of this friendly chat and tea, I have not the
+slightest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, I see; quite erased from the tablet. Pray,
+sir,&rdquo; with a sudden illumination, &ldquo;about six years back,
+did it happen to you to receive any injury on the head?
+Surprising effects have arisen from such a cause. Not
+alone unconsciousness as to events for a greater or less
+time immediately subsequent to the injury, but likewise&mdash;strange
+to add&mdash;oblivion, entire and incurable, as to
+events embracing a longer or shorter period immediately
+preceding it; that is, when the mind at the time
+was perfectly sensible of them, and fully competent also
+to register them in the memory, and did in fact so do;
+but all in vain, for all was afterwards bruised out by
+the injury.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After the first start, the merchant listened with what
+appeared more than ordinary interest. The other proceeded:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In my boyhood I was kicked by a horse, and lay
+insensible for a long time. Upon recovering, what a
+blank! No faintest trace in regard to how I had come
+near the horse, or what horse it was, or where it was, or
+that it was a horse at all that had brought me to that
+pass. For the knowledge of those particulars I am indebted
+solely to my friends, in whose statements, I need
+not say, I place implicit reliance, since particulars of
+some sort there must have been, and why should they
+deceive me? You see sir, the mind is ductile, very
+much so: but images, ductilely received into it, need a
+certain time to harden and bake in their impressions,
+otherwise such a casualty as I speak of will in an instant
+obliterate them, as though they had never been. We
+are but clay, sir, potter&rsquo;s clay, as the good book says,
+clay, feeble, and too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize.
+Tell me, was it your misfortune to receive
+any concussion upon the brain about the period I speak
+of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your
+memory by more minutely rehearsing the circumstances
+of our acquaintance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The growing interest betrayed by the merchant had
+not relaxed as the other proceeded. After some hesitation,
+indeed, something more than hesitation, he confessed
+that, though he had never received any injury of
+the sort named, yet, about the time in question, he had
+in fact been taken with a brain fever, losing his mind
+completely for a considerable interval. He was continuing,
+when the stranger with much animation exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There now, you see, I was not wholly mistaken.
+That brain fever accounts for it all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay; but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me, Mr. Roberts,&rdquo; respectfully interrupting
+him, &ldquo;but time is short, and I have something private
+and particular to say to you. Allow me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Roberts, good man, could but acquiesce, and the
+two having silently walked to a less public spot, the manner
+of the man with the weed suddenly assumed a seriousness
+almost painful. What might be called a writhing
+expression stole over him. He seemed struggling with
+some disastrous necessity inkept. He made one or two
+attempts to speak, but words seemed to choke him.
+His companion stood in humane surprise, wondering
+what was to come. At length, with an effort mastering
+his feelings, in a tolerably composed tone he
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I remember, you are a mason, Mr. Roberts?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Averting himself a moment, as to recover from a return
+of agitation, the stranger grasped the other&rsquo;s hand;
+&ldquo;and would you not loan a brother a shilling if he
+needed it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The merchant started, apparently, almost as if to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, Mr. Roberts, I trust you are not one of those
+business men, who make a business of never having to
+do with unfortunates. For God&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t leave me.
+I have something on my heart&mdash;on my heart. Under
+deplorable circumstances thrown among strangers, utter
+strangers. I want a friend in whom I may confide.
+Yours, Mr. Roberts, is almost the first known face I&rsquo;ve
+seen for many weeks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was so sudden an outburst; the interview offered
+such a contrast to the scene around, that the merchant,
+though not used to be very indiscreet, yet, being not
+entirely inhumane, remained not entirely unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>The other, still tremulous, resumed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I need not say, sir, how it cuts me to the soul, to
+follow up a social salutation with such words as have
+just been mine. I know that I jeopardize your good opinion.
+But I can&rsquo;t help it: necessity knows no law, and
+heeds no risk. Sir, we are masons, one more step aside;
+I will tell you my story.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In a low, half-suppressed tone, he began it. Judging
+from his auditor&rsquo;s expression, it seemed to be a tale of
+singular interest, involving calamities against which no
+integrity, no forethought, no energy, no genius, no piety,
+could guard.</p>
+
+<p>At every disclosure, the hearer&rsquo;s commiseration increased.
+No sentimental pity. As the story went on,
+he drew from his wallet a bank note, but after a while,
+at some still more unhappy revelation, changed it for
+another, probably of a somewhat larger amount; which,
+when the story was concluded, with an air studiously
+disclamatory of alms-giving, he put into the stranger&rsquo;s
+hands; who, on his side, with an air studiously disclamatory
+of alms-taking, put it into his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Assistance being received, the stranger&rsquo;s manner assumed
+a kind and degree of decorum which, under the
+circumstances, seemed almost coldness. After some words,
+not over ardent, and yet not exactly inappropriate, he
+took leave, making a bow which had one knows not
+what of a certain chastened independence about it; as
+if misery, however burdensome, could not break down
+self-respect, nor gratitude, however deep, humiliate a
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>He was hardly yet out of sight, when he paused as if
+thinking; then with hastened steps returning to the
+merchant, &ldquo;I am just reminded that the president, who
+is also transfer-agent, of the Black Rapids Coal Company,
+happens to be on board here, and, having been subpoenaed
+as witness in a stock case on the docket in Kentucky,
+has his transfer-book with him. A month since,
+in a panic contrived by artful alarmists, some credulous
+stock-holders sold out; but, to frustrate the aim of the
+alarmists, the Company, previously advised of their
+scheme, so managed it as to get into its own hands those
+sacrificed shares, resolved that, since a spurious panic
+must be, the panic-makers should be no gainers by it.
+The Company, I hear, is now ready, but not anxious, to
+redispose of those shares; and having obtained them at
+their depressed value, will now sell them at par, though,
+prior to the panic, they were held at a handsome figure
+above. That the readiness of the Company to do this
+is not generally known, is shown by the fact that the
+stock still stands on the transfer-book in the Company&rsquo;s
+name, offering to one in funds a rare chance for investment.
+For, the panic subsiding more and more every
+day, it will daily be seen how it originated; confidence
+will be more than restored; there will be a reaction;
+from the stock&rsquo;s descent its rise will be higher than from
+no fall, the holders trusting themselves to fear no second
+fate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Having listened at first with curiosity, at last with
+interest, the merchant replied to the effect, that some
+time since, through friends concerned with it, he had
+heard of the company, and heard well of it, but was ignorant
+that there had latterly been fluctuations. He added
+that he was no speculator; that hitherto he had avoided
+having to do with stocks of any sort, but in the present
+case he really felt something like being tempted. &ldquo;Pray,&rdquo;
+in conclusion, &ldquo;do you think that upon a pinch anything
+could be transacted on board here with the transfer-agent?
+Are you acquainted with him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not personally. I but happened to hear that he
+was a passenger. For the rest, though it might be
+somewhat informal, the gentleman might not object to
+doing a little business on board. Along the Mississippi,
+you know, business is not so ceremonious as at the
+East.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; returned the merchant, and looked down a
+moment in thought, then, raising his head quickly, said,
+in a tone not so benign as his wonted one, &ldquo;This would
+seem a rare chance, indeed; why, upon first hearing it,
+did you not snatch at it? I mean for yourself!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I?&mdash;would it had been possible!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Not without some emotion was this said, and not
+without some embarrassment was the reply. &ldquo;Ah, yes,
+I had forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, the stranger regarded him with mild gravity,
+not a little disconcerting; the more so, as there was
+in it what seemed the aspect not alone of the superior,
+but, as it were, the rebuker; which sort of bearing, in
+a beneficiary towards his benefactor, looked strangely
+enough; none the less, that, somehow, it sat not altogether
+unbecomingly upon the beneficiary, being free
+from anything like the appearance of assumption, and
+mixed with a kind of painful conscientiousness, as
+though nothing but a proper sense of what he owed to
+himself swayed him. At length he spoke:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To reproach a penniless man with remissness in not
+availing himself of an opportunity for pecuniary investment&mdash;but,
+no, no; it was forgetfulness; and this,
+charity will impute to some lingering effect of that unfortunate
+brain-fever, which, as to occurrences dating
+yet further back, disturbed Mr. Roberts&rsquo;s memory still
+more seriously.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; said the merchant, rallying, &ldquo;I am
+not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me, but you must admit, that just now, an
+unpleasant distrust, however vague, was yours. Ah,
+shallow as it is, yet, how subtle a thing is suspicion,
+which at times can invade the humanest of hearts and
+wisest of heads. But, enough. My object, sir, in calling
+your attention to this stock, is by way of acknowledgment
+of your goodness. I but seek to be grateful;
+if my information leads to nothing, you must remember
+the motive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He bowed, and finally retired, leaving Mr. Roberts
+not wholly without self-reproach, for having momentarily
+indulged injurious thoughts against one who, it was
+evident, was possessed of a self-respect which forbade
+his indulging them himself.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE MAN WITH THE WEED MAKES IT AN EVEN QUESTION WHETHER
+HE BE A GREAT SAGE OR A GREAT SIMPLETON.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness
+too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more
+than sorrow is. Dear good man. Poor beating heart!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the man with the weed, not very long after
+quitting the merchant, murmuring to himself with his
+hand to his side like one with the heart-disease.</p>
+
+<p>Meditation over kindness received seemed to have
+softened him something, too, it may be, beyond what
+might, perhaps, have been looked for from one whose
+unwonted self-respect in the hour of need, and in the act
+of being aided, might have appeared to some not wholly
+unlike pride out of place; and pride, in any place, is
+seldom very feeling. But the truth, perhaps, is, that
+those who are least touched with that vice, besides being
+not unsusceptible to goodness, are sometimes the
+ones whom a ruling sense of propriety makes appear
+cold, if not thankless, under a favor. For, at such a
+time, to be full of warm, earnest words, and heart-felt
+protestations, is to create a scene; and well-bred people
+dislike few things more than that; which would
+seem to look as if the world did not relish earnestness;
+but, not so; because the world, being earnest itself, likes
+an earnest scene, and an earnest man, very well, but
+only in their place&mdash;the stage. See what sad work they
+make of it, who, ignorant of this, flame out in Irish
+enthusiasm and with Irish sincerity, to a benefactor,
+who, if a man of sense and respectability, as well as
+kindliness, can but be more or less annoyed by it;
+and, if of a nervously fastidious nature, as some are,
+may be led to think almost as much less favorably of
+the beneficiary paining him by his gratitude, as if he had
+been guilty of its contrary, instead only of an indiscretion.
+But, beneficiaries who know better, though they
+may feel as much, if not more, neither inflict such pain,
+nor are inclined to run any risk of so doing. And these,
+being wise, are the majority. By which one sees how
+inconsiderate those persons are, who, from the absence
+of its officious manifestations in the world, complain that
+there is not much gratitude extant; when the truth is,
+that there is as much of it as there is of modesty; but,
+both being for the most part votarists of the shade, for
+the most part keep out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>What started this was, to account, if necessary, for
+the changed air of the man with the weed, who, throwing
+off in private the cold garb of decorum, and so giving
+warmly loose to his genuine heart, seemed almost
+transformed into another being. This subdued air of
+softness, too, was toned with melancholy, melancholy
+unreserved; a thing which, however at variance with
+propriety, still the more attested his earnestness; for
+one knows not how it is, but it sometimes happens that,
+where earnestness is, there, also, is melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, he was leaning over the rail at the boat&rsquo;s
+side, in his pensiveness, unmindful of another pensive
+figure near&mdash;a young gentleman with a swan-neck,
+wearing a lady-like open shirt collar, thrown back, and
+tied with a black ribbon. From a square, tableted-broach,
+curiously engraved with Greek characters, he
+seemed a collegian&mdash;not improbably, a sophomore&mdash;on
+his travels; possibly, his first. A small book bound in
+Roman vellum was in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Overhearing his murmuring neighbor, the youth
+regarded him with some surprise, not to say interest.
+But, singularly for a collegian, being apparently of a
+retiring nature, he did not speak; when the other still
+more increased his diffidence by changing from soliloquy
+to colloquy, in a manner strangely mixed of familiarity
+and pathos.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, who is this? You did not hear me, my young
+friend, did you? Why, you, too, look sad. My melancholy
+is not catching!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, sir,&rdquo; stammered the other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, now,&rdquo; with a sort of sociable sorrowfulness,
+slowly sliding along the rail, &ldquo;Pray, now, my young
+friend, what volume have you there? Give me leave,&rdquo;
+gently drawing it from him. &ldquo;Tacitus!&rdquo; Then opening
+it at random, read: &ldquo;In general a black and shameful
+period lies before me.&rdquo; &ldquo;Dear young sir,&rdquo; touching
+his arm alarmedly, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t read this book. It is poison,
+moral poison. Even were there truth in Tacitus,
+such truth would have the operation of falsity, and so
+still be poison, moral poison. Too well I know this
+Tacitus. In my college-days he came near souring me
+into cynicism. Yes, I began to turn down my collar,
+and go about with a disdainfully joyless expression.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, sir, I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Trust me. Now, young friend, perhaps you think
+that Tacitus, like me, is only melancholy; but he&rsquo;s more&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+ugly. A vast difference, young sir, between the
+melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the
+world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be
+compatible with benevolence, the other not. The one
+may deepen insight, the other shallows it. Drop Tacitus.
+Phrenologically, my young friend, you would
+seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but
+cribbed within the ugly view, the Tacitus view, your
+large brain, like your large ox in the contracted field,
+will but starve the more. And don&rsquo;t dream, as some of
+you students may, that, by taking this same ugly view,
+the deeper meanings of the deeper books will so alone
+become revealed to you. Drop Tacitus. His subtlety
+is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy of
+human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying&mdash;&lsquo;There
+is a subtle man, and the same is deceived.&rsquo; Drop
+Tacitus. Come, now, let me throw the book overboard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a word; I know just what is in your mind, and
+that is just what I am speaking to. Yes, learn from me
+that, though the sorrows of the world are great, its
+wickedness&mdash;that is, its ugliness&mdash;is small. Much cause
+to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known
+adversity, and know it still. But for that, do I turn
+cynic? No, no: it is small beer that sours. To my
+fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I
+may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in
+my kind. Now, then&rdquo; (winningly), &ldquo;this book&mdash;will
+you let me drown it for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, sir&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order
+to aid you in understanding human nature&mdash;as if truth
+was ever got at by libel. My young friend, if to know
+human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and go north
+to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Upon my word, I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, I foresee all that. But you carry Tacitus,
+that shallow Tacitus. What do <i>I</i> carry? See&rdquo;&mdash;producing
+a pocket-volume&mdash;&ldquo;Akenside&mdash;his &lsquo;Pleasures
+of Imagination.&rsquo; One of these days you will know it.
+Whatever our lot, we should read serene and cheery
+books, fitted to inspire love and trust. But Tacitus! I
+have long been of opinion that these classics are the bane
+of colleges; for&mdash;not to hint of the immorality of Ovid,
+Horace, Anacreon, and the rest, and the dangerous theology
+of Eschylus and others&mdash;where will one find views
+so injurious to human nature as in Thucydides, Juvenal,
+Lucian, but more particularly Tacitus? When I consider
+that, ever since the revival of learning, these classics
+have been the favorites of successive generations of students
+and studious men, I tremble to think of that mass
+of unsuspected heresy on every vital topic which for
+centuries must have simmered unsurmised in the heart
+of Christendom. But Tacitus&mdash;he is the most extraordinary
+example of a heretic; not one iota of confidence in
+his kind. What a mockery that such an one should be
+reputed wise, and Thucydides be esteemed the statesman&rsquo;s
+manual! But Tacitus&mdash;I hate Tacitus; not,
+though, I trust, with the hate that sins, but a righteous
+hate. Without confidence himself, Tacitus destroys it
+in all his readers. Destroys confidence, paternal confidence,
+of which God knows that there is in this world
+none to spare. For, comparatively inexperienced as you
+are, my dear young friend, did you never observe how
+little, very little, confidence, there is? I mean between
+man and man&mdash;more particularly between stranger and
+stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence!
+I have sometimes almost thought that confidence
+is fled; that confidence is the New Astrea&mdash;emigrated&mdash;vanished&mdash;gone.&rdquo;
+Then softly sliding nearer,
+with the softest air, quivering down and looking up,
+&ldquo;could you now, my dear young sir, under such circumstances,
+by way of experiment, simply have confidence
+in <i>me</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From the outset, the sophomore, as has been seen,
+had struggled with an ever-increasing embarrassment,
+arising, perhaps, from such strange remarks coming from
+a stranger&mdash;such persistent and prolonged remarks, too.
+In vain had he more than once sought to break the
+spell by venturing a deprecatory or leave-taking word.
+In vain. Somehow, the stranger fascinated him. Little
+wonder, then, that, when the appeal came, he could
+hardly speak, but, as before intimated, being apparently
+of a retiring nature, abruptly retired from the spot, leaving
+the chagrined stranger to wander away in the opposite
+direction.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>AT THE OUTSET OF WHICH CERTAIN PASSENGERS PROVE DEAF
+TO THE CALL OF CHARITY.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&mdash;&ldquo;You&mdash;pish! Why will the captain suffer these
+begging fellows on board?&rdquo;;</p>
+
+<p>These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do
+gentleman in a ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored
+cheek, a ruby-headed cane in his hand, to a man in
+a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly after the interview
+last described, had accosted him for contributions to a
+Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the
+Seminoles. Upon a cursory view, this last person might
+have seemed, like the man with the weed, one of the less
+unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a closer observation,
+his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though
+much of sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>With added words of touchy disgust, the well-to-do
+gentleman hurried away. But, though repulsed, and
+rudely, the man in gray did not reproach, for a time
+patiently remaining in the chilly loneliness to which he
+had been left, his countenance, however, not without
+token of latent though chastened reliance.</p>
+
+<p>At length an old gentleman, somewhat bulky, drew
+nigh, and from him also a contribution was sought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look, you,&rdquo; coming to a dead halt, and scowling
+upon him. &ldquo;Look, you,&rdquo; swelling his bulk out before
+him like a swaying balloon, &ldquo;look, you, you on others&rsquo;
+behalf ask for money; you, a fellow with a face as long
+as my arm. Hark ye, now: there is such a thing as
+gravity, and in condemned felons it may be genuine;
+but of long faces there are three sorts; that of grief&rsquo;s
+drudge, that of the lantern-jawed man, and that of the
+impostor. You know best which yours is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven give you more charity, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you less hypocrisy, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which words, the hard-hearted old gentleman
+marched off.</p>
+
+<p>While the other still stood forlorn, the young clergyman,
+before introduced, passing that way, catching a
+chance sight of him, seemed suddenly struck by some
+recollection; and, after a moment&rsquo;s pause, hurried up
+with: &ldquo;Your pardon, but shortly since I was all over
+looking for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For me?&rdquo; as marveling that one of so little account
+should be sought for.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, for you; do you know anything about the
+negro, apparently a cripple, aboard here? Is he, or is
+he not, what he seems to be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, poor Guinea! have you, too, been distrusted?
+you, upon whom nature has placarded the evidence of
+your claims?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you do really know him, and he is quite
+worthy? It relieves me to hear it&mdash;much relieves me.
+Come, let us go find him, and see what can be done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Another instance that confidence may come too
+late. I am sorry to say that at the last landing I myself&mdash;just
+happening to catch sight of him on the gangway-plank&mdash;assisted
+the cripple ashore. No time to
+talk, only to help. He may not have told you, but he
+has a brother in that vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, I regret his going without my seeing him
+again; regret it, more, perhaps, than you can readily think.
+You see, shortly after leaving St. Louis, he was on the
+forecastle, and there, with many others, I saw him, and
+put trust in him; so much so, that, to convince those
+who did not, I, at his entreaty, went in search of you,
+you being one of several individuals he mentioned, and
+whose personal appearance he more or less described,
+individuals who he said would willingly speak for him.
+But, after diligent search, not finding you, and catching
+no glimpse of any of the others he had enumerated,
+doubts were at last suggested; but doubts indirectly
+originating, as I can but think, from prior distrust unfeelingly
+proclaimed by another. Still, certain it is, I
+began to suspect.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha, ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A sort of laugh more like a groan than a laugh; and
+yet, somehow, it seemed intended for a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Both turned, and the young clergyman started at
+seeing the wooden-legged man close behind him, morosely
+grave as a criminal judge with a mustard-plaster
+on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster
+might have been the memory of certain recent biting
+rebuffs and mortifications.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t think it was I who laughed would you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to
+laugh at?&rdquo; demanded the young clergyman, flushing,
+&ldquo;me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles
+of you. But perhaps you don&rsquo;t believe it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not,&rdquo;
+interposed the man in gray calmly, &ldquo;it is one of the
+imbecilities of the suspicious person to fancy that every
+stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
+smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way,
+is secretly making him his butt. In some moods, the
+movements of an entire street, as the suspicious man
+walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic jeer at
+him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with
+his own foot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other
+folks&rsquo; sole-leather,&rdquo; said the wooden-legged man with a
+crusty attempt at humor. But with augmented grin
+and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
+&ldquo;you still think it was <i>you</i> I was laughing at, just now.
+To prove your mistake, I will tell you what I <i>was</i>
+laughing at; a story I happened to call to mind just
+then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic
+details, unpleasant to repeat, he related a story, which
+might, perhaps, in a good-natured version, be rendered
+as follows:</p>
+
+<p>A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man,
+less slender in purse than limb, happening to attend
+the theatre one evening, was so charmed with the
+character of a faithful wife, as there represented to
+the life, that nothing would do but he must marry upon
+it. So, marry he did, a beautiful girl from Tennessee, who
+had first attracted his attention by her liberal mould,
+and was subsequently recommended to him through her
+kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition.
+Though large, the praise proved not too much. For,
+ere long, rumor more than corroborated it, by whispering
+that the lady was liberal to a fault. But though various
+circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have
+been deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the
+old Frenchman by his friends, yet such was his confidence
+that not a syllable would he credit, till, chancing
+one night to return unexpectedly from a journey, upon
+entering his apartment, a stranger burst from the alcove:
+&ldquo;Begar!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;now I <i>begin</i> to suspec.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back
+his head, and gave vent to a long, gasping, rasping sort
+of taunting cry, intolerable as that of a high-pressure
+engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent
+satisfaction hobbled away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is that scoffer,&rdquo; said the man in gray, not without
+warmth. &ldquo;Who is he, who even were truth on his
+tongue, his way of speaking it would make truth almost
+offensive as falsehood. Who is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his
+suspicion of the negro,&rdquo; replied the young clergyman,
+recovering from disturbance, &ldquo;in short, the person
+to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
+maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted
+and painted up for a decoy. Yes, these were
+his very words, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed.
+Pray, will you call him back, and let me ask him if he
+were really in earnest?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly
+objections, prevailed upon the one-legged individual to
+return for a moment. Upon which, the man in gray
+thus addressed him: &ldquo;This reverend gentleman tells
+me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
+considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware
+that there are some persons in this world, who,
+unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange
+delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously
+read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions
+of them. I hope you are not one of these. In short,
+would you tell me now, whether you were not merely
+joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
+Would you be so kind?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I won&rsquo;t be so kind, I&rsquo;ll be so cruel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As you please about that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s just what I said he was.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A white masquerading as a black?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a
+moment, then quietly whispered to him, &ldquo;I thought you
+represented your friend here as a very distrustful sort of
+person, but he appears endued with a singular credulity.&mdash;Tell
+me, sir, do you really think that a white could
+look the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good
+acting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not much better than any other man acts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How? Does all the world act? Am <i>I</i>, for instance,
+an actor? Is my reverend friend here, too, a performer?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, don&rsquo;t you both perform acts? To do, is to act;
+so all doers are actors.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You trifle.&mdash;I ask again, if a white, how could he
+look the negro so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying
+the old saying, not more just than charitable, that
+&lsquo;the devil is never so black as he is painted.&rsquo; But his
+limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his limbs so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs?
+Easy enough to see how they are hoisted up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sham is evident, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To the discerning eye,&rdquo; with a horrible screw of his
+gimlet one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, where is Guinea?&rdquo; said the man in gray;
+&ldquo;where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond
+cavil this injurious hypothesis.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do so,&rdquo; cried the one-eyed man, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just in the
+humor now for having him found, and leaving the streaks
+of these fingers on his paint, as the lion leaves the
+streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn&rsquo;t let me
+touch him before. Yes, find him, I&rsquo;ll make wool fly,
+and him after.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You forget,&rdquo; here said the young clergyman to the
+man in gray, &ldquo;that yourself helped poor Guinea ashore.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look
+now,&rdquo; to the other, &ldquo;I think that without personal proof
+I can convince you of your mistake. For I put it to
+you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
+sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all
+that trouble, and run all that hazard, for the mere sake
+of those few paltry coppers, which, I hear, was all he
+got for his pains, if pains they were?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That puts the case irrefutably,&rdquo; said the young
+clergyman, with a challenging glance towards the one-legged
+man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole
+motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in
+this world. How much money did the devil make by
+gulling Eve?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of
+his intolerable jeer.</p>
+
+<p>The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a
+while, and then, turning to his companion, said: &ldquo;A
+bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be put down in
+any Christian community.&mdash;And this was he who was
+the means of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should
+shut our ears to distrust, and keep them open only for its
+opposite.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon
+it this morning, I should have spared myself what I now
+feel.&mdash;That but one man, and he with one leg, should
+have such ill power given him; his one sour word
+leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge,
+it did) the dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous
+company. But, as I hinted, with me at the time
+his ill words went for nothing; the same as now; only
+afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of
+distrust works something as certain potions do; it is a
+spirit which may enter such minds, and yet, for a time,
+longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent; but only the
+more deplorable its ultimate activity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful
+man did but just now anew drop on me his bane, how
+shall I be sure that my present exemption from its effects
+will be lasting?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any
+sort, which hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may
+arise in you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will do so.&rdquo; Then added as in soliloquy, &ldquo;Indeed,
+indeed, I was to blame in standing passive under such
+influences as that one-legged man&rsquo;s. My conscience upbraids
+me.&mdash;The poor negro: You see him occasionally,
+perhaps?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, not often; though in a few days, as it happens,
+my engagements will call me to the neighborhood of his
+present retreat; and, no doubt, honest Guinea, who is a
+grateful soul, will come to see me there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you have been his benefactor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;His benefactor? I did not say that. I have known
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take this mite. Hand it to Guinea when you see
+him; say it comes from one who has full belief in his
+honesty, and is sincerely sorry for having indulged, however
+transiently, in a contrary thought.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I accept the trust. And, by-the-way, since you are
+of this truly charitable nature, you will not turn away
+an appeal in behalf of the Seminole Widow and Orphan
+Asylum?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have not heard of that charity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But recently founded.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After a pause, the clergyman was irresolutely putting
+his hand in his pocket, when, caught by something in his
+companion&rsquo;s expression, he eyed him inquisitively, almost
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; smiled the other wanly, &ldquo;if that subtle
+bane, we were speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning
+to work, in vain my appeal to you. Good-by.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; not untouched, &ldquo;you do me injustice; instead
+of indulging present suspicions, I had rather make
+amends for previous ones. Here is something for your
+asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course
+you have papers?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; producing a memorandum book and
+pencil. &ldquo;Let me take down name and amount. We
+publish these names. And now let me give you a little
+history of our asylum, and the providential way in
+which it was started.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>At an interesting point of the narration, and at the
+moment when, with much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the
+narrator was being particularly questioned upon that
+point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted both
+from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a
+gentleman who had been standing in sight from the beginning,
+but, until now, as it seemed, without being
+observed by him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said he, rising, &ldquo;but yonder is one
+who I know will contribute, and largely. Don&rsquo;t take
+it amiss if I quit you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go: duty before all things,&rdquo; was the conscientious
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect.
+There he stood apart and in repose, and yet, by his mere
+look, lured the man in gray from his story, much as, by
+its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm, alone
+in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down
+his sheaves, and come and apply for the alms of its
+shade.</p>
+
+<p>But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing
+among men&mdash;the world familiarly know the noun; a
+common one in every language&mdash;it was curious that
+what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like
+a kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it
+make him appear more or less unreal in this portraiture),
+was but the expression of so <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'prevailent'.">prevalent</ins> a quality. Such
+goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune, that, so
+far as his own personal experience could have gone,
+scarcely could he have known ill, physical or moral;
+and as for knowing or suspecting the latter in any serious
+degree (supposing such degree of it to be), by observation
+or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
+its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly
+exempted. For the rest, he might have been five and
+fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall, rosy, between plump and
+portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the time and
+place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
+festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts
+was of white satin, which might have looked
+especially inappropriate, had it not seemed less a bit
+of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as it
+were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what
+seemed so good about him was not all outside; no, the
+fine covering had a still finer lining. Upon one hand he
+wore a white kid glove, but the other hand, which was
+ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidèle,
+like most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked
+here and there, especially about the railings, it was
+marvel how, under such circumstances, these hands retained
+their spotlessness. But, if you watched them
+a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
+you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant,
+whose hands nature had dyed black, perhaps with the
+same purpose that millers wear white, this negro servant&rsquo;s
+hands did most of his master&rsquo;s handling for him;
+having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his
+prejudices. But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences
+to himself, a gentleman could also sin by
+deputy, how shocking would that be! But it is not
+permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist
+would make proclamation of it.</p>
+
+<p>This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm,
+was one who, like the Hebrew governor, knew how to
+keep his hands clean, and who never in his life happened
+to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
+or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was
+to be a very good man.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce
+at all; that superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing
+in his manner bespoke him righteous, but only
+good, and though to be good is much below being righteous,
+and though there is a difference between the two,
+yet not, it is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a
+righteous man can not be a good man; though, conversely,
+in the pulpit it has been with much cogency urged,
+that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
+nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that
+nothing short of a total change and conversion can make
+him so; which is something which no honest mind,
+well read in the history of righteousness, will care to
+deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a
+sense with the pulpit distinction, though not altogether
+in the pulpit deduction, and also pretty plainly intimating
+which of the two qualities in question enjoys his
+apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
+said, that, &ldquo;scarcely for a righteous man will
+one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would
+even dare to die;&rdquo; therefore, when we repeat of this
+gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever
+else by severe censors may be objected to him, it is
+still to be hoped that his goodness will not at least
+be considered criminal in him. At all events, no man,
+not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to
+commit this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary
+as he might deem it; more especially, as, until
+everything could be known, there would be some chance
+that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent
+of it as he himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to mark the good man&rsquo;s reception of
+the salute of the righteous man, that is, the man in
+gray; his inferior, apparently, not more in the social
+scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
+good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness
+over that suitor, not in conceited condescension, but
+with that even amenity of true majesty, which can be
+kind to any one without stooping to it.</p>
+
+<p>To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and
+orphans, the gentleman, after a question or two duly
+answered, responded by producing an ample pocket-book
+in the good old capacious style, of fine green
+French morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of
+the same color, not to omit bills crisp with newness,
+fresh from the bank, no muckworms&rsquo; grime upon them.
+Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept
+unspotted from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing
+now three of those virgin bills in the applicant&rsquo;s
+hands, he hoped that the smallness of the contribution
+would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
+accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run
+down the river, to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon
+wedding of his niece: so did not carry much money
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>The other was about expressing his thanks when the
+gentleman in his pleasant way checked him: the gratitude
+was on the other side. To him, he said, charity
+was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against too
+great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had
+sometimes admonished him.</p>
+
+<p>In some general talk which followed, relative to organized
+modes of doing good, the gentleman expressed
+his regrets that so many benevolent societies as there
+were, here and there isolated in the land, should not act
+in concert by coming together, in the way that already
+in each society the individuals composing it had done,
+which would result, he thought, in like advantages upon
+a larger scale. Indeed, such a confederation might, perhaps,
+be attended with as happy results as politically
+attended that of the states.</p>
+
+<p>Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this
+suggestion had an effect illustrative in a sort of that notion
+of Socrates, that the soul is a harmony; for as the
+sound of a flute, in any particular key, will, it is said, audibly
+affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
+tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him
+respond, and with animation.</p>
+
+<p>Which animation, by the way, might seem more or
+less out of character in the man in gray, considering his
+unsprightly manner when first introduced, had he not
+already, in certain after colloquies, given proof, in some
+degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a soberly
+continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of
+stuff, is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because
+unwasted, and may be used the more effectively, too,
+when opportunity offers. What now follows on the
+part of the man in gray will still further exemplify, perhaps
+somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears
+to be such, of this remark.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said he eagerly, &ldquo;I am before you. A project,
+not dissimilar to yours, was by me thrown out at the
+World&rsquo;s Fair in London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;World&rsquo;s Fair? You there? Pray how was that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;First, let me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I went to exhibit an invalid&rsquo;s easy-chair I had invented.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you have not always been in the charity business?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am,
+and always have been, as I always will be, I trust, in
+the charity business, as you call it; but charity is not
+like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
+point; charity is a work to which a good workman may
+be competent in all its branches. I invented my Protean
+easy-chair in odd intervals stolen from meals and
+sleep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed,
+behinged, and bepadded, everyway so elastic,
+springy, and docile to the airiest touch, that in some one
+of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
+seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the
+body most racked, nay, I had almost added the most
+tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere,
+find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity
+to make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped
+together my little means and off to the World&rsquo;s Fair
+with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You did right. But your scheme; how did you
+come to hit upon that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention
+duly catalogued and placed, I gave myself up to pondering
+the scene about me. As I dwelt upon that shining
+pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and reflected
+that here was the pride of the world glorying in
+a glass house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur
+profoundly impressed me. And I said to myself,
+I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot supply a hint
+toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
+world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done.
+In short, inspired by the scene, on the fourth day I issued
+at the World&rsquo;s Fair my prospectus of the World&rsquo;s
+Charity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite a thought. But, pray explain it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The World&rsquo;s Charity is to be a society whose members
+shall comprise deputies from every charity and mission
+extant; the one object of the society to be the methodization
+of the world&rsquo;s benevolence; to which end,
+the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution
+to be done away, and the Society to be
+empowered by the various governments to levy, annually,
+one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as
+in Augustus C&aelig;sar&rsquo;s time, the whole world to come up
+to be taxed; a tax which, for the scheme of it, should
+be something like the income-tax in England, a tax, also,
+as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all possible
+benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax,
+and the county-tax, and the town-tax, and the
+poll-tax, are by the assessors rolled into one. This tax,
+according to my tables, calculated with care, would result
+in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
+hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to
+such objects, and in such modes, as the various charities
+and missions, in general congress represented, might
+decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I estimate, there
+would have been devoted to good works the sum of
+eleven thousand two hundred millions; which would
+warrant the dissolution of the society, as that fund judiciously
+expended, not a pauper or heathen could remain
+the round world over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all
+by passing round a <i>hat</i>, as it were.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible
+scheme, but a philanthropist and a financier setting forth
+a philanthropy and a finance which are practicable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Practicable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it
+will frighten none but a retail philanthropist. What is
+it but eight hundred millions for each of fourteen years?
+Now eight hundred millions&mdash;what is that, to average
+it, but one little dollar a head for the population of the
+planet? And who will refuse, what Turk or Dyak
+even, his own little dollar for sweet charity&rsquo;s sake?
+Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
+expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries.
+Consider that bloody spendthrift, War. And are
+mankind so stupid, so wicked, that, upon the demonstration
+of these things they will not, amending their ways,
+devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead
+of cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have
+not to make it, it is theirs already; they have but to
+direct it from ill to good. And to this, scarce a self-denial
+is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
+mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would
+they be all the better and happier. Don&rsquo;t you see?
+But admit, as you must, that mankind is not mad, and
+my project is practicable. For, what creature but a
+madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is
+plain that, good or ill, it must return upon himself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your sort of reasoning,&rdquo; said the good gentleman,
+adjusting his gold sleeve-buttons, &ldquo;seems all reasonable
+enough, but with mankind it wont do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason
+wont do with them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the
+manner in which you alluded to the world&rsquo;s census, it
+would appear that, according to your world-wide scheme,
+the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute to
+the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than
+the Christian to the conversion of heathenism. How is
+that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, that&mdash;pardon me&mdash;is quibbling. Now, no
+philanthropist likes to be opposed with quibbling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I won&rsquo;t quibble any more. But, after all, if
+I understand your project, there is little specially new
+in it, further than the magnifying of means now in
+operation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions
+I would thoroughly reform. Missions I would
+quicken with the Wall street spirit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Wall street spirit?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to
+be gained but through the auxiliary agency of worldly
+means, then, to the surer gaining of such spiritual ends,
+the example of worldly policy in worldly projects should
+not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
+conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending
+on human effort, would, by the world&rsquo;s charity, be let
+out on contract. So much by bid for converting India,
+so much for Borneo, so much for Africa. Competition
+allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
+lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house
+or tract-house of which slanderers could, with any
+plausibility, say that it had degenerated in its clerkships
+into a sort of custom-house. But the main point is the
+Archimedean money-power that would be brought to
+bear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean the eight hundred million power?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by
+driblets amounts to just nothing. I am for doing good
+to the world with a will. I am for doing good to the
+world once for all and having done with it. Do but
+think, my dear sir, of the eddies and ma&euml;lstroms of
+pagans in China. People here have no conception of
+it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper pagans
+are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas
+in a bin of peas. To be an immortal being in China is
+no more distinction than to be a snow-flake in a snow-squall.
+What are a score or two of missionaries to
+such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am
+for sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and
+converting the Chinese <i>en masse</i> within six months of
+the debarkation. The thing is then done, and turn to
+something else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fear you are too enthusiastic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for
+without enthusiasm what was ever achieved but commonplace?
+But again: consider the poor in London.
+To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf
+there? I am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks
+and one hundred thousand barrels of flour to begin
+with. They are then comforted, and no more hunger
+for one while among the poor of London. And so all
+round.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sharing the character of your general project, these
+things, I take it, are rather examples of wonders that
+were to be wished, than wonders that will happen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world
+too old? Is it barren? Think of Sarah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a
+smile). But still, as to your design at large, there
+seems a certain audacity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if to the audacity of the design there be brought
+a commensurate circumspectness of execution, how
+then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, do you really believe that your world&rsquo;s
+charity will ever go into operation?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have confidence that it will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But may you not be over-confident?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For a Christian to talk so!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But think of the obstacles!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles,
+though mountains. Yes, confidence in the world&rsquo;s
+charity to that degree, that, as no better person offers to
+supply the place, I have nominated myself provisional
+treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
+the present to be devoted to striking off a million more
+of my prospectuses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit
+of benevolence which, mindful of the millennial promise,
+had gone abroad over all the countries of the globe,
+much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman, stirred
+by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in
+March reveries at his fireside, over every field of his
+farm. The master chord of the man in gray had been
+touched, and it seemed as if it would never cease
+vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with
+gestures that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness
+before which granite hearts might crumble
+into gravel.</p>
+
+<p>Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly
+good-hearted as he seemed, remained proof to such eloquence;
+though not, as it turned out, to such pleadings.
+For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
+incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of
+destination, the gentleman, with a look half humor, half
+pity, put another bank-note into his hands; charitable
+to the last, if only to the dreams of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A CHARITABLE LADY.</span></h2>
+
+<p>If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals,
+an enthusiast in a reason-fit is not the most lively.
+And this, without prejudice to his greatly improved
+understanding; for, if his elation was the height of his
+madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity.
+Something thus now, to all appearance, with the
+man in gray. Society his stimulus, loneliness was his
+lethargy. Loneliness, like the sea breeze, blowing off
+from a thousand leagues of blankness, he did not find,
+as veteran solitaires do, if anything, too bracing. In
+short, left to himself, with none to charm forth his
+latent lymphatic, he insensibly resumes his original air,
+a quiescent one, blended of sad humility and demureness.</p>
+
+<p>Ere long he goes laggingly into the ladies&rsquo; saloon, as
+in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed
+glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa
+with an air of melancholy exhaustion and depression.</p>
+
+<p>At the sofa&rsquo;s further end sits a plump and pleasant
+person, whose aspect seems to hint that, if she have any
+weak point, it must be anything rather than her excellent
+heart. From her twilight dress, neither dawn nor
+dark, apparently she is a widow just breaking the chrysalis
+of her mourning. A small gilt testament is in her
+hand, which she has just been reading. Half-relinquished,
+she holds the book in reverie, her finger inserted at
+the xiii. of 1st Corinthians, to which chapter possibly
+her attention might have recently been turned, by witnessing
+the scene of the monitory mute and his slate.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred page no longer meets her eye; but, as at
+evening, when for a time the western hills shine on
+though the sun be set, her thoughtful face retains its
+tenderness though the teacher is forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the expression of the stranger is such as
+ere long to attract her glance. But no responsive one.
+Presently, in her somewhat inquisitive survey, her
+volume drops. It is restored. No encroaching politeness
+in the act, but kindness, unadorned. The eyes of
+the lady sparkle. Evidently, she is not now unprepossessed.
+Soon, bending over, in a low, sad tone, full of
+deference, the stranger breathes, &ldquo;Madam, pardon my
+freedom, but there is something in that face which
+strangely draws me. May I ask, are you a sister of the
+Church?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why&mdash;really&mdash;you&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In concern for her embarrassment, he hastens to relieve
+it, but, without seeming so to do. &ldquo;It is very
+solitary for a brother here,&rdquo; eying the showy ladies
+brocaded in the background, &ldquo;I find none to mingle
+souls with. It may be wrong&mdash;I <i>know</i> it is&mdash;but I cannot
+force myself to be easy with the people of the world.
+I prefer the company, however silent, of a brother or
+sister in good standing. By the way, madam, may I ask
+if you have confidence?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, sir&mdash;why, sir&mdash;really&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you put confidence in <i>me</i> for instance?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, sir&mdash;as much&mdash;I mean, as one may wisely
+put in a&mdash;a&mdash;stranger, an entire stranger, I had almost
+said,&rdquo; rejoined the lady, hardly yet at ease in her affability,
+drawing aside a little in body, while at the same
+time her heart might have been drawn as far the other
+way. A natural struggle between charity and prudence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Entire stranger!&rdquo; with a sigh. &ldquo;Ah, who would
+be a stranger? In vain, I wander; no one will have
+confidence in me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You interest me,&rdquo; said the good lady, in mild surprise.
+&ldquo;Can I any way befriend you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No one can befriend me, who has not confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&mdash;I have&mdash;at least to that degree&mdash;I mean
+that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, nay, you have none&mdash;none at all. Pardon, I
+see it. No confidence. Fool, fond fool that I am to
+seek it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are unjust, sir,&rdquo; rejoins the good lady with
+heightened interest; &ldquo;but it may be that something
+untoward in your experiences has unduly biased you.
+Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I&mdash;yes,
+yes&mdash;I may say&mdash;that&mdash;that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have
+twenty dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty dollars!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She
+sat in a sort of restless torment, knowing not which way
+to turn. She began twenty different sentences, and left
+off at the first syllable of each. At last, in desperation,
+she hurried out, &ldquo;Tell me, sir, for what you want the
+twenty dollars?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And did I not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; then glancing at her half-mourning,
+&ldquo;for the widow and the fatherless. I am traveling
+agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum, recently
+founded among the Seminoles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And why did you not tell me your object before?&rdquo;
+As not a little relieved. &ldquo;Poor souls&mdash;Indians, too&mdash;those
+cruelly-used Indians. Here, here; how could I
+hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Grieve not for that, madam,&rdquo; rising and folding up
+the bank-notes. &ldquo;This is an inconsiderable sum, I admit,
+but,&rdquo; taking out his pencil and book, &ldquo;though I
+here but register the amount, there is another register,
+where is set down the motive. Good-bye; you have
+confidence. Yea, you can say to me as the apostle said
+to the Corinthians, &lsquo;I rejoice that I have confidence in
+you in all things.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&mdash;&ldquo;Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed
+hereabouts, rather a saddish gentleman? Strange where
+he can have gone to. I was talking with him not
+twenty minutes since.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap,
+carrying under his arm a ledger-like volume,
+the above words were addressed to the collegian before
+introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which not
+long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted,
+he had returned, and there remained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you seen him, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial
+jauntiness of the stranger, the youth answered with unwonted
+promptitude: &ldquo;Yes, a person with a weed was
+here not very long ago.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Saddish?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and a little cracked, too, I should say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was he. Misfortune, I fear, has disturbed his
+brain. Now quick, which way did he go?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why just in the direction from which you came,
+the gangway yonder.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did he? Then the man in the gray coat, whom I
+just met, said right: he must have gone ashore. How
+unlucky!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stood vexedly twitching at his cap-tassel, which
+fell over by his whisker, and continued: &ldquo;Well, I am very
+sorry. In fact, I had something for him here.&rdquo;&mdash;Then
+drawing nearer, &ldquo;you see, he applied to me for relief,
+no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate,
+you understand. Well, being very busy just then, I
+declined; quite rudely, too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling
+way, I fear. At all events, not three minutes afterwards
+I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very peremptory,
+to deliver over into that unfortunate man&rsquo;s
+hands a ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be
+superstition, but I can&rsquo;t help it; I have my weak side,
+thank God. Then again,&rdquo; he rapidly went on, &ldquo;we
+have been so very prosperous lately in our affairs&mdash;by
+we, I mean the Black Rapids Coal Company&mdash;that, really,
+out of my abundance, associative and individual, it is
+but fair that a charitable investment or two should be
+made, don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the collegian without the least embarrassment,
+&ldquo;do I understand that you are officially connected
+with the Black Rapids Coal Company?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I happen to be president and transfer-agent.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but what is it to you? You don&rsquo;t want to
+invest?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, do you sell the stock?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some might be bought, perhaps; but why do you ask?
+you don&rsquo;t want to invest?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But supposing I did,&rdquo; with cool self-collectedness,
+&ldquo;could you do up the thing for me, and here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bless my soul,&rdquo; gazing at him in amaze, &ldquo;really,
+you are quite a business man. Positively, I feel afraid
+of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no need of that.&mdash;You could sell me some of
+that stock, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I don&rsquo;t know. To be sure, there are
+a few shares under peculiar circumstances bought in by
+the Company; but it would hardly be the thing to
+convert this boat into the Company&rsquo;s office. I think
+you had better defer investing. So,&rdquo; with an indifferent
+air, &ldquo;you have seen the unfortunate man I spoke of?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let the unfortunate man go his ways.&mdash;What is
+that large book you have with you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My transfer-book. I am subpoenaed with it to court.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Black Rapids Coal Company,&rdquo; obliquely reading
+the gilt inscription on the back; &ldquo;I have heard much of
+it. Pray do you happen to have with you any statement
+of the condition of your company.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A statement has lately been printed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have
+you a copy with you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you again, I do not think that it would be
+suitable to convert this boat into the Company&rsquo;s office.&mdash;That
+unfortunate man, did you relieve him at all?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.&mdash;Hand
+me the statement.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly
+deny you. Here,&rdquo; handing a small, printed pamphlet.</p>
+
+<p>The youth turned it over sagely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hate a suspicious man,&rdquo; said the other, observing
+him; &ldquo;but I must say I like to see a cautious one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can gratify you there,&rdquo; languidly returning the
+pamphlet; &ldquo;for, as I said before, I am naturally inquisitive;
+I am also circumspect. No appearances can deceive
+me. Your statement,&rdquo; he added &ldquo;tells a very fine
+story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy
+awhile ago? downward tendency? Sort of low spirits
+among holders on the subject of that stock?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, there was a depression. But how came it?
+who devised it? The &lsquo;bears,&rsquo; sir. The depression of
+our stock was solely owing to the growling, the hypocritical
+growling, of the bears.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How, hypocritical?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these
+bears: hypocrites by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation
+of things dark instead of bright; souls that thrive,
+less upon depression, than the fiction of depression;
+professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;
+spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the
+lugubrious day done, return, like sham Lazaruses among
+the beggars, to make merry over the gains got by their
+pretended sore heads&mdash;scoundrelly bears!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are warm against these bears?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their
+stratagems as to our stock, than from the persuasion
+that these same destroyers of confidence, and gloomy
+philosophers of the stock-market, though false in themselves,
+are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence
+and gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows
+who, whether in stocks, politics, bread-stuffs,
+morals, metaphysics, religion&mdash;be it what it may&mdash;trump
+up their black panics in the naturally-quiet
+brightness, solely with a view to some sort of covert
+advantage. That corpse of calamity which the gloomy
+philosopher parades, is but his Good-Enough-Morgan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I rather like that,&rdquo; knowingly drawled the youth.
+&ldquo;I fancy these gloomy souls as little as the next one.
+Sitting on my sofa after a champagne dinner, smoking
+my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me&mdash;what
+a bore!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You tell him it&rsquo;s all stuff, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell him it ain&rsquo;t natural. I say to him, you are
+happy enough, and you know it; and everybody else is
+as happy as you, and you know that, too; and we shall
+all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
+too; but no, still you must have your sulk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets
+his sulk? not from life; for he&rsquo;s often too much of a
+recluse, or else too young to have seen anything of it.
+No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees on
+the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in
+garrets. Ten to one, he has lugged home from auction
+a musty old Seneca, and sets about stuffing himself with
+that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it looks wise
+and antique to be a croaker, thinks it&rsquo;s taking a stand-way
+above his kind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; assented the youth. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve lived some, and
+seen a good many such ravens at second hand. By the
+way, strange how that man with the weed, you were inquiring
+for, seemed to take me for some soft sentimentalist,
+only because I kept quiet, and thought, because
+I had a copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him
+for his gloom, instead of his gossip. But I let him talk.
+And, indeed, by my manner humored him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t have done that, now. Unfortunate
+man, you must have made quite a fool of him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous
+fellows, comfortable fellows; fellows that talk comfortably
+and prosperously, like you. Such fellows are
+generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
+superfluity in my pocket, and I&rsquo;ll just&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&mdash;Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate
+man?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let the unfortunate man be his own brother.
+What are you dragging him in for all the time? One
+would think you didn&rsquo;t care to register any transfers,
+or dispose of any stock&mdash;mind running on something
+else. I say I will invest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows&mdash;this
+way, this way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And with off-handed politeness the man with the
+book escorted his companion into a private little haven
+removed from the brawling swells without.</p>
+
+<p>Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked
+the deck.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now tell me, sir,&rdquo; said he with the book, &ldquo;how
+comes it that a young gentleman like you, a sedate student
+at the first appearance, should dabble in stocks and
+that sort of thing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are certain sophomorean errors in the world,&rdquo;
+drawled the sophomore, deliberately adjusting his shirt-collar,
+&ldquo;not the least of which is the popular notion
+touching the nature of the modern scholar, and the nature
+of the modern scholastic sedateness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it seems, so it seems. Really, this is quite a
+new leaf in my experience.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Experience, sir,&rdquo; originally observed the sophomore,
+&ldquo;is the only teacher.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hence am I your pupil; for it&rsquo;s only when experience
+speaks, that I can endure to listen to speculation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My speculations, sir,&rdquo; dryly drawing himself up,
+&ldquo;have been chiefly governed by the maxim of Lord
+Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies which come
+home to my business and bosom&mdash;pray, do you know of
+any other good stocks?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t like to be concerned in the New Jerusalem,
+would you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;New Jerusalem?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the new and thriving city, so called, in northern
+Minnesota. It was originally founded by certain fugitive
+Mormons. Hence the name. It stands on the
+Mississippi. Here, here is the map,&rdquo; producing a roll.
+&ldquo;There&mdash;there, you see are the public buildings&mdash;here
+the landing&mdash;there the park&mdash;yonder the botanic gardens&mdash;and
+this, this little dot here, is a perpetual fountain,
+you understand. You observe there are twenty
+asterisks. Those are for the lyceums. They have lignum-vitae
+rostrums.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And are all these buildings now standing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All standing&mdash;bona fide.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These marginal squares here, are they the water-lots?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Water-lots in the city of New Jerusalem? All terra
+firma&mdash;you don&rsquo;t seem to care about investing, though?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly think I should read my title clear, as the
+law students say,&rdquo; yawned the collegian.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Prudent&mdash;you are prudent. Don&rsquo;t know that you are
+wholly out, either. At any rate, I would rather have
+one of your shares of coal stock than two of this other.
+Still, considering that the first settlement was by two
+fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite
+shore&mdash;it&rsquo;s a surprising place. It is, <i>bona fide</i>.&mdash;But
+dear me, I must go. Oh, if by possibility you should
+come across that unfortunate man&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&mdash;In that case,&rdquo; with drawling impatience, &ldquo;I
+will send for the steward, and have him and his misfortunes
+consigned overboard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha ha!&mdash;now were some gloomy philosopher here,
+some theological bear, forever taking occasion to growl
+down the stock of human nature (with ulterior views,
+d&rsquo;ye see, to a fat benefice in <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'the the'.">the</ins> gift of the worshipers
+of Ariamius), he would pronounce that the sign of a
+hardening heart and a softening brain. Yes, that would
+be his sinister construction. But it&rsquo;s nothing more than
+the oddity of a genial humor&mdash;genial but dry. Confess
+it. Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN THE CABIN.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying
+them are clusters of men, old and young, wise and simple;
+in their hands are cards spotted with diamonds,
+spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist,
+cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering
+among the marble-topped tables, amused with
+the scene, are the comparatively few, who, instead of
+having hands in the games, for the most part keep their
+hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes.
+But here and there, with a curious expression,
+one is reading a small sort of handbill of anonymous
+poetry, rather wordily entitled:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class='c noin'>&ldquo;ODE<br />
+<span class='sf75'>ON THE INTIMATIONS<br />
+OF<br />
+DISTRUST IN MAN,<br />
+UNWILLINGLY INFERRED FROM REPEATED REPULSES,<br />
+IN DISINTERESTED ENDEAVORS<br />
+TO PROCURE HIS<br />
+CONFIDENCE.&rdquo;</span></p>
+
+<p>On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered
+down from a balloon. The way they came there was
+this: A somewhat elderly person, in the quaker dress,
+had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in the
+manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede
+their proffers of sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or
+indirect, of the volumes to follow, had, without speaking,
+handed about the odes, which, for the most part,
+after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed
+aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some
+wandering rhapsodist.</p>
+
+<p>In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man
+with the traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro,
+looks animatedly about him, with a yearning sort of
+gratulatory affinity and longing, expressive of the very
+soul of sociality; as much as to say, &ldquo;Oh, boys, would
+that I were personally acquainted with each mother&rsquo;s
+son of you, since what a sweet world, to make sweet
+acquaintance in, is ours, my brothers; yea, and what
+dear, happy dogs are we all!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes
+fraternally up to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging
+with him some pleasant remark.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, what have you there?&rdquo; he asked of one newly
+accosted, a little, dried-up man, who looked as if he
+never dined.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A little ode, rather queer, too,&rdquo; was the reply, &ldquo;of
+the same sort you see strewn on the floor here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did not observe them. Let me see;&rdquo; picking
+one up and looking it over. &ldquo;Well now, this is pretty;
+plaintive, especially the opening:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&lsquo;Alas for man, he hath small sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of genial trust and confidence.&rsquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>&mdash;If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very
+smoothly, sir. Beautiful pathos. But do you think the
+sentiment just?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; said the little dried-up man, &ldquo;I think
+it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost
+ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking;
+yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it
+were trustful and genial. I don&rsquo;t know that ever I felt
+so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities;
+but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness
+not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my
+lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to
+be all alive in well-doing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as
+the doctors say. But who snowed the odes about
+here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot say; I have not been here long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel
+genial, let us do as the rest, and have cards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, I never play cards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A bottle of wine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, I never drink wine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cigars?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, I never smoke cigars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell stories?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth
+telling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel
+waked in you, is as water-power in a land without
+mills. Come, you had better take a genial hand at the
+cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as
+you please; just enough to make it interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust
+cards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for
+once I join with our sad Philomel here:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&lsquo;Alas for man, he hath small sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of genial trust and confidence.&rsquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>Good-bye!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he
+with the book at length seems fatigued, looks round
+for a seat, and spying a partly-vacant settee drawn up
+against the side, drops down there; soon, like his
+chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant,
+becoming not a little interested in the scene more immediately
+before him; a party at whist; two cream-faced,
+giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a red cravat,
+the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave,
+handsome, self-possessed men of middle age, decorously
+dressed in a sort of professional black, and apparently
+doctors of some eminence in the civil law.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new
+comer next him the good merchant, sideways leaning
+over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of the Ode
+which he holds: &ldquo;Sir, I don&rsquo;t like the looks of those
+two, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly,&rdquo; was the whispered reply; &ldquo;those colored
+cravats are not in the best taste, at least not to mine;
+but my taste is no rule for all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don&rsquo;t
+refer to dress, but countenance. I confess I am not
+familiar with such gentry any further than reading about
+them in the papers&mdash;but those two are&mdash;are sharpers,
+aint they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit,
+my dear sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given
+that way: but certainly, to say the least, these two
+youths can hardly be adepts, while the opposed couple
+may be even more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You would not hint that the colored cravats would
+be so bungling as to lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous
+as to cheat?&mdash;Sour imaginations, my dear sir.
+Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the
+Ode you have there. Years and experience, I trust,
+have not sophisticated you. A fresh and liberal construction
+would teach us to regard those four players&mdash;indeed,
+this whole cabin-full of players&mdash;as playing at
+games in which every player plays fair, and not a player
+but shall win.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, you hardly mean that; because games in
+which all may win, such games remain as yet in this
+world uninvented, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; luxuriously laying himself back, and
+casting a free glance upon the players, &ldquo;fares all paid;
+digestion sound; care, toil, penury, grief, unknown;
+lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
+be cheerfully resigned to one&rsquo;s fate, nor peevishly pick
+holes in the blessed fate of the world?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and
+hard, and then rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation,
+at first uneasy, but at last composed, and in the
+end, once more addressed his companion: &ldquo;Well, I see
+it&rsquo;s good to out with one&rsquo;s private thoughts now and
+then. Somehow, I don&rsquo;t know why, a certain misty
+suspiciousness seems inseparable from most of one&rsquo;s private
+notions about some men and some things; but
+once out with these misty notions, and their mere contact
+with other men&rsquo;s soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think I have done you good, then? may be,
+I have. But don&rsquo;t thank me, don&rsquo;t thank me. If by
+words, casually delivered in the social hour, I do any
+good to right or left, it is but involuntary influence&mdash;locust-tree
+sweetening the herbage under it; no merit
+at all; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.&mdash;Don&rsquo;t
+you see?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Another stare from the good merchant, and both were
+silent again.</p>
+
+<p>Finding his book, hitherto resting on his lap, rather
+irksome there, the owner now places it edgewise on the
+settee, between himself and neighbor; in so doing,
+chancing to expose the lettering on the back&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Black
+Rapids Coal Company</i>&rdquo;&mdash;which the good merchant,
+scrupulously honorable, had much ado to avoid reading,
+so directly would it have fallen under his eye, had
+he not conscientiously averted it. On a sudden, as if
+just reminded of something, the stranger starts up, and
+moves away, in his haste leaving his book; which
+the merchant observing, without delay takes it up, and,
+hurrying after, civilly returns it; in which act he could
+not avoid catching sight by an involuntary glance of
+part of the lettering.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, thank you, my good sir,&rdquo; said the other,
+receiving the volume, and was resuming his retreat,
+when the merchant spoke: &ldquo;Excuse me, but are you
+not in some way connected with the&mdash;the Coal Company
+I have heard of?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is more than one Coal Company that may be
+heard of, my good sir,&rdquo; smiled the other, pausing with
+an expression of painful impatience, disinterestedly
+mastered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you are connected with one in particular.&mdash;The
+&lsquo;Black Rapids,&rsquo; are you not?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did you find that out?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir, I have heard rather tempting information
+of your Company.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is your informant, pray,&rdquo; somewhat coldly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A&mdash;a person by the name of Ringman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know him. But, doubtless, there are plenty
+who know our Company, whom our Company does not
+know; in the same way that one may know an individual,
+yet be unknown to him.&mdash;Known this Ringman
+long? Old friend, I suppose.&mdash;But pardon, I must
+leave you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, sir, that&mdash;that stock.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stock?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a little irregular, perhaps, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me, you don&rsquo;t think of doing any business
+with me, do you? In my official capacity I have not
+been authenticated to you. This transfer-book, now,&rdquo;
+holding it up so as to bring the lettering in sight, &ldquo;how
+do you know that it may not be a bogus one? And I,
+being personally a stranger to you, how can you have
+confidence in me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; knowingly smiled the good merchant,
+&ldquo;if you were other than I have confidence that you are,
+hardly would you challenge distrust that way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you have not examined my book.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What need to, if already I believe that it is what it
+is lettered to be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you had better. It might suggest doubts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doubts, may be, it might suggest, but not knowledge;
+for how, by examining the book, should I think I
+knew any more than I now think I do; since, if it
+be the true book, I think it so already; and since if it
+be otherwise, then I have never seen the true one, and
+don&rsquo;t know what that ought to look like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your logic I will not criticize, but your confidence I
+admire, and earnestly, too, jocose as was the method
+I took to draw it out. Enough, we will go to yonder
+table, and if there be any business which, either in my
+private or official capacity, I can help you do, pray
+command me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>ONLY A PAGE OR SO.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The transaction concluded, the two still remained
+seated, falling into familiar conversation, by degrees
+verging into that confidential sort of sympathetic
+silence, the last refinement and luxury of unaffected
+good feeling. A kind of social superstition, to suppose
+that to be truly friendly one must be saying friendly
+words all the time, any more than be doing friendly
+deeds continually. True friendliness, like true religion,
+being in a sort independent of works.</p>
+
+<p>At length, the good merchant, whose eyes were pensively
+resting upon the gay tables in the distance, broke
+the spell by saying that, from the spectacle before them,
+one would little divine what other quarters of the boat
+might reveal. He cited the case, accidentally encountered
+but an hour or two previous, of a shrunken old
+miser, clad in shrunken old moleskin, stretched out, an
+invalid, on a bare plank in the emigrants&rsquo; quarters,
+eagerly clinging to life and lucre, though the one was
+gasping for outlet, and about the other he was in torment
+lest death, or some other unprincipled cut-purse,
+should be the means of his losing it; by like feeble
+tenure holding lungs and pouch, and yet knowing and
+desiring nothing beyond them; for his mind, never
+raised above mould, was now all but mouldered away.
+To such a degree, indeed, that he had no trust in anything,
+not even in his parchment bonds, which, the better
+to preserve from the tooth of time, he had packed
+down and sealed up, like brandy peaches, in a tin case
+of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy man proceeded at some length with
+these dispiriting particulars. Nor would his cheery
+companion wholly deny that there might be a point of
+view from which such a case of extreme want of confidence
+might, to the humane mind, present features not
+altogether welcome as wine and olives after dinner.
+Still, he was not without compensatory considerations,
+and, upon the whole, took his companion to task for
+evincing what, in a good-natured, round-about way, he
+hinted to be a somewhat jaundiced sentimentality.
+Nature, he added, in Shakespeare&rsquo;s words, had meal and
+bran; and, rightly regarded, the bran in its way was
+not to be condemned.</p>
+
+<p>The other was not disposed to question the justice of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s thought, but would hardly admit the
+propriety of the application in this instance, much less
+of the comment. So, after some further temperate discussion
+of the pitiable miser, finding that they could
+not entirely harmonize, the merchant cited another case,
+that of the negro cripple. But his companion suggested
+whether the alleged hardships of that alleged
+unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer
+than the experience of the observed. He knew
+nothing about the cripple, nor had seen him, but ventured
+to surmise that, could one but get at the real state
+of his heart, he would be found about as happy as most
+men, if not, in fact, full as happy as the speaker himself.
+He added that negroes were by nature a singularly
+cheerful race; no one ever heard of a native-born African
+Zimmermann or Torquemada; that even from religion
+they dismissed all gloom; in their hilarious rituals they
+danced, so to speak, and, as it were, cut pigeon-wings.
+It was improbable, therefore, that a negro, however reduced
+to his stumps by fortune, could be ever thrown
+off the legs of a laughing philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Foiled again, the good merchant would not desist, but
+ventured still a third case, that of the man with the
+weed, whose story, as narrated by himself, and confirmed
+and filled out by the testimony of a certain man in a
+gray coat, whom the merchant had afterwards met, he
+now proceeded to give; and that, without holding
+back those particulars disclosed by the second informant,
+but which delicacy had prevented the unfortunate
+man himself from touching upon.</p>
+
+<p>But as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better
+justice to the man than the story, we shall venture to
+tell it in other words than his, though not to any other
+effect.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>STORY OF THE UNFORTUNATE MAN, FROM WHICH MAY BE GATHERED
+WHETHER OR NO HE HAS BEEN JUSTLY SO ENTITLED.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It appeared that the unfortunate man had had for a
+wife one of those natures, anomalously vicious, which
+would almost tempt a metaphysical lover of our species
+to doubt whether the human form be, in all cases, conclusive
+evidence of humanity, whether, sometimes, it may
+not be a kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle,
+and whether, once for all to crush the saying of Thrasea,
+(an unaccountable one, considering that he himself was
+so good a man) that &ldquo;he who hates vice, hates humanity,&rdquo;
+it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable
+maxim, that none but the good are human.</p>
+
+<p>Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too
+straight, indeed, for a woman, a complexion naturally
+rosy, and which would have been charmingly so, but for
+a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of the glazed
+colors on stone-ware. Her hair was of a deep, rich
+chestnut, but worn in close, short curls all round her
+head. Her Indian figure was not without its impairing
+effect on her bust, while her mouth would have been
+pretty but for a trace of moustache. Upon the whole,
+aided by the resources of the toilet, her appearance at
+distance was such, that some might have thought her, if
+anything, rather beautiful, though of a style of beauty
+rather peculiar and cactus-like.</p>
+
+<p>It was happy for Goneril that her more striking peculiarities
+were less of the person than of temper and taste.
+One hardly knows how to reveal, that, while having a
+natural antipathy to such things as the breast of chicken,
+or custard, or peach, or grape, Goneril could yet in
+private make a satisfactory lunch on hard crackers and
+brawn of ham. She liked lemons, and the only kind of
+candy she loved were little dried sticks of blue clay,
+secretly carried in her pocket. Withal she had hard,
+steady health like a squaw&rsquo;s, with as firm a spirit and
+resolution. Some other points about her were likewise
+such as pertain to the women of savage life. Lithe
+though she was, she loved supineness, but upon occasion
+could endure like a stoic. She was taciturn, too. From
+early morning till about three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon
+she would seldom speak&mdash;it taking that time to thaw
+her, by all accounts, into but talking terms with humanity.
+During the interval she did little but look, and
+keep looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her
+enemies called cold as a cuttle-fish&rsquo;s, but which by her
+were esteemed gazelle-like; for Goneril was not without
+vanity. Those who thought they best knew her, often
+wondered what happiness such a being could take in
+life, not considering the happiness which is to be had by
+some natures in the very easy way of simply causing
+pain to those around them. Those who suffered from
+Goneril&rsquo;s strange nature, might, with one of those
+hyberboles to which the resentful incline, have pronounced
+her some kind of toad; but her worst slanderers
+could never, with any show of justice, have accused
+her of being a toady. In a large sense she possessed
+the virtue of independence of mind. Goneril held it
+flattery to hint praise even of the absent, and even if
+merited; but honesty, to fling people&rsquo;s imputed faults
+into their faces. This was thought malice, but it certainly
+was not passion. Passion is human. Like an
+icicle-dagger, Goneril at once stabbed and froze; so at
+least they said; and when she saw frankness and innocence
+tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell,
+according to the same authority, inly she chewed her
+blue clay, and you could mark that she chuckled. These
+peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but another
+was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company
+she had a strange way of touching, as by accident, the
+arm or hand of comely young men, and seemed to reap
+a secret delight from it, but whether from the humane
+satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called,
+or whether it was something else in her, not equally
+wonderful, but quite as deplorable, remained an enigma.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man&rsquo;s,
+when, engaged in conversation with company, he would
+suddenly perceive his Goneril bestowing her mysterious
+touches, especially in such cases where the strangeness
+of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
+notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing
+the mystery, on the spot, as a subject of discussion for
+the company. In these cases, too, the unfortunate man
+could never endure so much as to look upon the touched
+young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification
+of meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less
+quizzingly-knowing expression. He would shudderingly
+shun the young gentleman. So that here, to the husband,
+Goneril&rsquo;s touch had the dread operation of the
+heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So,
+at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately,
+would venture in private interviews gently to
+make distant allusions to this questionable propensity.
+She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it
+was witless to be telling one&rsquo;s dreams, especially foolish
+ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to
+rejoice his soul with such chimeras, much connubial joy
+might they give him. All this was sad&mdash;a touching
+case&mdash;but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
+unfortunate man&mdash;conscientiously mindful of his vow&mdash;for
+better or for worse&mdash;to love and cherish his dear
+Goneril so long as kind heaven might spare her to him&mdash;but
+when, after all that had happened, the devil of
+jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for
+none other could possess her, and the object of that deranged
+jealousy, her own child, a little girl of seven, her
+father&rsquo;s consolation and pet; when he saw Goneril artfully
+torment the little innocent, and then play the
+maternal hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man&rsquo;s patient
+long-suffering gave way. Knowing that she would
+neither confess nor amend, and might, possibly, become
+even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
+father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as
+he did, he could not do so without accompanying it into
+domestic exile himself. Which, hard though it was, he
+did. Whereupon the whole female neighborhood, who
+till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
+out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning
+a cause, could deliberately abandon the wife of
+his bosom, and sharpen the sting to her, too, by depriving
+her of the solace of retaining her offspring. To all this,
+self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
+kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been
+had he continued so; for when, driven to desperation,
+he hinted something of the truth of the case, not a soul
+would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
+he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the
+suggestion of some woman&rsquo;s-rights women, the injured
+wife began a suit, and, thanks to able counsel and accommodating
+testimony, succeeded in such a way, as
+not only to recover custody of the child, but to get such
+a settlement awarded upon a separation, as to make
+penniless the unfortunate man (so he averred), besides,
+through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting a
+judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made
+it yet more lamentable was, that the unfortunate man,
+thinking that, before the court, his wisest plan, as well
+as the most Christian besides, being, as he deemed, not
+at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to
+put forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril,
+which done, he could, with less of mortification to himself,
+and odium to her, reveal in self-defense those
+eccentricities which had led to his retirement from the
+joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this
+charge of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself&mdash;especially,
+when, among other things, he alleged
+her mysterious teachings. In vain did his counsel,
+striving to make out the derangement to be where, in
+fact, if anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise,
+to hold that such a being as Goneril was sane, this was
+constructively a libel upon womankind. Libel be it.
+And all ended by the unfortunate man&rsquo;s subsequently
+getting wind of Goneril&rsquo;s intention to procure him to
+be permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which
+he fled, and was now an innocent outcast, wandering
+forlorn in the great valley of the Mississippi, with a
+weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he had
+lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought
+it but proper to comply with the prescribed form of
+mourning in such cases. For some days past he had
+been trying to get money enough to return to his child,
+and was but now started with inadequate funds.</p>
+
+<p>Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant
+could not but consider rather hard for the unfortunate
+man.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE MAN WITH THE TRAVELING-CAP EVINCES MUCH HUMANITY,
+AND IN A WAY WHICH WOULD SEEM TO SHOW HIM TO BE ONE
+OF THE MOST LOGICAL OF OPTIMISTS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Years ago, a grave American savant, being in London,
+observed at an evening party there, a certain coxcombical
+fellow, as he thought, an absurd ribbon in his lapel,
+and full of smart persiflage, whisking about to the admiration
+of as many as were disposed to admire. Great
+was the savan&rsquo;s disdain; but, chancing ere long to find
+himself in a corner with the jackanapes, got into conversation
+with him, when he was somewhat ill-prepared
+for the good sense of the jackanapes, but was altogether
+thrown aback, upon subsequently being whispered by a
+friend that the jackanapes was almost as great a savan
+as himself, being no less a personage than Sir Humphrey
+Davy.</p>
+
+<p>The above anecdote is given just here by way of an
+anticipative reminder to such readers as, from the kind
+of jaunty levity, or what may have passed for such,
+hitherto for the most part appearing in the man with the
+traveling-cap, may have been tempted into a more or
+less hasty estimate of him; that such readers, when
+they find the same person, as they presently will, capable
+of philosophic and humanitarian discourse&mdash;no mere
+casual sentence or two as heretofore at times, but solidly
+sustained throughout an almost entire sitting; that they
+may not, like the American savan, be thereupon betrayed
+into any surprise incompatible with their own good
+opinion of their previous penetration.</p>
+
+<p>The merchant&rsquo;s narration being ended, the other
+would not deny but that it did in some degree affect
+him. He hoped he was not without proper feeling for
+the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what
+spirit he bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond
+or have confidence?</p>
+
+<p>The merchant did not, perhaps, take the exact import
+of the last member of the question; but answered, that,
+if whether the unfortunate man was becomingly resigned
+under his affliction or no, was the point, he could say for
+him that resigned he was, and to an exemplary degree:
+for not only, so far as known, did he refrain from any
+one-sided reflections upon human goodness and human
+justice, but there was observable in him an air of
+chastened reliance, and at times tempered cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Upon which the other observed, that since the unfortunate
+man&rsquo;s alleged experience could not be deemed
+very conciliatory towards a view of human nature better
+than human nature was, it largely redounded to his
+fair-mindedness, as well as piety, that under the alleged
+dissuasives, apparently so, from philanthropy, he had
+not, in a moment of excitement, been warped over to
+the ranks of the misanthropes. He doubted not, also,
+that with such a man his experience would, in the end,
+act by a complete and beneficent inversion, and so far
+from shaking his confidence in his kind, confirm it, and
+rivet it. Which would the more surely be the case, did
+he (the unfortunate man) at last become satisfied (as
+sooner or later he probably would be) that in the distraction
+of his mind his Goneril had not in all respects
+had fair play. At all events, the description of the
+lady, charity could not but regard as more or less exaggerated,
+and so far unjust. The truth probably was
+that she was a wife with some blemishes mixed with
+some beauties. But when the blemishes were displayed,
+her husband, no adept in the female nature, had tried to
+use reason with her, instead of something far more persuasive.
+Hence his failure to convince and convert.
+The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the
+circumstances, abrupt. In brief, there were probably
+small faults on both sides, more than balanced by large
+virtues; and one should not be hasty in judging.</p>
+
+<p>When the merchant, strange to say, opposed views so
+calm and impartial, and again, with some warmth, deplored
+the case of the unfortunate man, his companion,
+not without seriousness, checked him, saying, that this
+would never do; that, though but in the most exceptional
+case, to admit the existence of unmerited misery, more
+particularly if alleged to have been brought about by
+unhindered arts of the wicked, such an admission was,
+to say the least, not prudent; since, with some, it might
+unfavorably bias their most important persuasions. Not
+that those persuasions were legitimately servile to such
+influences. Because, since the common occurrences of
+life could never, in the nature of things, steadily look one
+way and tell one story, as flags in the trade-wind; hence,
+if the conviction of a Providence, for instance, were in
+any way made dependent upon such variabilities as
+everyday events, the degree of that conviction would,
+in thinking minds, be subject to fluctuations akin to those
+of the stock-exchange during a long and uncertain war.
+Here he glanced aside at his transfer-book, and after a
+moment&rsquo;s pause continued. It was of the essence of a
+right conviction of the divine nature, as with a right
+conviction of the human, that, based less on experience
+than intuition, it rose above the zones of weather.</p>
+
+<p>When now the merchant, with all his heart, coincided
+with this (as being a sensible, as well as religious person,
+he could not but do), his companion expressed satisfaction,
+that, in an age of some distrust on such subjects,
+he could yet meet with one who shared with him,
+almost to the full, so sound and sublime a confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Still, he was far from the illiberality of denying that
+philosophy duly bounded was not permissible. Only
+he deemed it at least desirable that, when such a case as
+that alleged of the unfortunate man was made the subject
+of philosophic discussion, it should be so philosophized
+upon, as not to afford handles to those unblessed
+with the true light. For, but to grant that there was
+so much as a mystery about such a case, might by those
+persons be held for a tacit surrender of the question.
+And as for the apparent license temporarily permitted
+sometimes, to the bad over the good (as was by implication
+alleged with regard to Goneril and the unfortunate
+man), it might be injudicious there to lay too much
+polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as
+the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed,
+to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient
+solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention
+of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous
+conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the
+one which should affirm that Providence was not now,
+but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers,
+it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever
+had the true light should stick behind the secure
+Malakoff of confidence, nor be tempted forth to hazardous
+skirmishes on the open ground of reason. Therefore,
+he deemed it unadvisable in the good man, even in
+the privacy of his own mind, or in communion with a
+congenial one, to indulge in too much latitude of philosophizing,
+or, indeed, of compassionating, since this might,
+beget an indiscreet habit of thinking and feeling which
+might unexpectedly betray him upon unsuitable occasions.
+Indeed, whether in private or public, there was
+nothing which a good man was more bound to guard
+himself against than, on some topics, the emotional unreserve
+of his natural heart; for, that the natural heart,
+in certain points, was not what it might be, men had
+been authoritatively admonished.</p>
+
+<p>But he thought he might be getting dry.</p>
+
+<p>The merchant, in his good-nature, thought otherwise,
+and said that he would be glad to refresh himself with
+such fruit all day. It was sitting under a ripe pulpit,
+and better such a seat than under a ripe peach-tree.</p>
+
+<p>The other was pleased to find that he had not, as he
+feared, been prosing; but would rather not be considered
+in the formal light of a preacher; he preferred
+being still received in that of the equal and genial companion.
+To which end, throwing still more of sociability
+into his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate
+man. Take the very worst view of that case;
+admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril; how
+fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by
+nature and by law? If he were acquainted with the
+unfortunate man, instead of condoling with him, he
+would congratulate him. Great good fortune had this
+unfortunate man. Lucky dog, he dared say, after all.</p>
+
+<p>To which the merchant replied, that he earnestly
+hoped it might be so, and at any rate he tried his best
+to comfort himself with the persuasion that, if the unfortunate
+man was not happy in this world, he would,
+at least, be so in another.</p>
+
+<p>His companion made no question of the unfortunate
+man&rsquo;s happiness in both worlds; and, presently calling
+for some champagne, invited the merchant to partake,
+upon the playful plea that, whatever notions other than
+felicitous ones he might associate with the unfortunate
+man, a little champagne would readily bubble away.</p>
+
+<p>At intervals they slowly quaffed several glasses in
+silence and thoughtfulness. At last the merchant&rsquo;s expressive
+face flushed, his eye moistly beamed, his lips
+trembled with an imaginative and feminine sensibility.
+Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine
+seemed to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying
+there. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he cried, pushing his glass from him,
+&ldquo;Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good; but can wine
+or confidence percolate down through all the stony
+strata of hard considerations, and drop warmly and
+ruddily into the cold cave of truth? Truth will <i>not</i> be
+comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by sweet hope,
+fond fancy essays this feat; but in vain; mere dreams
+and ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving naught
+but the scorching behind!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, why, why!&rdquo; in amaze, at the burst: &ldquo;bless
+me, if <i>In vino veritas</i> be a true saying, then, for all the
+fine confidence you professed with me, just now, distrust,
+deep distrust, underlies it; and ten thousand
+strong, like the Irish Rebellion, breaks out in you now.
+That wine, good wine, should do it! Upon my soul,&rdquo;
+half seriously, half humorously, securing the bottle,
+&ldquo;you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to
+gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence,
+not depress it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sobered, shamed, all but confounded, by this raillery,
+the most telling rebuke under such circumstances, the
+merchant stared about him, and then, with altered mien,
+stammeringly confessed, that he was almost as much
+surprised as his companion, at what had escaped him.
+He did not understand it; was quite at a loss to account
+for such a rhapsody popping out of him unbidden. It
+could hardly be the champagne; he felt his brain unaffected;
+in fact, if anything, the wine had acted upon
+it something like white of egg in coffee, clarifying and
+brightening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brightening? brightening it may be, but less like
+the white of egg in coffee, than like stove-lustre on a
+stove&mdash;black, brightening seriously, I repent calling for
+the champagne. To a temperament like yours, champagne
+is not to be recommended. Pray, my dear sir, do
+you feel quite yourself again? Confidence restored?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope so; I think I may say it is so. But we have
+had a long talk, and I think I must retire now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, the merchant rose, and making his adieus,
+left the table with the air of one, mortified at having
+been tempted by his own honest goodness, accidentally
+stimulated into making mad disclosures&mdash;to himself as
+to another&mdash;of the queer, unaccountable caprices of his
+natural heart.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE
+WORTH CONSIDERING.</span></h2>
+
+<p>As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking
+forwards, so the present must consist of one glancing
+backwards.</p>
+
+<p>To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one
+so full of confidence, as the merchant has throughout
+shown himself, up to the moment of his late sudden impulsiveness,
+should, in that instance, have betrayed such
+a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent,
+and even so he is. But for this, is the author to be
+blamed? True, it may be urged that there is nothing
+a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there
+is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for,
+than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
+should be preserved. But this, though at first blush,
+seeming reasonable enough, may, upon a closer view,
+prove not so much so. For how does it couple with
+another requirement&mdash;equally insisted upon, perhaps&mdash;that,
+while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention,
+yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory
+to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent
+character is a <i>rara avis</i>? Which being so, the distaste
+of readers to the contrary sort in books, can hardly arise
+from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be
+from perplexity as to understanding them. But if the
+acutest sage be often at his wits&rsquo; ends to understand
+living character, shall those who are not sages expect to
+run and read character in those mere phantoms which
+flit along a page, like shadows along a wall? That
+fiction, where every character can, by reason of its consistency,
+be comprehended at a glance, either exhibits
+but sections of character, making them appear for
+wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the
+other hand, that author who draws a character, even
+though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the
+flying-squirrel, and, at different periods, as much at
+variance with itself as the butterfly is with the caterpillar
+into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be
+not false but faithful to facts.</p>
+
+<p>If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent
+characters as nature herself has. It must call
+for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate
+in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception
+and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only
+guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with
+<i>what is</i>, it may be unwise in every ease to rest upon it.
+When the duck-billed beaver of Australia was first
+brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing
+to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
+reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen
+must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on.</p>
+
+<p>But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce
+her duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors
+some may hold, have no business to be perplexing
+readers with duck-billed characters. Always, they
+should represent human nature not in obscurity, but
+transparency, which, indeed, is the practice with most
+novelists, and is, perhaps, in certain cases, someway felt
+to be a kind of honor rendered by them to their kind.
+But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be
+mooted, considering that, if these waters of human
+nature can be so readily seen through, it may be either
+that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon the
+whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view
+of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that,
+in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that
+it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation
+of it than he who, by always representing it in a
+clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows
+all about it.</p>
+
+<p>But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent
+characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other
+way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency,
+afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be
+their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing
+so much as in this very particular. They challenge
+astonishment at the tangled web of some character,
+and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory
+unraveling of it; in this way throwing open,
+sometimes to the understanding even of school misses,
+the last complications of that spirit which is affirmed
+by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
+made.</p>
+
+<p>At least, something like this is claimed for certain
+psychological novelists; nor will the claim be here
+disputed. Yet, as touching this point, it may prove
+suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity, having for
+their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
+have, by the best judges, been excluded with
+contempt from the ranks of the sciences&mdash;palmistry,
+physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise, the
+fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the
+most eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as
+with other topics, seem some presumption of a pretty
+general and pretty thorough ignorance of it. Which
+may appear the less improbable if it be considered that,
+after poring over the best novels professing to portray
+human nature, the studious youth will still run risk of
+being too often at fault upon actually entering the world;
+whereas, had he been furnished with a true delineation,
+it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
+entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be
+very crooked, he may often pause; but, thanks to his true
+map, he does not hopelessly lose his way. Nor, to this
+comparison, can it be an adequate objection, that the
+twistings of the town are always the same, and those of
+human nature subject to variation. The grand points of
+human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand
+years ago. The only variability in them is in expression,
+not in feature.</p>
+
+<p>But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some
+mathematicians are yet in hopes of hitting upon an exact
+method of determining the longitude, the more earnest
+psychologists may, in the face of previous failures, still
+cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
+discovering the heart of man.</p>
+
+<p>But enough has been said by way of apology for
+whatever may have seemed amiss or obscure in the
+character of the merchant; so nothing remains but to turn
+to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
+thought to that of action.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>AN OLD MISER, UPON SUITABLE REPRESENTATIONS, IS PREVAILED UPON TO
+VENTURE AN INVESTMENT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The merchant having withdrawn, the other remained
+seated alone for a time, with the air of one who, after
+having conversed with some excellent man, carefully
+ponders what fell from him, however intellectually inferior
+it may be, that none of the profit may be lost;
+happy if from any honest word he has heard he can
+derive some hint, which, besides confirming him in the
+theory of virtue, may, likewise, serve for a finger-post
+to virtuous action.</p>
+
+<p>Ere long his eye brightened, as if some such hint was
+now caught. He rises, book in hand, quits the cabin,
+and enters upon a sort of corridor, narrow and dim, a
+by-way to a retreat less ornate and cheery than the
+former; in short, the emigrants&rsquo; quarters; but which,
+owing to the present trip being a down-river one, will
+doubtless be found comparatively tenantless. Owing
+to obstructions against the side windows, the whole
+place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most
+part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by
+narrow, capricious sky-lights in the cornices. But there
+would seem no special need for light, the place being
+designed more to pass the night in, than the day;
+in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks,
+without bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical
+towns of the associate penguin and pelican, these bunks
+were disposed with Philadelphian regularity, but, like
+the cradle of the oriole, they were pendulous, and,
+moreover, were, so to speak, three-story cradles; the
+description of one of which will suffice for all.</p>
+
+<p>Four ropes, secured to the ceiling, passed downwards
+through auger-holes bored in the corners of three rough
+planks, which at equal distances rested on knots vertically
+tied in the ropes, the lowermost plank but an inch
+or two from the floor, the whole affair resembling, on a
+large scale, rope book-shelves; only, instead of hanging
+firmly against a wall, they swayed to and fro at the
+least suggestion of motion, but were more especially
+lively upon the provocation of a green emigrant sprawling
+into one, and trying to lay himself out there, when
+the cradling would be such as almost to toss him back
+whence he came. In consequence, one less inexperienced,
+essaying repose on the uppermost shelf, was liable
+to serious disturbance, should a raw beginner select
+a shelf beneath. Sometimes a throng of poor emigrants,
+coming at night in a sudden rain to occupy these oriole
+nests, would&mdash;through ignorance of their peculiarity&mdash;bring
+about such a rocking uproar of carpentry, joining
+to it such an uproar of exclamations, that it seemed as if
+some luckless ship, with all its crew, was being dashed
+to pieces among the rocks. They were beds devised
+by some sardonic foe of poor travelers, to deprive them
+of that <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'tranquillity'.">tranquility</ins> which should precede, as well as
+accompany, slumber.&mdash;Procrustean beds, on whose hard
+grain humble worth and honesty writhed, still invoking
+repose, while but torment responded. Ah, did any one
+make such a bunk for himself, instead of having it made
+for him, it might be just, but how cruel, to say, You
+must lie on it!</p>
+
+<p>But, purgatory as the place would appear, the
+stranger advances into it: and, like Orpheus in his gay
+descent to Tartarus, lightly hums to himself an opera
+snatch.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there is a rustling, then a creaking, one of
+the cradles swings out from a murky nook, a sort of
+wasted penguin-flipper is supplicatingly put forth,
+while a wail like that of Dives is heard:&mdash;&ldquo;Water,
+water!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the miser of whom the merchant had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Swift as a sister-of-charity, the stranger hovers over
+him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My poor, poor sir, what can I do for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh&mdash;water!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Darting out, he procures a glass, returns, and, holding it
+to the sufferer&rsquo;s lips, supports his head while he drinks:
+&ldquo;And did they let you lie here, my poor sir, racked
+with this parching thirst?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The miser, a lean old man, whose flesh seemed salted
+cod-fish, dry as combustibles; head, like one whittled
+by an idiot out of a knot; flat, bony mouth, nipped
+between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting
+between hunks and imbecile&mdash;now one, now the other&mdash;he
+made no response. His eyes were closed, his cheek
+lay upon an old white moleskin coat, rolled under his
+head like a wizened apple upon a grimy snow-bank.</p>
+
+<p>Revived at last, he inclined towards his ministrant,
+and, in a voice disastrous with a cough, said:&mdash;&ldquo;I am
+old and miserable, a poor beggar, not worth a shoestring&mdash;how
+can I repay you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By giving me your confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Confidence!&rdquo; he squeaked, with changed manner,
+while the pallet swung, &ldquo;little left at my age, but take
+the stale remains, and welcome.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such as it is, though, you give it. Very good.
+Now give me a hundred dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this the miser was all panic. His hands
+groped towards his waist, then suddenly flew upward
+beneath his moleskin pillow, and there lay clutching
+something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he incoherently
+mumbled:&mdash;&ldquo;Confidence? Cant, gammon!
+Confidence? hum, bubble!&mdash;Confidence? fetch, gouge!&mdash;Hundred
+dollars?&mdash;hundred devils!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Half spent, he lay mute awhile, then feebly raising
+himself, in a voice for the moment made strong by the
+sarcasm, said, &ldquo;A hundred dollars? rather high price to
+put upon confidence. But don&rsquo;t you see I am a poor,
+old rat here, dying in the wainscot? You have served
+me; but, wretch that I am, I can but cough you my
+thanks,&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This time his cough was so violent that its convulsions
+were imparted to the plank, which swung him
+about like a stone in a sling preparatory to its being
+hurled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a shocking cough. I wish, my friend, the
+herb-doctor was here now; <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'abox'.">a box</ins> of his Omni-Balsamic
+Reinvigorator would do you good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a good mind to go find him. He&rsquo;s aboard
+somewhere. I saw his long, snuff-colored surtout.
+Trust me, his medicines are the best in the
+world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, how sorry I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt of it,&rdquo; squeaked the other again, &ldquo;but go,
+get your charity out on deck. There parade the pursy
+peacocks; they don&rsquo;t cough down here in desertion and
+darkness, like poor old me. Look how scaly a pauper I
+am, clove with this churchyard cough. Ugh, ugh,
+ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Again, how sorry I feel, not only for your cough,
+but your poverty. Such a rare chance made unavailable.
+Did you have but the sum named, how I could
+invest it for you. Treble profits. But confidence&mdash;I
+fear that, even had you the precious cash, you
+would not have the more precious confidence I speak
+of.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo; flightily raising himself. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+that? How, how? Then you don&rsquo;t want the money
+for yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, <i>dear</i> sir, how could you impute to me
+such preposterous self-seeking? To solicit out of hand,
+for my private behoof, an hundred dollars from a perfect
+stranger? I am not mad, my dear sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How, how?&rdquo; still more bewildered, &ldquo;do you, then,
+go about the world, gratis, seeking to invest people&rsquo;s
+money for them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My humble profession, sir. I live not for myself;
+but the world will not have confidence in me, and yet
+confidence in me were great gain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, but,&rdquo; in a kind of vertigo, &ldquo;what do&mdash;do you
+do&mdash;do with people&rsquo;s money? Ugh, ugh! How is the
+gain made?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To tell that would ruin me. That known, every
+one would be going into the business, and it would be
+overdone. A secret, a mystery&mdash;all I have to do with
+you is to receive your confidence, and all you have to
+do with me is, in due time, to receive it back, thrice
+paid in trebling profits.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, what?&rdquo; imbecility in the ascendant once
+more; &ldquo;but the vouchers, the vouchers,&rdquo; suddenly
+hunkish again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Honesty&rsquo;s best voucher is honesty&rsquo;s face.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t see yours, though,&rdquo; peering through the obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>From this last alternating flicker of rationality, the
+miser fell back, sputtering, into his previous gibberish,
+but it took now an arithmetical turn. Eyes closed, he
+lay muttering to himself&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One hundred, one hundred&mdash;two hundred, two hundred&mdash;three
+hundred, three hundred.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes, feebly stared, and still more feebly
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a little dim here, ain&rsquo;t it? Ugh, ugh! But,
+as well as my poor old eyes can see, you look honest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad to hear that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If&mdash;if, now, I should put&rdquo;&mdash;trying to raise himself,
+but vainly, excitement having all but exhausted him&mdash;&ldquo;if,
+if now, I should put, put&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No ifs. Downright confidence, or none. So help
+me heaven, I will have no half-confidences.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said it with an indifferent and superior air, and
+seemed moving to go.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t leave me, friend; bear with me; age
+can&rsquo;t help some distrust; it can&rsquo;t, friend, it can&rsquo;t. Ugh,
+ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and miserable. I ought to
+have a guardian. Tell me, if&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If? No more!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay! how soon&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;would my money be
+trebled? How soon, friend?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t confide. Good-bye!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, stay,&rdquo; falling back now like an infant, &ldquo;I
+confide, I confide; help, friend, my distrust!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From an old buckskin pouch, tremulously dragged
+forth, ten hoarded eagles, tarnished into the appearance
+of ten old horn-buttons, were taken, and half-eagerly,
+half-reluctantly, offered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know not whether I should accept this slack confidence,&rdquo;
+said the other coldly, receiving the gold, &ldquo;but
+an eleventh-hour confidence, a sick-bed confidence, a
+distempered, death-bed confidence, after all. Give me
+the healthy confidence of healthy men, with their
+healthy wits about them. But let that pass. All right.
+Good-bye!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, back, back&mdash;receipt, my receipt! Ugh, ugh,
+ugh! Who are you? What have I done? Where go
+you? My gold, my gold! Ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But, unluckily for this final flicker of reason, the
+stranger was now beyond ear-shot, nor was any one else
+within hearing of so feeble a call.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A SICK MAN, AFTER SOME IMPATIENCE, IS INDUCED TO BECOME A PATIENT</span></h2>
+
+<p>The sky slides into blue, the bluffs into bloom; the
+rapid Mississippi expands; runs sparkling and gurgling,
+all over in eddies; one magnified wake of a seventy-four.
+The sun comes out, a golden huzzar, from his tent, flashing
+his helm on the world. All things, warmed in the
+landscape, leap. Speeds the d&aelig;dal boat as a dream.</p>
+
+<p>But, withdrawn in a corner, wrapped about in a shawl,
+sits an unparticipating man, visited, but not warmed, by
+the sun&mdash;a plant whose hour seems over, while buds
+are blowing and seeds are astir. On a stool at his left
+sits a stranger in a snuff-colored surtout, the collar
+thrown back; his hand waving in persuasive gesture, his
+eye beaming with hope. But not easily may hope be
+awakened in one long tranced into hopelessness by a
+chronic complaint.</p>
+
+<p>To some remark the sick man, by word or look,
+seemed to have just made an impatiently querulous
+answer, when, with a deprecatory air, the other resumed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, think not I seek to cry up my treatment by
+crying down that of others. And yet, when one is confident
+he has truth on his side, and that is not on the
+other, it is no very easy thing to be charitable; not that
+temper is the bar, but conscience; for charity would
+beget toleration, you know, which is a kind of implied
+permitting, and in effect a kind of countenancing; and
+that which is countenanced is so far furthered. But
+should untruth be furthered? Still, while for the
+world&rsquo;s good I refuse to further the cause of these mineral
+doctors, I would fain regard them, not as willful
+wrong-doers, but good Samaritans erring. And is this&mdash;I
+put it to you, sir&mdash;is this the view of an arrogant
+rival and pretender?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His physical power all dribbled and gone, the sick
+man replied not by voice or by gesture; but, with feeble
+dumb-show of his face, seemed to be saying &ldquo;Pray leave
+me; who was ever cured by talk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the other, as if not unused to make allowances
+for such despondency, proceeded; and kindly, yet firmly:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You tell me, that by advice of an eminent physiologist
+in Louisville, you took tincture of iron. For what?
+To restore your lost energy. And how? Why, in
+healthy subjects iron is naturally found in the blood, and
+iron in the bar is strong; ergo, iron is the source of
+animal invigoration. But you being deficient in vigor,
+it follows that the cause is deficiency of iron. Iron, then,
+must be put into you; and so your tincture. Now as
+to the theory here, I am mute. But in modesty assuming
+its truth, and then, as a plain man viewing that
+theory in practice, I would respectfully question your
+eminent physiologist: &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; I would say, &lsquo;though by natural
+processes, lifeless natures taken as nutriment become
+vitalized, yet is a lifeless nature, under any circumstances,
+capable of a living transmission, with all its qualities
+as a lifeless nature unchanged? If, sir, nothing can
+be incorporated with the living body but by assimilation,
+and if that implies the conversion of one thing to a
+different thing (as, in a lamp, oil is assimilated into
+flame), is it, in this view, likely, that by banqueting on
+fat, Calvin Edson will fatten? That is, will what is fat
+on the board prove fat on the bones? If it will, then,
+sir, what is iron in the vial will prove iron in the vein.&rsquo;
+Seems that conclusion too confident?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the sick man again turned his dumb-show look,
+as much as to say, &ldquo;Pray leave me. Why, with painful
+words, hint the vanity of that which the pains of this
+body have too painfully proved?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the other, as if unobservant of that querulous
+look, went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But this notion, that science can play farmer to the
+flesh, making there what living soil it pleases, seems not
+so strange as that other conceit&mdash;that science is now-a-days
+so expert that, in consumptive cases, as yours, it
+can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain vapors,
+achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing
+into all but lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you
+not tell me, my poor sir, that by order of the great
+chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you were never
+driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of
+every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring
+vapors generated by the burning of drugs? as if this
+concocted atmosphere of man were an antidote to the
+poison of God&rsquo;s natural air. Oh, who can wonder at
+that old reproach against science, that it is atheistical?
+And here is my prime reason for opposing these chemical
+practitioners, who have sought out so many inventions.
+For what do their inventions indicate, unless it
+be that kind and degree of pride in human skill, which
+seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence
+upon the power above? Try to rid my mind of it as I
+may, yet still these chemical practitioners with their
+tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult incantations,
+seem to me like Pharaoh&rsquo;s vain sorcerers, trying
+to beat down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all
+charity, I intercede for them, that heaven may not, in
+its own language, be provoked to anger with their
+inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A
+thousand pities that you should ever have been in the
+hands of these Egyptians.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as
+much as to say, &ldquo;Pray leave me; quacks, and indignation
+against quacks, both are vain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But, once more, the other went on: &ldquo;How different
+we herb-doctors! who claim nothing, invent nothing;
+but staff in hand, in glades, and upon hillsides, go about
+in nature, humbly seeking her cures. True Indian doctors,
+though not learned in names, we are not unfamiliar
+with essences&mdash;successors of Solomon the Wise, who
+knew all vegetables, from the cedar of Lebanon, to the
+hyssop on the wall. Yes, Solomon was the first of
+herb-doctors. Nor were the virtues of herbs unhonored
+by yet older ages. Is it not writ, that on a moonlight
+night,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;Medea gathered the enchanted herbs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That did renew old &AElig;son?&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>Ah, would you but have confidence, you should be
+the new &AElig;son, and I your Medea. A few vials of my
+Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would, I am certain, give
+you some strength.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, indignation and abhorrence seemed to
+work by their excess the effect promised of the balsam.
+Roused from that long apathy of impotence, the cadaverous
+man started, and, in a voice that was as the sound
+of obstructed air gurgling through a maze of broken
+honey-combs, cried: &ldquo;Begone! You are all alike. The
+name of doctor, the dream of helper, condemns you. For
+years I have been but a gallipot for you experimentizers
+to rinse your experiments into, and now, in this livid
+skin, partake of the nature of my contents. Begone!
+I hate ye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I were inhuman, could I take affront at a want of
+confidence, born of too bitter an experience of betrayers.
+Yet, permit one who is not without feeling&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Begone! Just in that voice talked to me, not six
+months ago, the German doctor at the water cure, from
+which I now return, six months and sixty pangs nigher
+my grave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The water-cure? Oh, fatal delusion of the well-meaning
+Preisnitz!&mdash;Sir, trust me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Begone!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, an invalid should not always have his own
+way. Ah, sir, reflect how untimely this distrust in one
+like you. How weak you are; and weakness, is it not
+the time for confidence? Yes, when through weakness
+everything bids despair, then is the time to get strength
+by confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Relenting in his air, the sick man cast upon him a
+long glance of beseeching, as if saying, &ldquo;With confidence
+must come hope; and how can hope be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor took a sealed paper box from his
+surtout pocket, and holding it towards him, said solemnly,
+&ldquo;Turn not away. This may be the last time of health&rsquo;s
+asking. Work upon yourself; invoke confidence, though
+from ashes; rouse it; for your life, rouse it, and invoke
+it, I say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other trembled, was silent; and then, a little
+commanding himself, asked the ingredients of the medicine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Herbs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What herbs? And the nature of them? And the
+reason for giving them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It cannot be made known.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then I will none of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before
+him, the herb-doctor was mute a moment, then
+said:&mdash;&ldquo;I give up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are sick, and a philosopher.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no;&mdash;not the last.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for
+giving, is the mark of a philosopher; just as the consequence
+is the penalty of a fool. A sick philosopher is
+incurable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because he has no confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How does that make him incurable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take
+it, it proves a blank cartridge, though the same given to
+a rustic in like extremity, would act like a charm. I
+am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon the body,
+that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again, the sick man appeared not unmoved. He
+seemed to be thinking what in candid truth could be
+said to all this. At length, &ldquo;You talk of confidence.
+How comes it that when brought low himself, the herb-doctor,
+who was most confident to prescribe in other
+cases, proves least confident to prescribe in his own;
+having small confidence in himself for himself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he has confidence in the brother he calls in.
+And that he does so, is no reproach to him, since he
+knows that when the body is prostrated, the mind is
+not erect. Yes, in this hour the herb-doctor does distrust
+himself, but not his art.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The sick man&rsquo;s knowledge did not warrant him to
+gainsay this. But he seemed not grieved at it; glad to
+be confuted in a way tending towards his wish.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you give me hope?&rdquo; his sunken eye turned up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hope is proportioned to confidence. How much
+confidence you give me, so much hope do I give you.
+For this,&rdquo; lifting the box, &ldquo;if all depended upon this, I
+should rest. It is nature&rsquo;s own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nature!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why do you start?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; with a sort of shudder, &ldquo;but I have
+heard of a book entitled &lsquo;Nature in Disease.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A title I cannot approve; it is suspiciously scientific.
+&lsquo;Nature in Disease?&rsquo; As if nature, divine nature,
+were aught but health; as if through nature disease
+is decreed! But did I not before hint of the tendency
+of science, that forbidden tree? Sir, if despondency
+is yours from recalling that title, dismiss it. Trust
+me, nature is health; for health is good, and nature
+cannot work ill. As little can she work error. Get
+nature, and you get well. Now, I repeat, this medicine
+is nature&rsquo;s own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again the sick man could not, according to his light,
+conscientiously disprove what was said. Neither, as
+before, did he seem over-anxious to do so; the less, as
+in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly could
+he offer so to do without something like the appearance
+of a kind of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he
+ungrateful, that since a spirit opposite to that pervaded
+all the herb-doctor&rsquo;s hopeful words, therefore, for hopefulness,
+he (the sick man) had not alone medical warrant,
+but also doctrinal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you do really think,&rdquo; hectically, &ldquo;that if I
+take this medicine,&rdquo; mechanically reaching out for it,
+&ldquo;I shall regain my health?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will not encourage false hopes,&rdquo; relinquishing to
+him the box, &ldquo;I will be frank with you. Though
+frankness is not always the weakness of the mineral
+practitioner, yet the herb doctor must be frank, or
+nothing. Now then, sir, in your case, a radical cure&mdash;such
+a cure, understand, as should make you robust&mdash;such
+a cure, sir, I do not and cannot promise.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you need not! only restore me the power of
+being something else to others than a burdensome care,
+and to myself a droning grief. Only cure me of this
+misery of weakness; only make me so that I can walk
+about in the sun and not draw the flies to me, as lured
+by the coming of decay. Only do that&mdash;but that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have
+you suffered. That little you ask, I think, can be
+granted. But remember, not in a day, nor a week, nor
+perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly
+when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if,
+according to the directions in your box there, you take
+my medicine steadily, without assigning an especial day,
+near or remote, to discontinue it, then may you calmly
+look for some eventual result of good. But again I say,
+you must have confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and
+hourly should pray for its increase. When suddenly
+relapsing into one of those strange caprices peculiar to
+some invalids, he added: &ldquo;But to one like me, it is so
+hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have
+failed me, and as often have I vowed never, no, never,
+to trust them again. Oh,&rdquo; feebly wringing his hands,
+&ldquo;you do not know, you do not know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know this, that never did a right confidence, come
+to naught. But time is short; you hold your cure, to
+retain or reject.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I retain,&rdquo; with a clinch, &ldquo;and now how much?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As much as you can evoke from your heart and
+heaven.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&mdash;the price of this medicine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it was confidence you meant; how much
+confidence you should have. The medicine,&mdash;that is
+half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The money was paid.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, sir,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor, &ldquo;my business calls
+me away, and it may so be that I shall never see you
+again; if then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He paused, for the sick man&rsquo;s countenance fell blank.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; cried the other, &ldquo;forgive that imprudent
+phrase &lsquo;never see you again.&rsquo; Though I solely
+intended it with reference to myself, yet I had forgotten
+what your sensitiveness might be. I repeat, then, that
+it may be that we shall not soon have a second interview,
+so that hereafter, should another of my boxes be needed,
+you may not be able to replace it except by purchase at
+the shops; and, in so doing, you may run more or less
+risk of taking some not salutary mixture. For such is
+the popularity of the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator&mdash;thriving
+not by the credulity of the simple, but the
+trust of the wise&mdash;that certain contrivers have not been
+idle, though I would not, indeed, hastily affirm of them
+that they are aware of the sad consequences to the
+public. Homicides and murderers, some call those contrivers;
+but I do not; for murder (if such a crime be
+possible) comes from the heart, and these men&rsquo;s motives
+come from the purse. Were they not in poverty, I
+think they would hardly do what they do. Still, the
+public interests forbid that I should let their needy
+device for a living succeed. In short, I have adopted
+precautions. Take the wrapper from any of my vials
+and hold it to the light, you will see water-marked in
+capitals the word &lsquo;<i>confidence</i>,&rsquo; which is the countersign
+of the medicine, as I wish it was of the world. The
+wrapper bears that mark or else the medicine is counterfeit.
+But if still any lurking doubt should remain,
+pray enclose the wrapper to this address,&rdquo; handing a
+card, &ldquo;and by return mail I will answer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At first the sick man listened, with the air of vivid
+interest, but gradually, while the other was still talking,
+another strange caprice came over him, and he presented
+the aspect of the most calamitous dejection.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How now?&rdquo; said the herb-doctor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You told me to have confidence, said that confidence
+was indispensable, and here you preach to me
+distrust. Ah, truth will out!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning
+confidence, I meant confidence in the genuine medicine,
+and the genuine <i>me</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be
+yours, it seems I cannot have unquestioning confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Prove all the vials; trust those which are true.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But to doubt, to suspect, to prove&mdash;to have all this
+wearing work to be doing continually&mdash;how opposed to
+confidence. It is evil!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to
+confidence. How has it proved in our interview? But
+your voice is husky; I have let you talk too much.
+You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay&mdash;when I
+hear that health is yours, I will not, like some I know,
+vainly make boasts; but, giving glory where all glory is
+due, say, with the devout herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil,
+when, in the unseen but efficacious presence of Venus,
+he with simples healed the wound of &AElig;neas:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&lsquo;This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor art&rsquo;s effect, but done by power divine.&rsquo;&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>TOWARDS THE END OF WHICH THE HERB-DOCTOR PROVES HIMSELF A
+FORGIVER OF INJURIES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In a kind of ante-cabin, a number of respectable looking
+people, male and female, way-passengers, recently
+come on board, are listlessly sitting in a mutually shy
+sort of silence.</p>
+
+<p>Holding up a small, square bottle, ovally labeled
+with the engraving of a countenance full of soft pity as
+that of the Romish-painted Madonna, the herb-doctor
+passes slowly among them, benignly urbane, turning
+this way and that, saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen, I hold in my hand here the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader, thrice-blessed discovery of
+that disinterested friend of humanity whose portrait
+you see. Pure vegetable extract. Warranted to remove
+the acutest pain within less than ten minutes.
+Five hundred dollars to be forfeited on failure. Especially
+efficacious in heart disease and tic-douloureux.
+Observe the expression of this pledged friend of humanity.&mdash;Price
+only fifty cents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In vain. After the first idle stare, his auditors&mdash;in
+pretty good health, it seemed&mdash;instead of encouraging
+his politeness, appeared, if anything, impatient of it;
+and, perhaps, only diffidence, or some small regard for
+his feelings, prevented them from telling him so. But,
+insensible to their coldness, or charitably overlooking it,
+he more wooingly than ever resumed: &ldquo;May I venture
+upon a small supposition? Have I your kind
+leave, ladies and gentlemen?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To which modest appeal, no one had the kindness to
+answer a syllable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, resignedly, &ldquo;silence is at least not
+denial, and may be consent. My supposition is this:
+possibly some lady, here present, has a dear friend at
+home, a bed-ridden sufferer from spinal complaint. If
+so, what gift more appropriate to that sufferer than this
+tasteful little bottle of Pain Dissuader?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again he glanced about him, but met much the same
+reception as before. Those faces, alien alike to sympathy
+or surprise, seemed patiently to say, &ldquo;We are travelers;
+and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly
+put up with, many antic fools, and more antic quacks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen,&rdquo; (deferentially fixing his eyes
+upon their now self-complacent faces) &ldquo;ladies and gentlemen,
+might I, by your kind leave, venture upon one
+other small supposition? It is this: that there is scarce
+a sufferer, this noonday, writhing on his bed, but in his
+hour he sat satisfactorily healthy and happy; that the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader is the one only balm for
+that to which each living creature&mdash;who knows?&mdash;may
+be a draughted victim, present or prospective. In
+short:&mdash;Oh, Happiness on my right hand, and oh, Security
+on my left, can ye wisely adore a Providence,
+and not think it wisdom to provide?&mdash;Provide!&rdquo; (Uplifting
+the bottle.)</p>
+
+<p>What immediate effect, if any, this appeal might have
+had, is uncertain. For just then the boat touched at a
+houseless landing, scooped, as by a land-slide, out of
+sombre forests; back through which led a road, the
+sole one, which, from its narrowness, and its being
+walled up with story on story of dusk, matted foliage,
+presented the vista of some cavernous old gorge in a
+city, like haunted Cock Lane in London. Issuing from
+that road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his
+shaggy form in the door-way, and entered the ante-cabin,
+with a step so burdensome that shot seemed in his
+pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his beard
+blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with
+cypress dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as
+an iron-ore country in a clouded day. In one hand he
+carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak; with the
+other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably
+his child, but evidently of alien maternity,
+perhaps Creole, or even Camanche. Her eye would
+have been large for a woman, and was inky as the pools
+of falls among mountain-pines. An Indian blanket,
+orange-hued, and fringed with lead tassel-work, appeared
+that morning to have shielded the child from
+heavy showers. Her limbs were tremulous; she seemed
+a little Cassandra, in nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than
+with a cheerful air, both arms extended like a host&rsquo;s, he
+advanced, and taking the child&rsquo;s reluctant hand, said,
+trippingly: &ldquo;On your travels, ah, my little May Queen?
+Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to
+dance in.&rdquo; Then with a half caper sang&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;&lsquo;Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cow jumped over the moon.&rsquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness
+from the child, nor appeared to gladden or conciliate
+the father; but rather, if anything, to dash the dead
+weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile
+hypochondriacally scornful.</p>
+
+<p>Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the
+stranger in a manly, business-like way&mdash;a transition
+which, though it might seem a little abrupt, did not
+appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his
+recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature,
+than the frolic condescension of a kindly heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but, if I err not, I was speaking
+to you the other day;&mdash;on a Kentucky boat, wasn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never to me,&rdquo; was the reply; the voice deep and
+lonesome enough to have come from the bottom of an
+abandoned coal-shaft.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&mdash;But am I again mistaken, (his eye falling on
+the swamp-oak stick,) or don&rsquo;t you go a little lame,
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never was lame in my life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed? I fancied I had perceived not a limp, but
+a hitch, a slight hitch;&mdash;some experience in these
+things&mdash;divined some hidden cause of the hitch&mdash;buried
+bullet, may be&mdash;some dragoons in the Mexican war discharged
+with such, you know.&mdash;Hard fate!&rdquo; he sighed,
+&ldquo;little pity for it, for who sees it?&mdash;have you dropped
+anything?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Why, there is no telling, but the stranger was bowed
+over, and might have seemed bowing for the purpose of
+picking up something, were it not that, as arrested
+in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so remained;
+slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding
+to the gale, or Adam to the thunder.</p>
+
+<p>The little child pulled him. With a kind of a surge
+he righted himself, for an instant looked toward the
+herb-doctor; but, either from emotion or aversion, or
+both together, withdrew his eyes, saying nothing. Presently,
+still stooping, he seated himself, drawing his child
+between his knees, his massy hands tremulous, and still
+averting his face, while up into the compassionate one
+of the herb-doctor the child turned a fixed, melancholy
+glance of repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor stood observant a moment, then
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surely you have pain, strong pain, somewhere; in
+strong frames pain is strongest. Try, now, my specific,&rdquo;
+(holding it up). &ldquo;Do but look at the expression
+of this friend of humanity. Trust me, certain cure for
+any pain in the world. Won&rsquo;t you look?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; choked the other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good. Merry time to you, little May Queen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And so, as if he would intrude his cure upon no one,
+moved pleasantly off, again crying his wares, nor now
+at last without result. A new-comer, not from the
+shore, but another part of the boat, a sickly young
+man, after some questions, purchased a bottle. Upon
+this, others of the company began a little to wake up
+as it were; the scales of indifference or prejudice fell
+from their eyes; now, at last, they seemed to have an
+inkling that here was something not undesirable which
+might be had for the buying.</p>
+
+<p>But while, ten times more briskly bland than ever,
+the herb-doctor was driving his benevolent trade, accompanying
+each sale with added praises of the thing
+traded, all at once the dusk giant, seated at some distance,
+unexpectedly raised his voice with&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was that you last said?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The question was put distinctly, yet resonantly, as
+when a great clock-bell&mdash;stunning admonisher&mdash;strikes
+one; and the stroke, though single, comes bedded in
+the belfry clamor.</p>
+
+<p>All proceedings were suspended. Hands held forth
+for the specific were withdrawn, while every eye turned
+towards the direction whence the question came. But,
+no way abashed, the herb-doctor, elevating his voice
+with even more than wonted self-possession, replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was saying what, since you wish it, I cheerfully
+repeat, that the Samaritan Pain Dissuader, which I here
+hold in my hand, will either cure or ease any pain
+you please, within ten minutes after its application.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does it produce insensibility?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By no means. Not the least of its merits is, that
+it is not an opiate. It kills pain without killing
+feeling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You lie! Some pains cannot be eased but by producing
+insensibility, and cannot be cured but by producing
+death.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this the dusk giant said nothing; neither, for
+impairing the other&rsquo;s market, did there appear much
+need to. After eying the rude speaker a moment with
+an expression of mingled admiration and consternation,
+the company silently exchanged glances of mutual sympathy
+under unwelcome conviction. Those who had
+purchased looked sheepish or ashamed; and a cynical-looking
+little man, with a thin flaggy beard, and a
+countenance ever wearing the rudiments of a grin,
+seated alone in a corner commanding a good view of
+the scene, held a rusty hat before his face.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, the herb-doctor, without noticing the retort,
+overbearing though it was, began his panegyrics
+anew, and in a tone more assured than before, going so
+far now as to say that his specific was sometimes almost
+as effective in cases of mental suffering as in cases
+of physical; or rather, to be more precise, in cases
+when, through sympathy, the two sorts of pain co&ouml;perated
+into a climax of both&mdash;in such cases, he said, the
+specific had done very well. He cited an example:
+Only three bottles, faithfully taken, cured a Louisiana
+widow (for three weeks sleepless in a darkened chamber)
+of neuralgic sorrow for the loss of husband and
+child, swept off in one night by the last epidemic. For
+the truth of this, a printed voucher was produced, duly
+signed.</p>
+
+<p>While he was reading it aloud, a sudden side-blow
+all but felled him.</p>
+
+<p>It was the giant, who, with a countenance lividly
+epileptic with hypochondriac mania, exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Profane fiddler on heart-strings! Snake!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>More he would have added, but, convulsed, could
+not; so, without another word, taking up the child,
+who had followed him, went with a rocking pace out of
+the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Regardless of decency, and lost to humanity!&rdquo;
+exclaimed the herb-doctor, with much ado recovering
+himself. Then, after a pause, during which he examined
+his bruise, not omitting to apply externally a little
+of his specific, and with some success, as it would
+seem, plained to himself:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no, I won&rsquo;t seek redress; innocence is my redress.
+But,&rdquo; turning upon them all, &ldquo;if that man&rsquo;s
+wrathful blow provokes me to no wrath, should his evil
+distrust arouse you to distrust? I do devoutly hope,&rdquo;
+proudly raising voice and arm, &ldquo;for the honor of
+humanity&mdash;hope that, despite this coward assault, the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader stands unshaken in the confidence
+of all who hear me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But, injured as he was, and patient under it, too,
+somehow his case excited as little compassion as his
+oratory now did enthusiasm. Still, pathetic to the last,
+he continued his appeals, notwithstanding the frigid
+regard of the company, till, suddenly interrupting himself,
+as if in reply to a quick summons from without, he
+said hurriedly, &ldquo;I come, I come,&rdquo; and so, with every
+token of precipitate dispatch, out of the cabin the
+herb-doctor went.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>INQUEST INTO THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE HERB-DOCTOR.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t see that fellow again in a hurry,&rdquo; remarked
+an auburn-haired gentleman, to his neighbor with a hook-nose.
+&ldquo;Never knew an operator so completely unmasked.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But do you think it the fair thing to unmask an
+operator that way?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fair? It is right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Supposing that at high &rsquo;change on the Paris Bourse,
+Asmodeus should lounge in, distributing hand-bills, revealing
+the true thoughts and designs of all the operators
+present&mdash;would that be the fair thing in Asmodeus?
+Or, as Hamlet says, were it &lsquo;to consider the thing too
+curiously?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t go into that. But since you admit the
+fellow to be a knave&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admit it. Or, if I did, I take it back.
+Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if, after all, he is no knave at all, or,
+but little of one. What can you prove against him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can prove that he makes dupes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Many held in honor do the same; and many, not
+wholly knaves, do it too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How about that last?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He is not wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among
+whose dupes is himself. Did you not see our quack
+friend apply to himself his own quackery? A fanatic
+quack; essentially a fool, though effectively a
+knave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bending over, and looking down between his knees
+on the floor, the auburn-haired gentleman meditatively
+scribbled there awhile with his cane, then, glancing up,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t conceive how you, in anyway, can hold
+him a fool. How he talked&mdash;so glib, so pat, so
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A smart fool always talks well; takes a smart fool
+to be tonguey.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In much the same strain the discussion continued&mdash;the
+hook-nosed gentleman talking at large and excellently,
+with a view of demonstrating that a smart fool
+always talks just so. Ere long he talked to such purpose
+as almost to convince.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, back came the person of whom the auburn-haired
+gentleman had predicted that he would not
+return. Conspicuous in the door-way he stood, saying,
+in a clear voice, &ldquo;Is the agent of the Seminole Widow
+and Orphan Asylum within here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No one replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is there within here any agent or any member of
+any charitable institution whatever?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No one seemed competent to answer, or, no one
+thought it worth while to.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If there be within here any such person, I have in
+my hand two dollars for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Some interest was manifested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was called away so hurriedly, I forgot this part of
+my duty. With the proprietor of the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader it is a rule, to devote, on the spot, to some
+benevolent purpose, the half of the proceeds of sales.
+Eight bottles were disposed of among this company.
+Hence, four half-dollars remain to charity. Who, as
+steward, takes the money?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One or two pair of feet moved upon the floor, as with
+a sort of itching; but nobody rose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does diffidence prevail over duty? If, I say, there
+be any gentleman, or any lady, either, here present, who
+is in any connection with any charitable institution
+whatever, let him or her come forward. He or she
+happening to have at hand no certificate of such connection,
+makes no difference. Not of a suspicious
+temper, thank God, I shall have confidence in whoever
+offers to take the money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A demure-looking woman, in a dress rather tawdry
+and rumpled, here drew her veil well down and rose;
+but, marking every eye upon her, thought it advisable,
+upon the whole, to sit down again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it to be believed that, in this Christian company,
+there is no one charitable person? I mean, no one connected
+with any charity? Well, then, is there no object
+of charity here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, an unhappy-looking woman, in a sort of
+mourning, neat, but sadly worn, hid her face behind a
+meagre bundle, and was heard to sob. Meantime, as
+not seeing or hearing her, the herb-doctor again spoke,
+and this time not unpathetically:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are there none here who feel in need of help, and
+who, in accepting such help, would feel that they, in
+their time, have given or done more than may ever be
+given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none
+such here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The sobs of the woman were more audible, though
+she strove to repress them. While nearly every one&rsquo;s
+attention was bent upon her, a man of the appearance of
+a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face, concealing
+the side of the nose, and who, for coolness&rsquo; sake,
+had been sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat
+thrown across one shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping
+behind&mdash;this man shufflingly rose, and, with a pace that
+seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of convicts,
+went up for a duly-qualified claimant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor wounded huzzar!&rdquo; sighed the herb-doctor, and
+dropping the money into the man&rsquo;s clam-shell of a hand
+turned and departed.</p>
+
+<p>The recipient of the alms was about moving after,
+when the auburn-haired gentleman staid him: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+be frightened, you; but I want to see those coins.
+Yes, yes; good silver, good silver. There, take them
+again, and while you are about it, go bandage the rest
+of yourself behind something. D&rsquo;ye hear? Consider
+yourself, wholly, the scar of a nose, and be off with
+yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Being of a forgiving nature, or else from emotion not
+daring to trust his voice, the man silently, but not
+without some precipitancy, withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Strange,&rdquo; said the auburn-haired gentleman, returning
+to his friend, &ldquo;the money was good money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, and where your fine knavery now? Knavery
+to devote the half of one&rsquo;s receipts to charity? He&rsquo;s a
+fool I say again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Others might call him an original genius.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, being original in his folly. Genius? His
+genius is a cracked pate, and, as this age goes, not
+much originality about that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May he not be knave, fool, and genius altogether?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon,&rdquo; here said a third person with a gossiping
+expression who had been listening, &ldquo;but you are
+somewhat puzzled by this man, and well you may be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know anything about him?&rdquo; asked the
+hooked-nosed gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, but I suspect him for something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suspicion. We want knowledge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, suspect first and know next. True knowledge
+comes but by suspicion or revelation. That&rsquo;s my
+maxim.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said the auburn-haired gentleman, &ldquo;since
+a wise man will keep even some certainties to himself,
+much more some suspicions, at least he will at all events
+so do till they ripen into knowledge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you hear that about the wise man?&rdquo; said the
+hook-nosed gentleman, turning upon the new comer.
+&ldquo;Now what is it you suspect of this fellow?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shrewdly suspect him,&rdquo; was the eager response,
+&ldquo;for one of those Jesuit emissaries prowling all over our
+country. The better to accomplish their secret designs,
+they assume, at times, I am told, the most singular
+masques; sometimes, in appearance, the absurdest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This, though indeed for some reason causing a droll
+smile upon the face of the hook-nosed gentleman, added
+a third angle to the discussion, which now became a
+sort of triangular duel, and ended, at last, with but a
+triangular result.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mexico? Molino del Rey? Resaca de la Palma?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Resaca de la <i>Tomba</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Leaving his reputation to take care of itself, since, as
+is not seldom the case, he knew nothing of its being in
+debate, the herb-doctor, wandering towards the forward
+part of the boat, had there espied a singular character in a
+grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once grim
+and wizened, interwoven paralyzed legs, stiff as icicles,
+suspended between rude crutches, while the whole
+rigid body, like a ship&rsquo;s long barometer on gimbals,
+swung to and fro, mechanically faithful to the motion
+of the boat. Looking downward while he swung, the
+cripple seemed in a brown study.</p>
+
+<p>As moved by the sight, and conjecturing that here
+was some battered hero from the Mexican battle-fields,
+the herb-doctor had sympathetically accosted him as
+above, and received the above rather dubious reply. As,
+with a half moody, half surly sort of air that reply was
+given, the cripple, by a voluntary jerk, nervously increased
+his swing (his custom when seized by emotion), so that
+one would have thought some squall had suddenly rolled
+the boat and with it the barometer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tombs? my friend,&rdquo; exclaimed the herb-doctor in
+mild surprise. &ldquo;You have not descended to the dead,
+have you? I had imagined you a scarred campaigner,
+one of the noble children of war, for your dear country
+a glorious sufferer. But you are Lazarus, it seems.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, he who had sores.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, the <i>other</i> Lazarus. But I never knew that
+either of them was in the army,&rdquo; glancing at the dilapidated
+regimentals.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That will do now. Jokes enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; said the other reproachfully, &ldquo;you think
+amiss. On principle, I greet unfortunates with some
+pleasant remark, the better to call off their thoughts
+from their troubles. The physician who is at once wise
+and humane seldom unreservedly sympathizes with his
+patient. But come, I am a herb-doctor, and also a natural
+bone-setter. I may be sanguine, but I think I
+can do something for you. You look up now. Give me
+your story. Ere I undertake a cure, I require a full account
+of the case.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t help me,&rdquo; returned the cripple gruffly.
+&ldquo;Go away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seem sadly destitute of&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No I ain&rsquo;t destitute; to-day, at least, I can pay my
+way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Natural Bone-setter is happy, indeed, to hear
+that. But you were premature. I was deploring your
+destitution, not of cash, but of confidence. You think
+the Natural Bone-setter can&rsquo;t help you. Well, suppose
+he can&rsquo;t, have you any objection to telling him your
+story? You, my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced
+adversity. Tell me, then, for my private good,
+how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus, you
+have arrived at his heroic sang-froid in misfortune.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At these words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the
+hard ironic eye of one toughened and defiant in misery,
+and, in the end, grinned upon him with his unshaven face
+like an ogre.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, be sociable&mdash;be human, my friend.
+Don&rsquo;t make that face; it distresses me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; with a sneer, &ldquo;you are the man I&rsquo;ve
+long heard of&mdash;The Happy Man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Happy? my friend. Yes, at least I ought to be.
+My conscience is peaceful. I have confidence in everybody.
+I have confidence that, in my humble profession,
+I do some little good to the world. Yes, I think that,
+without presumption, I may venture to assent to the
+proposition that I am the Happy Man&mdash;the Happy Bone-setter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then, you shall hear my story. Many a month I
+have longed to get hold of the Happy Man, drill him,
+drop the powder, and leave him to explode at his
+leisure.&rdquo;.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a demoniac unfortunate&rdquo; exclaimed the herb-doctor
+retreating. &ldquo;Regular infernal machine!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look ye,&rdquo; cried the other, stumping after him, and
+with his horny hand catching him by a horn button, &ldquo;my
+name is Thomas Fry. Until my&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&ldquo;Any relation of Mrs. Fry?&rdquo; interrupted the other.
+&ldquo;I still correspond with that excellent lady on the subject
+of prisons. Tell me, are you anyway connected
+with <i>my</i> Mrs. Fry?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Blister Mrs. Fry! What do them sentimental souls
+know of prisons or any other black fact? I&rsquo;ll tell ye
+a story of prisons. Ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor shrank, and with reason, the laugh
+being strangely startling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Positively, my friend,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you must stop
+that; I can&rsquo;t stand that; no more of that. I hope I
+have the milk of kindness, but your thunder will soon
+turn it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hold, I haven&rsquo;t come to the milk-turning part yet.
+My name is Thomas Fry. Until my twenty-third year
+I went by the nickname of Happy Tom&mdash;happy&mdash;ha,
+ha! They called me Happy Tom, d&rsquo;ye see? because I was
+so good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am
+now&mdash;ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run,
+but once more the hy&aelig;na clawed him. Presently,
+sobering down, he continued:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I was born in New York, and there I lived a
+steady, hard-working man, a cooper by trade. One
+evening I went to a political meeting in the Park&mdash;for
+you must know, I was in those days a great patriot. As
+bad luck would have it, there was trouble near, between
+a gentleman who had been drinking wine, and a pavior
+who was sober. The pavior chewed tobacco, and the
+gentleman said it was beastly in him, and pushed him,
+wanting to have his place. The pavior chewed on and
+pushed back. Well, the gentleman carried a sword-cane,
+and presently the pavior was down&mdash;skewered.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How was that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why you see the pavior undertook something above
+his strength.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The other must have been a Samson then. &lsquo;Strong
+as a pavior,&rsquo; is a proverb.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it is, and the gentleman was in body a rather
+weakly man, but, for all that, I say again, the pavior
+undertook something above his strength.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you talking about? He tried to maintain
+his rights, didn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; but, for all that, I say again, he undertook
+something above his strength.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you. But go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Along with the gentleman, I, with other witnesses,
+was taken to the Tombs. There was an examination,
+and, to appear at the trial, the gentleman and witnesses
+all gave bail&mdash;I mean all but me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And why didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t get it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Steady, hard-working cooper like you; what was
+the reason you couldn&rsquo;t get bail?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Steady, hard-working cooper hadn&rsquo;t no friends.
+Well, souse I went into a wet cell, like a canal-boat
+splashing into the lock; locked up in pickle, d&rsquo;ye see?
+against the time of the trial.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what had you done?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I hadn&rsquo;t got any friends, I tell ye. A worse
+crime than murder, as ye&rsquo;ll see afore long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Murder? Did the wounded man die?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Died the third night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then the gentleman&rsquo;s bail didn&rsquo;t help him. Imprisoned
+now, wasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Had too many friends. No, it was <i>I</i> that was
+imprisoned.&mdash;But I was going on: They let me walk
+about the corridor by day; but at night I must into lock.
+There the wet and the damp struck into my bones. They
+doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was
+boosted up and said my say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what was that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it
+sticking in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And that hung the gentleman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a
+meeting in the Park, and presented him with a gold
+watch and chain upon his acquittal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Acquittal?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I say he had friends?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor&rsquo;s
+saying: &ldquo;Well, there is a bright side to everything.
+If this speak prosaically for justice, it speaks romantically
+for friendship! But go on, my fine fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My say being said, they told me I might go. I said
+I could not without help. So the constables helped me,
+asking <i>where</i> would I go? I told them back to the
+&lsquo;Tombs.&rsquo; I knew no other place. &lsquo;But where are your
+friends?&rsquo; said they. &lsquo;I have none.&rsquo; So they put me
+into a hand-barrow with an awning to it, and wheeled
+me down to the dock and on board a boat, and away to
+Blackwell&rsquo;s Island to the Corporation Hospital. There
+I got worse&mdash;got pretty much as you see me now.
+Couldn&rsquo;t cure me. After three years, I grew sick of
+lying in a grated iron bed alongside of groaning thieves
+and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver dollars,
+and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an
+only brother who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged
+about, to make up a sum to go to him; got to
+Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It
+was on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump
+fence, the old gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers.
+The bier, set over the grave, it being the last
+dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green twigs
+sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets
+on the mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose
+the poorest soils for grave-yards), and they were all dried
+to tinder. I was going to sit and rest myself on the bier
+and think about my brother in heaven, but the bier
+broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after
+driving some hogs out of the yard that were rooting
+there, I came away, and, not to make too long a story
+of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other bit
+of wreck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor was silent for a time, buried in
+thought. At last, raising his head, he said: &ldquo;I have
+considered your whole story, my friend, and strove to
+consider it in the light of a commentary on what I
+believe to be the system of things; but it so jars with all,
+is so incompatible with all, that you must pardon me,
+if I honestly tell you, I cannot believe it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That don&rsquo;t surprise me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly anybody believes my story, and so to most
+I tell a different one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How, again?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wait here a bit and I&rsquo;ll show ye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that, taking off his rag of a cap, and arranging
+his tattered regimentals the best he could, off he went
+stumping among the passengers in an adjoining part of
+the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air: &ldquo;Sir, a
+shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista.
+Lady, something for General Scott&rsquo;s soldier, crippled in
+both pins at glorious Contreras.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now, it so chanced that, unbeknown to the cripple, a
+prim-looking stranger had overheard part of his story.
+Beholding him, then, on his present begging adventure,
+this person, turning to the herb-doctor, indignantly said:
+&ldquo;Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder rascal should lie
+so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charity never faileth, my good sir,&rdquo; was the reply.
+&ldquo;The vice of this unfortunate is pardonable. Consider,
+he lies not out of wantonness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not out of wantonness. I never heard more wanton
+lies. In one breath to tell you what would appear to
+be his true story, and, in the next, away and falsify it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For all that, I repeat he lies not out of wantonness.
+A ripe philosopher, turned out of the great Sorbonne of
+hard times, he thinks that woes, when told to strangers
+for money, are best sugared. Though the inglorious
+lock-jaw of his knee-pans in a wet dungeon is a far
+more pitiable ill than to have been crippled at glorious
+Contreras, yet he is of opinion that this lighter and
+false ill shall attract, while the heavier and real one
+might repel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense; he belongs to the Devil&rsquo;s regiment; and
+I have a great mind to expose him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shame upon you. Dare to expose that poor unfortunate,
+and by heaven&mdash;don&rsquo;t you do it, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Noting something in his manner, the other thought it
+more prudent to retire than retort. By-and-by, the
+cripple came back, and with glee, having reaped a pretty
+good harvest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;you know now what sort of
+soldier I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, one that fights not the stupid Mexican, but a
+foe worthy your tactics&mdash;Fortune!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hi, hi!&rdquo; clamored the cripple, like a fellow in the
+pit of a sixpenny theatre, then said, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t know much
+what you meant, but it went off well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This over, his countenance capriciously put on a
+morose ogreness. To kindly questions he gave no kindly
+answers. Unhandsome notions were thrown out
+about &ldquo;free Ameriky,&rdquo; as he sarcastically called his country.
+These seemed to disturb and pain the herb-doctor,
+who, after an interval of thoughtfulness, gravely addressed
+him in these words:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You, my Worthy friend, to my concern, have reflected
+upon the government under which you live and suffer.
+Where is your patriotism? Where your gratitude?
+True, the charitable may find something in your case,
+as you put it, partly to account for such reflections as
+coming from you. Still, be the facts how they may,
+your reflections are none the less unwarrantable. Grant,
+for the moment, that your experiences are as you give
+them; in which case I would admit that government
+might be thought to have more or less to do with what
+seems undesirable in them. But it is never to be forgotten
+that human government, being subordinate to the
+divine, must needs, therefore, in its degree, partake of
+the characteristics of the divine. That is, while in general
+efficacious to happiness, the world&rsquo;s law may yet, in
+some cases, have, to the eye of reason, an unequal operation,
+just as, in the same imperfect view, some inequalities
+may appear in the operations of heaven&rsquo;s law;
+nevertheless, to one who has a right confidence, final
+benignity is, in every instance, as sure with the one law
+as the other. I expound the point at some length,
+because these are the considerations, my poor fellow,
+which, weighed as they merit, will enable you to sustain
+with unimpaired trust the apparent calamities which
+are yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you talk your hog-latin to me for?&rdquo; cried
+the cripple, who, throughout the address, betrayed the
+most illiterate obduracy; and, with an incensed look,
+anew he swung himself.</p>
+
+<p>Glancing another way till the spasm passed, the
+other continued:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charity marvels not that you should be somewhat
+hard of conviction, my friend, since you, doubtless,
+believe yourself hardly dealt by; but forget not that
+those who are loved are chastened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t chasten them too much, though, and too
+long, because their skin and heart get hard, and feel
+neither pain nor tickle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To mere reason, your case looks something piteous,
+I grant. But never despond; many things&mdash;the
+choicest&mdash;yet remain. You breathe this bounteous air,
+are warmed by this gracious sun, and, though poor and
+friendless, indeed, nor so agile as in your youth, yet, how
+sweet to roam, day by day, through the groves, plucking
+the bright mosses and flowers, till forlornness itself
+becomes a hilarity, and, in your innocent independence,
+you skip for joy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fine skipping with these &rsquo;ere horse-posts&mdash;ha ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon; I forgot the crutches. My mind, figuring
+you after receiving the benefit of my art, overlooked
+you as you stand before me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your art? You call yourself a bone-setter&mdash;a natural
+bone-setter, do ye? Go, bone-set the crooked world,
+and then come bone-set crooked me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Truly, my honest friend, I thank you for again recalling
+me to my original object. Let me examine you,&rdquo;
+bending down; &ldquo;ah, I see, I see; much such a case as the
+negro&rsquo;s. Did you see him? Oh no, you came aboard
+since. Well, his case was a little something like yours.
+I prescribed for him, and I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder at all if, in
+a very short time, he were able to walk almost as well
+as myself. Now, have you no confidence in my art?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor averted himself; but, the wild laugh
+dying away, resumed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will not force confidence on you. Still, I would
+fain do the friendly thing by you. Here, take this box;
+just rub that liniment on the joints night and morning.
+Take it. Nothing to pay. God bless you. Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay,&rdquo; pausing in his swing, not untouched by so
+unexpected an act; &ldquo;stay&mdash;thank&rsquo;ee&mdash;but will this
+really do me good? Honor bright, now; will it? Don&rsquo;t
+deceive a poor fellow,&rdquo; with changed mien and glistening
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Try it. Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, stay! <i>Sure</i> it will do me good?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Possibly, possibly; no harm in trying. Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, stay; give me three more boxes, and here&rsquo;s
+the money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; returning towards him with a sadly
+pleased sort of air, &ldquo;I rejoice in the birth of your confidence
+and hopefulness. Believe me that, like your
+crutches, confidence and hopefulness will long support
+a man when his own legs will not. Stick to confidence
+and hopefulness, then, since how mad for the cripple to
+throw his crutches away. You ask for three more boxes
+of my liniment. Luckily, I have just that number remaining.
+Here they are. I sell them at half-a-dollar
+apiece. But I shall take nothing from you. There;
+God bless you again; good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay,&rdquo; in a convulsed voice, and rocking himself,
+&ldquo;stay, stay! You have made a better man of me. You
+have borne with me like a good Christian, and talked to
+me like one, and all that is enough without making me
+a present of these boxes. Here is the money. I won&rsquo;t
+take nay. There, there; and may Almighty goodness
+go with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As the herb-doctor withdrew, the cripple gradually
+subsided from his hard rocking into a gentle oscillation.
+It expressed, perhaps, the soothed mood of his
+reverie.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>REAPPEARANCE OF ONE WHO MAY BE REMEMBERED.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The herb-doctor had not moved far away, when, in
+advance of him, this spectacle met his eye. A dried-up
+old man, with the stature of a boy of twelve, was tottering
+about like one out of his mind, in rumpled
+clothes of old moleskin, showing recent contact with
+bedding, his ferret eyes, blinking in the sunlight of the
+snowy boat, as imbecilely eager, and, at intervals, coughing,
+he peered hither and thither as if in alarmed search
+for his nurse. He presented the aspect of one who,
+bed-rid, has, through overruling excitement, like that of
+a fire, been stimulated to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seek some one,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor, accosting
+him. &ldquo;Can I assist you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do, do; I am so old and miserable,&rdquo; coughed the
+old man. &ldquo;Where is he? This long time I&rsquo;ve been trying
+to get up and find him. But I haven&rsquo;t any friends,
+and couldn&rsquo;t get up till now. Where is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who do you mean?&rdquo; drawing closer, to stay the
+further wanderings of one so weakly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, why, why,&rdquo; now marking the other&rsquo;s dress,
+&ldquo;why you, yes you&mdash;you, you&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&mdash;you are the man he spoke of.
+Who is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Faith, that is just what I want to know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mercy, mercy!&rdquo; coughed the old man, bewildered,
+&ldquo;ever since seeing him, my head spins round so. I
+ought to have a guard<i>ee</i>an. Is this a snuff-colored surtout
+of yours, or ain&rsquo;t it? Somehow, can&rsquo;t trust my
+senses any more, since trusting him&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you have trusted somebody? Glad to hear it.
+Glad to hear of any instance, of that sort. Reflects well
+upon all men. But you inquire whether this is a snuff-colored
+surtout. I answer it is; and will add that a
+herb-doctor wears it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this the old man, in his broken way, replied
+that then he (the herb-doctor) was the person he
+sought&mdash;the person spoken of by the other person as
+yet unknown. He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted
+to know who this last person was, and where he was,
+and whether he could be trusted with money to treble it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, now, I begin to understand; ten to one you
+mean my worthy friend, who, in pure goodness of heart,
+makes people&rsquo;s fortunes for them&mdash;their everlasting fortunes,
+as the phrase goes&mdash;only charging his one small
+commission of confidence. Aye, aye; before intrusting
+funds with my friend, you want to know about him.
+Very proper&mdash;and, I am glad to assure you, you need
+have no hesitation; none, none, just none in the world;
+bona fide, none. Turned me in a trice a hundred dollars
+the other day into as many eagles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did he? did he? But where is he? Take me to
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, take my arm! The boat is large! We may
+have something of a hunt! Come on! Ah, is that he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where? where?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, no; I took yonder coat-skirts for his. But no,
+my honest friend would never turn tail that way.
+Ah!&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where? where?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Another mistake. Surprising resemblance. I took
+yonder clergyman for him. Come on!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Having searched that part of the boat without success,
+they went to another part, and, while exploring that,
+the boat sided up to a landing, when, as the two were
+passing by the open guard, the herb-doctor suddenly
+rushed towards the disembarking throng, crying out:
+&ldquo;Mr. Truman, Mr. Truman! There he goes&mdash;that&rsquo;s he.
+Mr. Truman, Mr. Truman!&mdash;Confound that steam-pipe.,
+Mr. Truman! for God&rsquo;s sake, Mr. Truman!&mdash;No, no.&mdash;There,
+the plank&rsquo;s in&mdash;too late&mdash;we&rsquo;re off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that, the huge boat, with a mighty, walrus
+wallow, rolled away from the shore, resuming her
+course.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How vexatious!&rdquo; exclaimed the herb-doctor, returning.
+&ldquo;Had we been but one single moment sooner.&mdash;There
+he goes, now, towards yon hotel, his portmanteau
+following. You see him, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where? where?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t see him any more. Wheel-house shot between.
+I am very sorry. I should have so liked you
+to have let him have a hundred or so of your money.
+You would have been pleased with the investment, believe
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I <i>have</i> let him have some of my money,&rdquo;
+groaned the old man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have? My dear sir,&rdquo; seizing both the miser&rsquo;s
+hands in both his own and heartily shaking them. &ldquo;My
+dear sir, how I congratulate you. You don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh! I fear I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; with another groan.
+&ldquo;His name is Truman, is it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;John Truman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where does he live?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In St. Louis.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s his office?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me see. Jones street, number one hundred
+and&mdash;no, no&mdash;anyway, it&rsquo;s somewhere or other up-stairs
+in Jones street.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you remember the number? Try, now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One hundred&mdash;two hundred&mdash;three hundred&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my hundred dollars! I wonder whether it will
+be one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, with
+them! Ugh, ugh! Can&rsquo;t remember the number?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Positively, though I once knew, I have forgotten,
+quite forgotten it. Strange. But never mind. You
+will easily learn in St. Louis. He is well known
+there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I have no receipt&mdash;ugh, ugh! Nothing to
+show&mdash;don&rsquo;t know where I stand&mdash;ought to have a
+guard<i>ee</i>an&mdash;ugh, ugh! Don&rsquo;t know anything. Ugh,
+ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, you know that you gave him your confidence,
+don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what, what&mdash;how, how&mdash;ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, didn&rsquo;t he tell you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What! Didn&rsquo;t he tell you that it was a secret, a
+mystery?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&mdash;yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I have no bond.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t need any with Mr. Truman. Mr. Truman&rsquo;s
+word is his bond.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But how am I to get my profits&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;and
+my money back? Don&rsquo;t know anything. Ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you must have confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that word again. Makes my head spin
+so. Oh, I&rsquo;m so old and miserable, nobody caring for
+me, everybody fleecing me, and my head spins so&mdash;ugh,
+ugh!&mdash;and this cough racks me so. I say again, I ought
+to have a guard<i>ee</i>an.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So you ought; and Mr. Truman is your guardian to
+the extent you invested with him. Sorry we missed
+him just now. But you&rsquo;ll hear from him. All right.
+It&rsquo;s imprudent, though, to expose yourself this way.
+Let me take you to your berth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Forlornly enough the old miser moved slowly away
+with him. But, while descending a stairway, he was
+seized with such coughing that he was fain to pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is a very bad cough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Church-yard&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;church-yard cough.&mdash;Ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you tried anything for it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tired of trying. Nothing does me any good&mdash;ugh!
+ugh! Not even the Mammoth Cave. Ugh! ugh!
+Denned there six months, but coughed so bad the rest
+of the coughers&mdash;ugh! ugh!&mdash;black-balled me out.
+Ugh, ugh! Nothing does me good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But have you tried the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator,
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what that Truman&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;said I
+ought to take. Yarb-medicine; you are that yarb-doctor,
+too?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The same. Suppose you try one of my boxes now.
+Trust me, from what I know of Mr. Truman, he is not
+the gentleman to recommend, even in behalf of a friend,
+anything of whose excellence he is not conscientiously
+satisfied.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh!&mdash;how much?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only two dollars a box.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Two dollars? Why don&rsquo;t you say two millions?
+ugh, ugh! Two dollars, that&rsquo;s two hundred cents;
+that&rsquo;s eight hundred farthings; that&rsquo;s two thousand
+mills; and all for one little box of yarb-medicine. My
+head, my head!&mdash;oh, I ought to have a guard<i>ee</i>an for;
+my head. Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if two dollars a box seems too much, take a
+dozen boxes at twenty dollars; and that will be getting
+four boxes for nothing, and you need use none but those
+four, the rest you can retail out at a premium, and so
+cure your cough, and make money by it. Come, you
+had better do it. Cash down. Can fill an order in a
+day or two. Here now,&rdquo; producing a box; &ldquo;pure
+herbs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, seized with another spasm, the miser
+snatched each interval to fix his half distrustful, half
+hopeful eye upon the medicine, held alluringly up.
+&ldquo;Sure&mdash;ugh! Sure it&rsquo;s all nat&rsquo;ral? Nothing but
+yarbs? If I only thought it was a purely nat&rsquo;ral medicine
+now&mdash;all yarbs&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;oh this cough, this
+cough&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;shatters my whole body. Ugh,
+ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake try my medicine, if but a single
+box. That it is pure nature you may be confident,
+Refer you to Mr. Truman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know his number&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh
+this cough. He did speak well of this medicine though;
+said solemnly it would cure me&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh!&mdash;take
+off a dollar and I&rsquo;ll have a box.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t sir, can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say a dollar-and-half. Ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t. Am pledged to the one-price system, only
+honorable one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take off a shilling&mdash;ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh&mdash;I&rsquo;ll take it.&mdash;There.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Grudgingly he handed eight silver coins, but while
+still in his hand, his cough took him and they were
+shaken upon the deck.</p>
+
+<p>One by one, the herb-doctor picked them up, and,
+examining them, said: &ldquo;These are not quarters, these
+are pistareens; and clipped, and sweated, at that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t be so miserly&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;better a beast
+than a miser&mdash;ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, let it go. Anything rather than the idea of
+your not being cured of such a cough. And I hope, for
+the credit of humanity, you have not made it appear
+worse than it is, merely with a view to working upon
+the weak point of my pity, and so getting my medicine
+the cheaper. Now, mind, don&rsquo;t take it till night. Just
+before retiring is the time. There, you can get along
+now, can&rsquo;t you? I would attend you further, but I land
+presently, and must go hunt up my luggage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A HARD CASE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yarbs, yarbs; natur, natur; you foolish old file
+you! He diddled you with that hocus-pocus, did he?
+Yarbs and natur will cure your incurable cough, you
+think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was a rather eccentric-looking person who spoke;
+somewhat ursine in aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer
+of the cloth called bear&rsquo;s-skin; a high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin,
+the long bushy tail switching over behind;
+raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a
+double-barreled gun in hand&mdash;a Missouri bachelor, a
+Hoosier gentleman, of Spartan leisure and fortune, and
+equally Spartan manners and sentiments; and, as the
+sequel may show, not less acquainted, in a Spartan way
+of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
+and rifles.</p>
+
+<p>He must have overheard some of the talk between the
+miser and the herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal
+of the one, he made up to the other&mdash;now at the foot
+of the stairs leaning against the baluster there&mdash;with the
+greeting above.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Think it will cure me?&rdquo; coughed the miser in echo;
+&ldquo;why shouldn&rsquo;t it? The medicine is nat&rsquo;ral yarbs,
+pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because a thing is nat&rsquo;ral, as you call it, you think
+it must be good. But who gave you that cough? Was
+it, or was it not, nature?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure, you don&rsquo;t think that natur, Dame Natur, will
+hurt a body, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Natur is good Queen Bess; but who&rsquo;s responsible
+for the cholera?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur
+and yarbs&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh!&mdash;ain&rsquo;t sick men sent out into
+the country; sent out to natur and grass?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green
+pastures, like lame horses turned out unshod to the turf
+to renew their hoofs. A sort of yarb-doctors in their
+way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for sore lungs,
+nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my
+teamster on the prairie? And who made an idiot of
+Peter the Wild Boy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t believe in these &rsquo;ere yarb-doctors?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor
+I saw once on a hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the
+faculty passing round and seeing who lay there, said
+with professional triumph, &lsquo;Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
+don&rsquo;t help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and
+the mercury now, Dr. Green.&mdash;Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?&rdquo;
+here said a flute-like voice, advancing.</p>
+
+<p>It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in
+hand, he happened to be strolling back that way.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; addressing the Missourian, &ldquo;but if I
+caught your words aright, you would seem to have little
+confidence in nature; which, really, in my way of
+thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of distrust pretty
+far.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who of my sublime species may you be?&rdquo;
+turning short round upon him, clicking his rifle-lock,
+with an air which would have seemed half cynic, half
+wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the expression,
+which made its sincerity appear more or less
+dubious.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One who has confidence in nature, and confidence
+in man, with some little modest confidence in himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence
+in man, eh? Pray, which do you think are most,
+knaves or fools?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Having met with few or none of either, I hardly
+think I am competent to answer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will answer for you. Fools are most.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why do you think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For the same reason that I think oats are numerically
+more than horses. Don&rsquo;t knaves munch up fools
+just as horses do oats?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate
+drollery&mdash;ha, ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m in earnest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance
+with an earnest air&mdash;knaves munching up fools as horses
+oats.&mdash;Faith, very droll, indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I
+think I understand you now, sir. How silly I was to
+have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too,
+about having no confidence in nature. In reality you
+have just as much as I have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>I</i> have confidence in nature? <i>I?</i> I say again there
+is nothing I am more suspicious of. I once lost ten
+thousand dollars by nature. Nature embezzled that
+amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars&rsquo;
+worth of my property; a plantation on this stream,
+swept clean away by one of those sudden shiftings of
+the banks in a freshet; ten thousand dollars&rsquo; worth of
+alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting
+that soil will come back after many days?&mdash;ah, here
+is my venerable friend,&rdquo; observing the old miser, &ldquo;not
+in your berth yet? Pray, if you <i>will</i> keep afoot, don&rsquo;t
+lean against that baluster; take my arm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was taken; and the two stood together; the old
+miser leaning against the herb-doctor with something of
+that air of trustful fraternity with which, when standing,
+the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually leans
+against the other.</p>
+
+<p>The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was
+broken by the herb-doctor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly
+take under my protection a figure like this? But I am
+never ashamed of honesty, whatever his coat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look you,&rdquo; said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing
+pause, &ldquo;you are a queer sort of chap. Don&rsquo;t know
+exactly what to make of you. Upon the whole though,
+you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my
+place.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some
+kind of machine to do the sort of work which boys are
+supposed to be fitted for.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you have passed a veto upon boys?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And men, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear sir, does not that again imply more or
+less lack of confidence?&mdash;(Stand up a little, just a very
+little, my venerable friend; you lean rather hard.)&mdash;No
+confidence in boys, no confidence in men, no confidence
+in nature. Pray, sir, who or what may you have confidence
+in?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have confidence in distrust; more particularly as
+applied to you and your herbs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; with a forbearing smile, &ldquo;that is frank. But
+pray, don&rsquo;t forget that when you suspect my herbs you
+suspect nature.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I say that before?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good. For the argument&rsquo;s sake I will suppose
+you are in earnest. Now, can you, who suspect nature,
+deny, that this same nature not only kindly brought you
+into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your present
+vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature
+that you are indebted for that robustness of mind
+which you so unhandsomely use to her scandal? Pray,
+is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by which
+you criticise her?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No! for the privilege of vision I am indebted to an
+oculist, who in my tenth year operated upon me in Philadelphia.
+Nature made me blind and would have kept
+me so. My oculist counterplotted her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet, sir, by your complexion, I judge you live
+an out-of-door life; without knowing it, you are
+partial to nature; you fly to nature, the universal
+mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very motherly! Sir, in the passion-fits of nature,
+I&rsquo;ve known birds fly from nature to me, rough as I look;
+yes, sir, in a tempest, refuge here,&rdquo; smiting the folds of
+his bearskin. &ldquo;Fact, sir, fact. Come, come, Mr. Palaverer,
+for all your palavering, did you yourself never
+shut out nature of a cold, wet night? Bar her out?
+Bolt her out? Lint her out?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor calmly, &ldquo;much
+may be said.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say it, then,&rdquo; ruffling all his hairs. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t,
+sir, can&rsquo;t.&rdquo; Then, as in apostrophe: &ldquo;Look you, nature!
+I don&rsquo;t deny but your clover is sweet, and your
+dandelions don&rsquo;t roar; but whose hailstones smashed
+my windows?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; with unimpaired affability, producing one of
+his boxes, &ldquo;I am pained to meet with one who holds
+nature a dangerous character. Though your manner is
+refined your voice is rough; in short, you seem to have
+a sore throat. In the calumniated name of nature, I
+present you with this box; my venerable friend here
+has a similar one; but to you, a free gift, sir. Through
+her regularly-authorized agents, of whom I happen to
+be one, Nature delights in benefiting those who most
+abuse her. Pray, take it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Away with it! Don&rsquo;t hold it so near. Ten to one
+there is a torpedo in it. Such things have been. Editors
+been killed that way. Take it further off, I
+say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good heavens! my dear sir&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you I want none of your boxes,&rdquo; snapping his
+rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, take it&mdash;ugh, ugh! do take it,&rdquo; chimed in the
+old miser; &ldquo;I wish he would give me one for nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You find it lonely, eh,&rdquo; turning short round; &ldquo;gulled
+yourself, you would have a companion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can he find it lonely,&rdquo; returned the herb-doctor,
+&ldquo;or how desire a companion, when here I stand by
+him; I, even I, in whom he has trust. For the gulling,
+tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man?
+Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain,
+is it kind to deprive him of what, in mere imagination,
+if nothing more, may help eke out, with hope, his
+disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and,
+thanks to your native health, can get along without it,
+so far, at least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet,
+how cruel an argument to use, with this afflicted one
+here. Is it not for all the world as if some brawny
+pugilist, aglow in December, should rush in and put
+out a hospital-fire, because, forsooth, he feeling no need
+of artificial heat, the shivering patients shall have none?
+Put it to your conscience, sir, and you will admit, that,
+whatever be the nature of this afflicted one&rsquo;s trust, you,
+in opposing it, evince either an erring head or a heart
+amiss. Come, own, are you not pitiless?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, poor soul,&rdquo; said the Missourian, gravely eying
+the old man&mdash;&ldquo;yes, it <i>is</i> pitiless in one like me to
+speak too honestly to one like you. You are a late
+sitter-up in this life; past man&rsquo;s usual bed-time; and
+truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast,
+proves to all a supper too hearty. Hearty food,
+taken late, gives bad dreams.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, in wonder&rsquo;s name&mdash;ugh, ugh!&mdash;is he talking
+about?&rdquo; asked the old miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven be praised for that!&rdquo; cried the Missourian.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Out of his mind, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; again appealed the old
+miser.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, sir,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor to the Missourian,
+&ldquo;for what were you giving thanks just now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect,
+not so cruel a thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded
+pistol found by poor devils of savages, it raises
+more wonder than terror&mdash;its peculiar virtue being unguessed,
+unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should
+happen to go off of itself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I pretend not to divine your meaning there,&rdquo; said
+the herb-doctor, after a pause, during which he eyed the
+Missourian with a kind of pinched expression, mixed of
+pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his state of mind,
+and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him
+to it, &ldquo;but this much I know,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that the
+general cast of your thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate.
+There is strength in them, but a strength,
+whose source, being physical, must wither. You will
+yet recant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Recant?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of
+decay come on, when a hoary captive in your chamber,
+then will you, something like the dungeoned Italian we
+read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence begot in
+the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling
+if it return to you in age.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood,
+indeed. You are soft.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mercy, mercy!&rdquo; cried the old miser, &ldquo;what is all
+this!&mdash;ugh, ugh! Do talk sense, my good friends.
+Ain&rsquo;t you,&rdquo; to the Missourian, &ldquo;going to buy some of
+that medicine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, my venerable friend,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor,
+now trying to straighten himself, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t lean <i>quite</i> so
+hard; my arm grows numb; abate a little, just a very
+little.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said the Missourian, &ldquo;go lay down in your
+grave, old man, if you can&rsquo;t stand of yourself. It&rsquo;s a
+hard world for a leaner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to his grave,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor, &ldquo;that is far
+enough off, so he but faithfully take my medicine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ugh, ugh, ugh!&mdash;He says true. No, I ain&rsquo;t&mdash;ugh!
+a going to die yet&mdash;ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live
+yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I approve your confidence,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor;
+&ldquo;but your coughing distresses me, besides being
+injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you to your
+berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait
+till my return, I know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which he led the old miser away, and then,
+coming back, the talk with the Missourian was
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and
+more feeling, &ldquo;now that our infirm friend is withdrawn,
+allow me, to the full, to express my concern at the
+words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
+of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to
+beget deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to
+convey unpleasant imputations against me, his physician.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose they did?&rdquo; with a menacing air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, then&mdash;then, indeed,&rdquo; respectfully retreating,
+&ldquo;I fall back upon my previous theory of your general
+facetiousness. I have the fortune to be in company with
+a humorist&mdash;a wag.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fall back you had better, and wag it is,&rdquo; cried the
+Missourian, following him up, and wagging his raccoon
+tail almost into the herb-doctor&rsquo;s face, &ldquo;look you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you mean,&rdquo; returned the other, not unselfpossessed,
+&ldquo;whether I flatter myself that I can in any way
+dupe you, or impose upon you, or pass myself off upon
+you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer that
+I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught
+of the kind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a
+craven.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put
+any affront upon me. The innocence in me heals me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a
+queer man&mdash;a very queer and dubious man; upon the
+whole, about the most so I ever met.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome
+to the diffidence of the herb-doctor. As if at once to
+attest the absence of resentment, as well as to change
+the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into
+his air, and said: &ldquo;So you are going to get some machine
+made to do your work? Philanthropic scruples,
+doubtless, forbid your going as far as New Orleans for
+slaves?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Slaves?&rdquo; morose again in a twinkling, &ldquo;won&rsquo;t have
+&rsquo;em! Bad enough to see whites ducking and grinning
+round for a favor, without having those poor devils of
+niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,
+the niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist,
+ain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he added, squaring himself with
+both hands on his rifle, used for a staff, and gazing in
+the herb-doctor&rsquo;s face with no more reverence than if it
+were a target. &ldquo;You are an abolitionist, ain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist
+you mean a zealot, I am none; but if you mean
+a man, who, being a man, feels for all men, slaves included,
+and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody&rsquo;s
+interest, and therefore, rousing nobody&rsquo;s enmity, would
+willingly abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree,
+to exist) from among mankind, irrespective of color,
+then am I what you say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate
+man, the invaluable understrapper of the wicked
+man. You, the moderate man, may be used for wrong,
+but are useless for right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From all this,&rdquo; said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly,
+&ldquo;I infer, that you, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state,
+are without slave sentiments.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so
+spiritlessly enduring and yielding, the very air of a
+slave? Who is your master, pray; or are you owned by
+a company?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>My</i> master?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come
+from a slave-state, and a slave-pen, where the best
+breeds are to be bought up at any price from a livelihood
+to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but
+expresses the fellow-feeling of slave for slave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The back-woods would seem to have given you
+rather eccentric notions,&rdquo; now with polite superiority
+smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly intrepidity forbearing
+each unmanly thrust, &ldquo;but to return; since,
+for your purpose, you will have neither man nor boy,
+bond nor free, truly, then some sort of machine for you
+is all there is left. My desires for your success attend
+you, sir.&mdash;Ah!&rdquo; glancing shoreward, &ldquo;here is Cape Gir&aacute;deau;
+I must leave you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;Philosophical Intelligence Office&rsquo;&mdash;novel
+idea! But how did you come to dream that I wanted
+anything in your absurd line, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Gir&aacute;deau,
+the above was growled out over his shoulder by the Missourian
+to a chance stranger who had just accosted
+him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean five-dollar
+suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass
+plate, inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine
+deprecation, slunk obliquely behind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did you come to dream that I wanted anything
+in your line, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, respected sir,&rdquo; whined the other, crouching a
+pace nearer, and, in his obsequiousness, seeming to wag
+his very coat-tails behind him, shabby though they were,
+&ldquo;oh, sir, from long experience, one glance tells me the
+gentleman who is in need of our humble services.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But suppose I did want a boy&mdash;what they jocosely
+call a good boy&mdash;how could your absurd office help me?&mdash;Philosophical
+Intelligence Office?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical
+and physio&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look you&mdash;come up here&mdash;how, by philosophy or
+physiology either, make good boys to order? Come up
+here. Don&rsquo;t give me a crick in the neck. Come up
+here, come, sir, come,&rdquo; calling as if to his pointer.
+&ldquo;Tell me, how put the requisite assortment of good
+qualities into a boy, as the assorted mince into the
+pie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Respected sir, our office&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You talk much of that office. Where is it? On
+board this boat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do
+you know a herb-doctor there? Smooth scamp in a
+snuff-colored surtout?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Gir&aacute;deau.
+Though, now that you mention a snuff-colored surtout, I
+think I met such a man as you speak of stepping ashore
+as I stepped aboard, and &rsquo;pears to me I have seen him
+somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian
+sort of person, I should say. Do you know him, respected
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed
+with your business.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission,
+the other began: &ldquo;Our office&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look you,&rdquo; broke in the bachelor with ire, &ldquo;have
+you the spinal complaint? What are you ducking and
+groveling about? Keep still. Where&rsquo;s your office?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir,
+in the free state we now pass,&rdquo; (pointing somewhat
+proudly ashore).</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself?
+With those coat-tails and that spinal complaint of servility?
+Free? Just cast up in your private mind who
+is your master, will you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, oh, oh! I don&rsquo;t understand&mdash;indeed&mdash;indeed.
+But, respected sir, as before said, our office, founded on
+principles wholly new&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when
+a man begins to talk of his principles. Hold, come
+back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I tell you no
+more boys for me. Nay, I&rsquo;m a Mede and Persian. In
+my old home in the woods I&rsquo;m pestered enough with
+squirrels, weasels, chipmunks, skunks. I want no more
+wild vermin to spoil my temper and waste my substance.
+Don&rsquo;t talk of boys; enough of your boys; a
+plague of your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for
+Intelligence Offices, I&rsquo;ve lived in the East, and know
+&rsquo;em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born cynics, under
+a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
+mankind. You are a fair specimen of &rsquo;em.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh dear, dear, dear!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your
+boys would be to me. A rot on your boys!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might
+we not, in our small way, accommodate you with a
+man?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate
+me with a bosom-friend too, couldn&rsquo;t you?
+Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate: there&rsquo;s
+accommodation notes now, where one accommodates
+another with a loan, and if he don&rsquo;t pay it pretty quickly,
+<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'acommodates'.">accommodates</ins> him, with a chain to his foot. Accommodate!
+God forbid that I should ever be accommodated.
+No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of
+yours, the herb-doctor, I&rsquo;m now on the road to get me
+made some sort of machine to do my work. Machines for
+me. My cider-mill&mdash;does that ever steal my cider? My
+mowing-machine&mdash;does that ever lay a-bed mornings?
+My corn-husker&mdash;does that ever give me insolence?
+No: cider-mill, mowing-machine, corn-husker&mdash;all faithfully
+attend to their business. Disinterested, too; no
+board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives long;
+shining examples that virtue is its own reward&mdash;the only
+practical Christians I know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir:&mdash;boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference,
+in a moral point of view, between a corn-husker
+and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for its patient continuance
+in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven. Do
+you suppose a boy will?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites
+of his eyes). Respected sir, this way of talking as if
+heaven were a kind of Washington patent-office museum&mdash;oh,
+oh, oh!&mdash;as if mere machine-work and puppet-work
+went to heaven&mdash;oh, oh, oh! Things incapable
+of free agency, to receive the eternal reward of well-doing&mdash;oh,
+oh, oh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning
+about? Did I say anything of that sort? Seems to
+me, though you talk so good, you are mighty quick at a
+hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
+quarrel with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It may be so or not, respected sir,&rdquo; was now the demure
+reply; &ldquo;but if it be, it is only because as a soldier
+out of honor is quick in taking affront, so a Christian
+out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a little too
+much so, in spying heresy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; after an astonished pause, &ldquo;for an unaccountable
+pair, you and the herb-doctor ought to yoke
+together.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply,
+when he with the brass plate recalled him to the discussion
+by a hint, not unflattering, that he (the man with
+the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him further on
+the subject of servants.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;About that matter,&rdquo; exclaimed the impulsive bachelor,
+going off at the hint like a rocket, &ldquo;all thinking
+minds are, now-a-days, coming to the conclusion&mdash;one
+derived from an immense hereditary experience&mdash;see
+what Horace and others of the ancients say of servants&mdash;coming
+to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
+human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal.
+Can&rsquo;t be trusted; less trustworthy than oxen;
+for conscientiousness a turn-spit dog excels him. Hence
+these thousand new inventions&mdash;carding machines, horseshoe
+machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
+apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines,
+sewing machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines,
+dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what
+machines; all of which announce the era when
+that refractory animal, the working or serving man,
+shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly
+prior to which glorious time, I doubt not that a price
+will be put upon their peltries as upon the knavish
+&lsquo;possums,&rsquo; especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his
+rifle down on the deck), I rejoice to think that the
+day is at hand, when, prompted to it by law, I shall
+shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!&mdash;But <i>our</i> office, respected
+sir, conducted as I ventured to observe&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his
+coon-skins. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t try to oil me; the herb-doctor
+tried that. My experience, carried now through a course&mdash;worse
+than salivation&mdash;a course of five and thirty
+boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of
+rascality.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Save us, save us!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I
+say. I speak from fifteen years&rsquo; experience; five and
+thirty boys; American, Irish, English, German, African,
+Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent me by
+one who well knew my perplexities, from California;
+and that Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found
+him sucking the embryo life from my spring eggs. All
+rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or Mongol.
+Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature
+of the juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged,
+one after another, twenty-nine boys&mdash;each, too,
+for some wholly unforeseen species of viciousness peculiar
+to that one peculiar boy&mdash;I remember saying to myself:
+Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list,
+wholly exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy,
+any boy different from those twenty-nine preceding
+boys, and he infallibly shall be that virtuous boy I have
+so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth boy&mdash;by
+the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
+offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners
+of Emigration, all the way from New York,
+culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular request,
+from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the
+flowers of all nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in
+barracks on an East River island&mdash;I say, this thirtieth
+boy was in person not ungraceful; his deceased mother
+a lady&rsquo;s maid, or something of that sort; and
+in manner, why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield;
+very intelligent, too&mdash;quick as a flash. But,
+such suavity! &lsquo;Please sir! please sir!&rsquo; always bowing
+and saying, &lsquo;Please sir.&rsquo; In the strangest way, too, combining
+a filial affection with a menial respect. Took
+such warm, singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to
+be considered one of the family&mdash;sort of adopted son of
+mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I would go out
+to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would
+trot out my nag, &lsquo;Please sir, I think he&rsquo;s getting fatter
+and fatter.&rsquo; &lsquo;But, he don&rsquo;t look very clean, does
+he?&rsquo; unwilling to be downright harsh with so affectionate
+a lad; &lsquo;and he seems a little hollow inside the
+haunch there, don&rsquo;t he? or no, perhaps I don&rsquo;t see plain
+this morning.&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh, please sir, it&rsquo;s just there I think
+he&rsquo;s gaining so, please.&rsquo; Polite scamp! I soon found
+he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
+didn&rsquo;t bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid
+work. No end to his willful neglects. But the
+more he abused my service, the more polite he grew.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, sir, some way you mistook him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under
+a Chesterfieldian exterior hid strong destructive propensities.
+He cut up my horse-blanket for the bits of
+leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
+After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress.
+Would slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to
+get rid of hoeing. Then be so gracefully penitent for
+his fatal excess of industrious strength. Offer to mend
+all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest settlement&mdash;cherry-trees
+in full bearing all the way&mdash;to get the broken
+thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd
+pennies, shillings, dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at
+it. But I could prove nothing. Expressed to him my
+suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, &lsquo;A little less
+politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.&rsquo;
+He fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won&rsquo;t
+say anything about his afterwards, in Ohio, being found
+in the act of gracefully putting a bar across a rail-road
+track, for the reason that a stoker called him the rogue
+that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys,
+white boys or black boys, smart boys or lazy boys,
+Caucasian boys or Mongol boys&mdash;all are rascals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shocking, shocking!&rdquo; nervously tucking his frayed
+cravat-end out of sight. &ldquo;Surely, respected sir, you labor
+under a deplorable hallucination. Why, pardon again,
+you seem to have not the slightest confidence in boys, I
+admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least, are but
+too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what
+then, respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally
+outgrow such things, and wholly?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive
+dissent of canine whines and groans, the man with the
+brass-plate seemed beginning to summon courage to a
+less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay, was
+not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
+continued as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad
+boys spring good men? Sir, &lsquo;the child is father of the
+man;&rsquo; hence, as all boys are rascals, so are all men.
+But, God bless me, you must know these things better
+than I; keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business
+which must furnish peculiar facilities for studying
+mankind. Come, come up here, sir; confess you know
+these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
+that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings
+seeming to pluck up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet
+degree, &ldquo;Sir, heaven be praised, I am far, very far from
+knowing what you say. True,&rdquo; he thoughtfully continued,
+&ldquo;with my associates, I keep an intelligence
+office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way
+or other, been concerned in that line; for no small period
+in the great city of Cincinnati, too; and though, as
+you hint, within that long interval, I must have had
+more or less favorable opportunity for studying mankind&mdash;in
+a business way, scanning not only the faces,
+but ransacking the lives of several thousands of human
+beings, male and female, of various nations, both employers
+and employed, genteel and ungenteel, educated
+and uneducated; yet&mdash;of course, I candidly admit, with
+some random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation
+goes, found that mankind thus domestically
+viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say; they, upon the
+whole&mdash;making some reasonable allowances for human
+imperfection&mdash;present as pure a moral spectacle as the
+purest angel could wish. I say it, respected sir, with
+confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gammon! You don&rsquo;t mean what you say. Else
+you are like a landsman at sea: don&rsquo;t know the ropes,
+the very things everlastingly pulled before your eyes.
+Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too
+subtle for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle.
+Why, you green ones wouldn&rsquo;t know if she were unseaworthy;
+but still, with thumbs stuck back into your
+arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool,
+words put into your green mouth by the cunning owner,
+the man who, heavily insuring it, sends his ship to be
+wrecked&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&lsquo;A wet sheet and a flowing sea!&rsquo;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the
+whole of it, is but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and
+an idle wind that follows fast, offering a striking contrast
+to my own discourse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his
+patience now more or less tasked, &ldquo;permit me with
+deference to hint that some of your remarks are injudiciously
+worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when
+they enter our office full of abuse of us because of some
+worthy boy we may have sent them&mdash;some boy wholly
+misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit me to remark
+that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
+man, I may have my small share of feelings.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well, I didn&rsquo;t mean to wound your feelings at
+all. And that they are small, very small, I take your
+word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth is like a thrashing-machine;
+tender sensibilities must keep out of the
+way. Hope you understand me. Don&rsquo;t want to hurt
+you. All I say is, what I said in the first place, only
+now I swear it, that all boys are rascals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an
+old lawyer badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted
+simpleton, the butt of mischievous wags, &ldquo;Sir, since
+you come back to the point, will you allow me, in my
+small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet
+views of the subject in hand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; with insulting indifference, rubbing his
+chin and looking the other way. &ldquo;Oh, yes; go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, respected sir,&rdquo; continued the other, now
+assuming as genteel an attitude as the irritating set of
+his pinched five-dollar suit would permit; &ldquo;well, then,
+sir, the peculiar principles, the strictly philosophical
+principles, I may say,&rdquo; guardedly rising in dignity, as
+he guardedly rose on his toes, &ldquo;upon which our office is
+founded, has led me and my associates, in our small,
+quiet way, to a careful analytical study of man, conducted,
+too, on a quiet theory, and with an unobtrusive
+aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
+large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting
+from it, I will, by your permission, very briefly mention;
+such of them, I mean, as refer to the state of boyhood
+scientifically viewed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied
+boys, eh? Why didn&rsquo;t you out with that before?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed
+with so many masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing.
+I have been taught that in this world there is a precedence
+of opinions as well as of persons. You have
+kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty,
+about to give you mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stop flunkying&mdash;go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed
+by analogy from the physical to the moral. Are
+we right there, sir? Now, sir, take a young boy, a
+young male infant rather, a man-child in short&mdash;what
+sir, I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must
+evacuate. May I proceed? Well, then, what, in the
+first place, in a general view, do you remark, respected
+sir, in that male baby or man-child?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the
+whole, better governed himself than before, though not,
+indeed, to the degree of thinking it prudent to risk an
+articulate response.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you remark? I respectfully repeat.&rdquo;
+But, as no answer came, only the low, half-suppressed
+growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the questioner continued:
+&ldquo;Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small way,
+to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient
+creation; loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary
+rag-paper study, or careless cartoon, so to speak, of a
+man. The idea, you see, respected sir, is there; but, as
+yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir, the
+man-child is at present but little, every way; I don&rsquo;t
+pretend to deny it; but, then, he <i>promises</i> well, does he
+not? Yes, promises very well indeed, I may say. (So,
+too, we say to our patrons in reference to some noble
+little youngster objected to for being a <i>dwarf</i>.) But, to
+advance one step further,&rdquo; extending his thread-bare leg,
+as he drew a pace nearer, &ldquo;we must now drop the
+figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and borrow one&mdash;to use
+presently, when wanted&mdash;from the horticultural kingdom.
+Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such
+points as the new-born man-child has&mdash;as yet not all
+that could be desired, I am free to confess&mdash;still, such
+as they are, there they are, and palpable as those of an
+adult. But we stop not here,&rdquo; taking another step.
+&ldquo;The man-child not only possesses these present points,
+small though they are, but, likewise&mdash;now our horticultural
+image comes into play&mdash;like the bud of the lily,
+he contains concealed rudiments of others; that is,
+points at present invisible, with beauties at present
+dormant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural
+and beautiful altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Respected sir,&rdquo; with a rustily martial sort of gesture,
+like a decayed corporal&rsquo;s, &ldquo;when deploying into the
+field of discourse the vanguard of an important argument,
+much more in evolving the grand central forces
+of a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you
+will kindly allow scope adequate to the movement in
+hand, small and humble in its way as that movement
+may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, stop flunkying and go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate
+proceeded:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such
+terms, to an applicant for service, we allude to some
+patron we chance to have in our eye), supposing, respected
+sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
+dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture;
+supposing that, sir&mdash;then how could even the learned
+serpent himself have foreknown that such a downy-chinned
+little innocent would eventually rival the goat
+in a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality
+would have been entirely hidden from his wisdom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that. The devil is very sagacious.
+To judge by the event, he appears to have
+understood man better even than the Being who made
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t say that, sir! To the point.
+Can it now with fairness be denied that, in his beard, the
+man-child prospectively possesses an appendix, not less
+imposing than patriarchal; and for this goodly beard,
+should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
+even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now,
+sir? respectfully I put it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it
+shoots,&rdquo; porcinely rubbing his stubble-chin against his
+coon-skins.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have hinted at the analogy,&rdquo; continued the other,
+calmly disregardful of the digression; &ldquo;now to apply it.
+Suppose a boy evince no noble quality. Then generously
+give him credit for his prospective one. Don&rsquo;t you
+see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain
+return a boy upon us as unworthy: &lsquo;Madam, or sir,
+(as the case may be) has this boy a beard?&rsquo; &lsquo;No.&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
+quality?&rsquo; &lsquo;No, indeed.&rsquo; &lsquo;Then, madam, or sir, take him
+back, we humbly beseech; and keep him till that same
+noble quality sprouts; for, have confidence, it, like the
+beard, is in him.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very fine theory,&rdquo; scornfully exclaimed the bachelor,
+yet in secret, perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by
+these strange new views of the matter; &ldquo;but what trust
+is to be placed in it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed.
+Once more, if you please, regard the man-child.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hold!&rdquo; paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm,
+&ldquo;don&rsquo;t intrude that man-child upon me too often. He
+who loves not bread, dotes not on dough. As little of
+your man-child as your logical arrangements will
+admit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anew regard the man-child,&rdquo; with inspired intrepidity
+repeated he with the brass-plate, &ldquo;in the perspective
+of his developments, I mean. At first the man-child
+has no teeth, but about the sixth month&mdash;am I right,
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know anything about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth,
+about the sixth month the man-child begins to put forth
+in that particular. And sweet those tender little puttings-forth
+are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless
+enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning
+with a boy alleged not only to be deficient in
+goodness, but redundant in ill: &lsquo;The lad, madam or sir,
+evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
+them.&rsquo; &lsquo;But, have confidence, there will be; for pray,
+madam, in this lad&rsquo;s early childhood, were not those
+frail first teeth, then his, followed by his present sound,
+even, beautiful and permanent set. And the more objectionable
+those first teeth became, was not that, madam,
+we respectfully submit, so much the more reason
+to look for their speedy substitution by the present
+sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.&rsquo; &lsquo;True,
+true, can&rsquo;t deny that.&rsquo; &lsquo;Then, madam, take him back,
+we respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift
+course of nature, dropping those transient moral blemishes
+you complain of, he replacingly buds forth in the
+sound, even, beautiful and permanent virtues.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very philosophical again,&rdquo; was the contemptuous
+reply&mdash;the outward contempt, perhaps, proportioned to
+the inward misgiving. &ldquo;Vastly philosophical, indeed, but
+tell me&mdash;to continue your analogy&mdash;since the second
+teeth followed&mdash;in fact, came from&mdash;the first, is there
+no chance the blemish may be transmitted?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all.&rdquo; Abating in humility as he gained in
+the argument. &ldquo;The second teeth follow, but do not
+come from, the first; successors, not sons. The first
+teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
+once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it
+foreruns; but they are thrust from their place by the
+independent undergrowth of the succeeding set&mdash;an
+illustration, by the way, which shows more for me than
+I meant, though not more than I wish.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What does it show?&rdquo; Surly-looking as a thundercloud
+with the inkept unrest of unacknowledged conviction.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any
+boy, especially an ill one, to apply unconditionally the
+saying, that the &lsquo;child is father of the man&rsquo;, is, besides
+implying an uncharitable aspersion of the race, affirming
+a thing very wide of&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&mdash;Your analogy,&rdquo; like a snapping turtle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, respected sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is analogy argument? You are a punster.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Punster, respected sir?&rdquo; with a look of being aggrieved.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with
+words.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever
+has no confidence in human reason, whoever despises
+human reason, in vain to reason with him. Still, respected
+sir,&rdquo; altering his air, &ldquo;permit me to hint that,
+had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you
+would hardly have offered to contemn it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Talk away,&rdquo; disdainfully; &ldquo;but pray tell me what
+has that last analogy of yours to do with your intelligence
+office business?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that
+analogy we derive the reply made to such a patron as,
+shortly after being supplied by us with an adult servant,
+proposes to return him upon our hands; not that, while
+with the patron, said adult has given any cause of dissatisfaction,
+but the patron has just chanced to hear
+something unfavorable concerning him from some
+gentleman who employed said adult, long before, while
+a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking said
+adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to
+the patron, say: &lsquo;Far be it from you, madam, or sir,
+to proceed in your censure against this adult, in anything
+of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law. Madam, or
+sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the
+caterpillar? In the natural advance of all creatures, do
+they not bury themselves over and over again in the
+endless resurrection of better and better? Madam, or sir,
+take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar,
+but is now a butterfly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun,
+what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature,
+and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the
+caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
+lies the impostor&rsquo;s long spindle of a body, pretty much
+worm-shaped as before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You
+deny that a youth of one character can be transformed
+into a man of an opposite character. Now then&mdash;yes,
+I have it. There&rsquo;s the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
+Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood,
+both devil-may-care bloods, and yet, in the end, the
+wonders of the world for anchoritish self-command.
+These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons
+as would hastily return rakish young waiters upon
+us. &lsquo;Madam, or sir&mdash;patience; patience,&rsquo; we say; &lsquo;good
+madam, or sir, would you discharge forth your cask of
+good wine, because, while working, it riles more or less?
+Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
+him is working.&rsquo; &lsquo;But he is a sad rake.&rsquo; &lsquo;Therein is
+his promise; the rake being crude material for the
+saint.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, you are a talking man&mdash;what I call a wordy
+man. You talk, talk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge,
+bishop or prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks.
+It is the peculiar vocation of a teacher to talk. What&rsquo;s
+wisdom itself but table-talk? The best wisdom in this
+world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
+literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You, you, you!&rdquo; rattling down his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray,
+what is your opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know
+of him? Seems to me, for one in such a business, to say
+nothing of such a coat, that though you don&rsquo;t know a
+great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
+you ought to know, or than you have a right to know,
+or than it is safe or expedient for you to know, or
+than, in the fair course of life, you could have honestly
+come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
+like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge
+of yours, which you haven&rsquo;t enough knowledge to
+know how to make a right use of, it should be taken
+from you. And so I have been thinking all along.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked
+into St. Augustine I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book.
+But you, I ask again, where do you find time or inclination
+for these out-of-the-way speculations? In fact,
+your whole talk, the more I think of it, is altogether unexampled
+and extraordinary.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Respected sir, have I not already informed you that
+the quite new method, the strictly philosophical one, on
+which our office is founded, has led me and my associates
+to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my fault,
+if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed
+always to the scientific procuring of good servants of all
+sorts, boys included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons&mdash;that
+these studies, I say, have been conducted equally
+among all books of all libraries, as among all men of all
+nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excellent genius!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under
+his own hand, St. Augustine confesses that, until his
+thirtieth year, he was a very sad dog?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A saint a sad dog?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not the saint, but the saint&rsquo;s irresponsible little
+forerunner&mdash;the boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All boys are rascals, and so are all men,&rdquo; again flying
+off at his tangent; &ldquo;my name is Pitch; I stick to
+what I say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, sir, permit me&mdash;when I behold you on this mild
+summer&rsquo;s eve, thus eccentrically clothed in the skins of
+wild beasts, I cannot but conclude that the equally
+grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
+an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine
+soul, no more than in nature herself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, really, now&mdash;really,&rdquo; fidgeted the bachelor,
+not unaffected in his conscience by these benign personalities,
+&ldquo;really, really, now, I don&rsquo;t know but that I
+may have been a little bit too hard upon those five and
+thirty boys of mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows
+now, but that flexile gracefulness, however questionable
+at the time of that thirtieth boy of yours, might have
+been the silky husk of the most solid qualities of maturity.
+It might have been with him as with the ear of the
+Indian corn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes, yes,&rdquo; excitedly cried the bachelor, as the
+light of this new illustration broke in, &ldquo;yes, yes; and
+now that I think of it, how often I&rsquo;ve sadly watched my
+Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
+half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff,
+stately spear of August.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only,
+according to the analogical theory first started by our office,
+to apply it to that thirtieth boy in question, and see
+the result. Had you but kept that thirtieth boy&mdash;been
+patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them, hoed
+round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have
+been yours, when at last you should have had a St. Augustine
+for an ostler.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, really&mdash;well, I am glad I didn&rsquo;t send him to
+jail, as at first I intended.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was
+vicious. The petty vices of boys are like the innocent
+kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken. Some boys
+know not virtue only for the same reason they know
+not French; it was never taught them. Established upon
+the basis of parental charity, juvenile asylums exist by
+law for the benefit of lads convicted of acts which, in
+adults, would have received other requital. Why? Because,
+do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom
+has a Christian confidence in boys. And all this we
+say to our patrons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you
+may say anything,&rdquo; said the other, relapsing. &ldquo;Why
+do knowing employers shun youths from asylums,
+though offered them at the smallest wages? I&rsquo;ll none
+of your reformado boys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you,
+but a boy that never needed reform. Do not smile, for
+as whooping-cough and measles are juvenile diseases,
+and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
+boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the
+best of boys&rsquo; measles may be contagious, and evil communications
+corrupt good manners; but a boy with a
+sound mind in a sound body&mdash;such is the boy I would
+get you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly
+bad vein of boys, so much the more hope now of
+your hitting a good one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were&mdash;a
+little so, really. In fact, though you have said a great
+many foolish things, very foolish and absurd things, yet,
+upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
+might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a
+certain conditional confidence in you, I had almost added
+in your office, also. Now, for the humor of it, supposing
+that even I, I myself, really had this sort of conditional
+confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a boy, in
+sober fact, could you send me? And what would be
+your fee?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Conducted,&rdquo; replied the other somewhat loftily,
+rising now in eloquence as his proselyte, for all his pretenses,
+sunk in conviction, &ldquo;conducted upon principles
+involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
+usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence
+Office is forced to charge somewhat higher than
+customary. Briefly, our fee is three dollars in advance.
+As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a very promising
+little fellow now in my eye&mdash;a very likely little
+fellow, indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Honest?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As the day is long. Might trust him with untold
+millions. Such, at least, were the marginal observations
+on the phrenological chart of his head, submitted to me
+by the mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How old?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just fifteen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tall? Stout?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Industrious?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The busy bee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last,
+with much hesitancy, he spoke:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think now, candidly, that&mdash;I say candidly&mdash;candidly&mdash;could
+I have some small, limited&mdash;some
+faint, conditional degree of confidence in that boy?
+Candidly, now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Candidly, you could.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A sound boy? A good boy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never knew one more so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie;
+then said: &ldquo;Well, now, you have suggested some
+rather new views of boys, and men, too. Upon those
+views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
+Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment,
+I will try that boy. I don&rsquo;t think him an angel,
+mind. No, no. But I&rsquo;ll try him. There are my three
+dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
+day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money
+for his passage. There,&rdquo; handing it somewhat reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;&rdquo; then,
+altering in manner, and gravely holding the bills, continued:
+&ldquo;Respected sir, never willingly do I handle
+money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a certain
+alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect
+and unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy
+now) or permit me respectfully to return these bills.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Put &rsquo;em up, put &rsquo;em-up!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis
+of all sorts of business transactions. Without it, commerce
+between man and man, as between country and
+country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
+now, supposing that against present expectation the lad
+should, after all, evince some little undesirable trait, do
+not, respected sir, rashly dismiss him. Have but patience,
+have but confidence. Those transient vices will,
+ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm,
+even and permanent virtues. Ah,&rdquo; glancing shoreward,
+towards a grotesquely-shaped bluff, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s the Devil&rsquo;s
+Joke, as they call it: the bell for landing will shortly
+ring. I must go look up the cook I brought for the innkeeper
+at Cairo.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED
+IN THE CASE OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT
+CAIRO, HAS A RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever &amp; Ague is
+still settling up its unfinished business; that Creole
+grave-digger, Yellow Jack&mdash;his hand at the mattock and
+spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
+Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson
+and three undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the
+mephitic breeze with zest.</p>
+
+<p>In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and
+sparkling with fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo.
+She has landed certain passengers, and tarries for the
+coming of expected ones. Leaning over the rail on the
+inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
+medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it
+audibly mumbles his cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus&rsquo;
+dog may have mumbled his bone. He bethinks
+him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on
+this villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins
+to suspect him. Like one beginning to rouse himself
+from a dose of chloroform treacherously given, he
+half divines, too, that he, the philosopher, had unwittingly
+been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe.
+To what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject!
+He ponders the mystery of human subjectivity in general.
+He thinks he perceives with Crossbones, his favorite
+author, that, as one may wake up well in the morning,
+very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but
+ere bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling
+how&mdash;so one may wake up wise, and slow of assent,
+very wise and very slow, I assure you, and for all that,
+before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
+the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious,
+and equally little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied
+on.</p>
+
+<p>But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy,
+knowledge, experience&mdash;were those trusty knights
+of the castle recreant? No, but unbeknown to them, the
+enemy stole on the castle&rsquo;s south side, its genial one,
+where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
+indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed
+him. Admonished by which, he thinks he must be a
+little splenetic in his intercourse henceforth.</p>
+
+<p>He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by
+which, as he fancies, the man with the brass-plate
+wormed into him, and made such a fool of him as insensibly
+to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
+case, that general law of distrust systematically applied
+to the race. He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the
+operation, still less the operator. Was the man a
+trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre.
+Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice
+wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming.
+Before his mental vision the person of that threadbare
+Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli, that seedy
+Rosicrucian&mdash;for something of all these he vaguely deems
+him&mdash;passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor,
+would he make out a logical case. The doctrine
+of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough doctrine when
+wielded against one&rsquo;s prejudices, but in corroboration of
+cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically,
+he couples the slanting cut of the equivocator&rsquo;s
+coat-tails with the sinister cast in his eye; he weighs
+slyboot&rsquo;s sleek speech in the light imparted by the oblique
+import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels;
+the insinuator&rsquo;s undulating flunkyisms dovetail into
+those of the flunky beast that windeth his way on his
+belly.</p>
+
+<p>From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial
+slap on the shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of
+tobacco-smoke, out of which came a voice, sweet as a
+seraph&rsquo;s:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES
+NOT GET BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hands off!&rdquo; cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering
+dejection with moroseness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hands off? that sort of label won&rsquo;t do in our Fair.
+Whoever in our Fair has fine feelings loves to feel the
+nap of fine cloth, especially when a fine fellow wears
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who of my fine-fellow species may you be?
+From the Brazils, ain&rsquo;t you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers
+on foul meat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This ungentle mention of the toucan was not improbably
+suggested by the parti-hued, and rather plumagy
+aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would seem, but a
+liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
+than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
+informalities, might, even to observers less critical
+than the bachelor, have looked, if anything, a little out
+of the common; but not more so perhaps, than, considering
+the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor&rsquo;s
+own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture
+barred with various hues, that of the cochineal
+predominating, in style participating of a Highland
+plaid, Emir&rsquo;s robe, and French blouse; from its plaited
+sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
+while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed
+over maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap
+of regal purple crowned him off at top; king of traveled
+good-fellows, evidently. Grotesque as all was, nothing
+looked stiff or unused; all showed signs of easy service,
+the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
+That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial
+shoulder, was now carelessly thrust down before
+him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of Indian belt, confining
+the redundant vesture; the other held, by its long bright
+cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
+bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and
+arms of interlinked nations&mdash;a florid show. As by
+subtle saturations of its mellowing essence the tobacco
+had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something similar
+of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But
+rosy pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on
+that unrosy man, the bachelor, who, waiting a moment
+till the commotion, caused by the boat&rsquo;s renewed progress,
+had a little abated, thus continued:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hark ye,&rdquo; jeeringly eying the cap and belt, &ldquo;did
+you ever see Signor Marzetti in the African pantomime?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No;&mdash;good performer?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it.
+With such naturalness can a being endowed with an
+immortal spirit enter into that of a monkey. But
+where&rsquo;s your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
+hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on
+one hip, his right leg cavalierly crossed before the other,
+the toe of his vertical slipper pointed easily down on the
+deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of indifferent and
+charitable puff, betokening him more or less of the mature
+man of the world, a character which, like its opposite,
+the sincere Christian&rsquo;s, is not always swift to take
+offense; and then, drawing near, still smoking, again
+laid his hand, this time with mild impressiveness, on the
+ursine shoulder, and not unamiably said: &ldquo;That in your
+address there is a sufficiency of the <i>fortiter in re</i> few unbiased
+observers will question; but that this is duly
+attempered with the <i>suaviter in modo</i> may admit, I think,
+of an honest doubt. My dear fellow,&rdquo; beaming his eyes
+full upon him, &ldquo;what injury have I done you, that
+you should receive my greeting with a curtailed civility?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Off hands;&rdquo; once more shaking the friendly member
+from him. &ldquo;Who in the name of the great chimpanzee,
+in whose likeness, you, Marzetti, and the other chatterers
+are made, who in thunder are you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such,
+ties himself to no narrow tailor or teacher, but federates,
+in heart as in costume, something of the various gallantries
+of men under various suns. Oh, one roams not
+over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal
+and fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost
+anybody. Warm and confiding, you wait not for measured
+advances. And though, indeed, mine, in this instance,
+have met with no very hilarious encouragement,
+yet the principle of a true citizen of the world is still to
+return good for ill.&mdash;My dear fellow, tell me how I can
+serve you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world,
+into the heart of the Lunar Mountains. You are another
+of them. Out of my sight!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you
+then? Ah, I may be foolish, but for my part, in all its
+aspects, I love it. Served up &agrave; la Pole, or &agrave; la Moor, &agrave; la
+Ladrone, or &agrave; la Yankee, that good dish, man, still delights
+me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of
+comparing and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan,
+a sort of London-Dock-Vault connoisseur,
+going about from Teheran to Natchitoches, a taster of
+races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy
+creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal
+palates which have a distaste even for Amontillado, so I
+suppose there may be teetotal souls which relish not
+even the very best brands of humanity. Excuse me,
+but it just occurs to me that you, my dear fellow, possibly
+lead a solitary life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Solitary?&rdquo; starting as at a touch of divination.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes: in a solitary life one insensibly contracts oddities,&mdash;talking
+to one&rsquo;s self now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Been eaves-dropping, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be
+overheard, and without much reproach to the hearer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are an eaves-dropper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well. Be it so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing
+by, caught a word or two, and, by like chance,
+something previous of your chat with the Intelligence-office
+man;&mdash;a rather sensible fellow, by the way;
+much of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake,
+he were of my style of dress. Grief to good minds, to
+see a man of superior sense forced to hide his light
+under the bushel of an inferior coat.&mdash;Well, from what
+little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the
+unprofitable philosophy of disesteem for man. Which
+disease, in the main, I have observed&mdash;excuse me&mdash;to
+spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness, of spirits
+inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better
+mix in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding
+out against having a good time. Life is a pic-nic <i>en
+costume</i>; one must take a part, assume a character, stand
+ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
+plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes
+one a discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene.
+Like your jug of cold water among the wine-flasks, it
+leaves you unelated among the elated ones. No, no.
+This austerity won&rsquo;t do. Let me tell you too&mdash;<i>en confiance</i>&mdash;that
+while revelry may not always merge into
+ebriety, soberness, in too deep potations, may become a
+sort of sottishness. Which sober sottishness, in my
+way of thinking, is only to be cured by beginning at the
+other end of the horn, to tipple a little.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are
+you hired to lecture for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little
+story may help. The story of the worthy old woman
+of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who wouldn&rsquo;t let
+her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
+might ferment upon their brains, and so make them
+swinish. Now, during a green Christmas, inauspicious
+to the old, this worthy old woman fell into a moping
+decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to
+see her best friends. In much concern her good man
+sent for the doctor, who, after seeing the patient and
+putting a question or two, beckoned the husband out,
+and said: &lsquo;Deacon, do you want her cured?&rsquo; &lsquo;Indeed I
+do.&rsquo; &lsquo;Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Santa Cruz? my wife drink Santa Cruz?&rsquo; &lsquo;Either that
+or die.&rsquo; &lsquo;But how much?&rsquo; &lsquo;As much as she can get
+down.&rsquo; &lsquo;But she&rsquo;ll get drunk!&rsquo; &lsquo;That&rsquo;s the cure.&rsquo;
+Wise men, like doctors, must be obeyed. Much against
+the grain, the sober deacon got the unsober medicine,
+and, equally against her conscience, the poor old woman
+took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and
+spirits, famous appetite, and glad again to see her
+friends; and having by this experience broken the ice of
+arid abstinence, never afterwards kept herself a cup too
+low.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor
+into interest, though hardly into approval.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I take your parable right,&rdquo; said he, sinking no
+little of his former churlishness, &ldquo;the meaning is, that
+one cannot enjoy life with gusto unless he renounce
+the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
+view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I,
+who rate truth, though cold water, above untruth, though
+Tokay, will stick to my earthen jug.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of
+lazy smoke, &ldquo;I see; you go in for the lofty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, nothing! but if I wasn&rsquo;t afraid of prosing, I
+might tell another story about an old boot in a pieman&rsquo;s
+loft, contracting there between sun and oven an
+unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You&rsquo;ve seen such
+leathery old garretteers, haven&rsquo;t you? Very high, sober,
+solitary, philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for
+my part, would rather be the pieman&rsquo;s trodden slipper
+on the ground. Talking of piemen, humble-pie before
+proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
+is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like
+roosters; the one that betakes himself to a lone and
+lofty perch is the hen-pecked one, or the one that has
+the pip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are abusive!&rdquo; cried the bachelor, evidently
+touched.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is abused? You, or the race? You won&rsquo;t
+stand by and see the human race abused? Oh, then,
+you have some respect for the human race.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have some respect for <i>myself</i>&rdquo; with a lip not so
+firm as before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what race may <i>you</i> belong to? now don&rsquo;t you
+see, my dear fellow, in what inconsistencies one involves
+himself by affecting disesteem for men. To a charm, my
+little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
+of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude.
+I fear, by the way, you have at some time been reading
+Zimmermann, that old Mr. Megrims of a Zimmermann,
+whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume&rsquo;s on Suicide,
+as Bacon&rsquo;s on Knowledge; and, like these, will betray
+him who seeks to steer soul and body by it, like a false
+religion. All they, be they what boasted ones you
+please, who, to the yearning of our kind after a founded
+rule of content, offer aught not in the spirit of fellowly
+gladness based on due confidence in what is above,
+away with them for poor dupes, or still poorer impostors.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His manner here was so earnest that scarcely any
+auditor, perhaps, but would have been more or less
+impressed by it, while, possibly, nervous opponents might
+have a little quailed under it. Thinking within himself
+a moment, the bachelor replied: &ldquo;Had you experience,
+you would know that your tippling theory, take it in
+what sense you will, is poor as any other. And Rabelais&rsquo;s
+pro-wine Koran no more trustworthy than Mahomet&rsquo;s
+anti-wine one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; for a finality knocking the ashes from his
+pipe, &ldquo;we talk and keep talking, and still stand where
+we did. What do you say for a walk? My arm, and
+let&rsquo;s a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck
+to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to
+save the pieces, you hold my loose change; and following
+that, I propose that you, my dear fellow, stack your
+gun, and throw your bearskins in a sailor&rsquo;s hornpipe&mdash;I
+holding your watch. What do you say?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this proposition the other was himself again, all
+raccoon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look you,&rdquo; thumping down his rifle, &ldquo;are you
+Jeremy Diddler No. 3?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jeremy Diddler? I <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'have have'.">have</ins> heard of Jeremy the
+prophet, and Jeremy Taylor the divine, but your other
+Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted with.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are his confidential clerk, ain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Whose</i>, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of
+being confided in, but I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are another of them. Somehow I meet with
+the most extraordinary metaphysical scamps to-day.
+Sort of visitation of them. And yet that herb-doctor
+Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers
+that come after him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Herb-doctor? who is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like you&mdash;another of them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Who?</i>&rdquo; Then drawing near, as if for a good long
+explanatory chat, his left hand spread, and his pipe-stem
+coming crosswise down upon it like a ferule, &ldquo;You
+think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just
+enter into a little argument and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No you don&rsquo;t. No more little arguments for me.
+Had too many little arguments to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But put a case. Can you deny&mdash;I dare you to
+deny&mdash;that the man leading a solitary life is peculiarly
+exposed to the sorriest misconceptions touching strangers?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I <i>do</i> deny it,&rdquo; again, in his impulsiveness, snapping
+at the controversial bait, &ldquo;and I will confute
+you there in a trice. Look, you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, now, now, my dear fellow,&rdquo; thrusting out
+both vertical palms for double shields, &ldquo;you crowd me
+too hard. You don&rsquo;t give one a chance. Say what you
+will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun
+society in any way, evinces a churlish nature&mdash;cold, loveless;
+as, to embrace it, shows one warm and friendly,
+in fact, sunshiny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way,
+launched forth into the unkindest references to deaf old
+worldlings keeping in the deafening world; and gouty
+gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
+corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the
+waltz, all for disinterested society&rsquo;s sake; and thousands,
+bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of
+pure love of the sweet company of man&mdash;no envies,
+rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, now,&rdquo; deprecating with his pipe, &ldquo;irony is so
+unjust: never could abide irony: something Satanic about
+irony. God defend me from Irony, and Satire, his bosom
+friend.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A right knave&rsquo;s prayer, and a right fool&rsquo;s, too,&rdquo; snapping
+his rifle-lock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous.
+But, no, no, you didn&rsquo;t mean it; any way, I can make
+allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how much pleasanter
+to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
+fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'worldlingg, lutton,'.">worldling,
+glutton,&rdquo;</ins> and coquette, though, doubtless, being
+such, they may have their little foibles&mdash;as who has
+not?&mdash;yet not one of the three can be reproached with
+that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for
+not seldom it presupposes a still darker thing than
+itself&mdash;remorse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Remorse drives man away from man? How came
+your fellow-creature, Cain, after the first murder, to go
+and build the first city? And why is it that the
+modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you
+will, I for one must have my fellow-creatures round me.
+Thick, too&mdash;I must have them thick.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures
+round him. Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd
+but for his end; and the end of too many is the same as
+the pick-pocket&rsquo;s&mdash;a purse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience
+to say that, when it is as much according to
+natural law that men are social as sheep gregarious.
+But grant that, in being social, each man has his end,
+do you, upon the strength of that, do you yourself, I
+say, mix with man, now, immediately, and be your
+end a more genial philosophy. Come, let&rsquo;s take a
+turn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor
+once more flung it off, and, raising his rifle in energetic
+invocation, cried: &ldquo;Now the high-constable catch and
+confound all knaves in towns and rats in grain-bins, and
+if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the time,
+any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin
+him, thou high rat-catcher, against this rail.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And
+when a card&rsquo;s that, little matters it whether it be spade
+or diamond. You are good wine that, to be still better,
+only needs a shaking up. Come, let&rsquo;s agree that we&rsquo;ll
+to New Orleans, and there embark for London&mdash;I staying
+with my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting
+up at the Piazza, Covent Garden&mdash;Piazza, Covent Garden;
+for tell me&mdash;since you will not be a disciple
+to the full&mdash;tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes,
+which led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market,
+better than that of the less wise Athenian,
+which made him a skulking scare-crow in pine-barrens?
+An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your hand!&rdquo; seizing it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we
+shall be brothers, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be,&rdquo;
+with another and terrific squeeze. &ldquo;I had thought that
+the moderns had degenerated beneath the capacity of
+misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one instance,
+and that disguised, to be undeceived.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other stared in blank amaze.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise.
+I say&mdash;Diogenes masquerading as a cosmopolitan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute
+awhile. At length, in a pained tone, spoke: &ldquo;How hard
+the lot of that pleader who, in his zeal conceding too
+much, is taken to belong to a side which he but labors,
+however ineffectually, to convert!&rdquo; Then with another
+change of air: &ldquo;To you, an Ishmael, disguising
+in sportiveness my intent, I came ambassador from the
+human race, charged with the assurance that for your
+mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to
+conciliate accord between you and them. Yet you take
+me not for the honest envoy, but I know not what sort
+of unheard-of spy. Sir,&rdquo; he less lowly added, &ldquo;this
+mistaking of your man should teach you how you may
+mistake all men. For God&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; laying both hands
+upon him, &ldquo;get you confidence. See how distrust has
+duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
+beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter?
+Better were I stark and stiff!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which the philanthropist moved away less
+lightsome than he had come, leaving the discomfited
+misanthrope to the solitude he held so sapient.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a
+passenger, who with the bluff <i>abord</i> of the West, thus
+addressed him, though a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Queer &rsquo;coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage
+with him myself. Rather entertaining old &rsquo;coon, if he
+wasn&rsquo;t so deuced analytical. Reminded me somehow of
+what I&rsquo;ve heard about Colonel John Moredock, of Illinois,
+only your friend ain&rsquo;t quite so good a fellow at
+bottom, I should think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening
+a recess from the deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead,
+and sending its light vertically down, like the sun
+at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the speaker, affording
+to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
+scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed
+no such rudeness.</p>
+
+<p>A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt;
+but with a body fitted, as by measure, to the service of
+his mind. For the rest, one less favored perhaps in his
+features than his clothes; and of these the beauty may
+have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
+the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with
+something the reverse of fine in the skin; and the
+unsuitableness of a violet vest, sending up sunset hues to
+a countenance betokening a kind of bilious habit.</p>
+
+<p>But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that
+his appearance was unprepossessing; indeed, to the
+congenial, it would have been doubtless not uncongenial;
+while to others, it could not fail to be at least curiously
+interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
+contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish
+sallowness of saving discretion lurking behind it.
+Ungracious critics might have thought that the manner
+flushed the man, something in the same fictitious way
+that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
+were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might
+have hinted that they were too good to be true; or rather,
+were not so good as they might be; since the best
+false teeth are those made with at least two or three
+blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately
+for better constructions, no such critics had the stranger
+now in eye; only the cosmopolitan, who, after, in the
+first place, acknowledging his advances with a mute
+salute&mdash;in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
+spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was
+probably because of the saddening sequel of that late
+interview&mdash;thus now replied: &ldquo;Colonel John Moredock,&rdquo;
+repeating the words abstractedly; &ldquo;that surname recalls
+reminiscences. Pray,&rdquo; with enlivened air, &ldquo;was he
+anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock
+Hall, Northamptonshire, England?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall
+than of the Burdocks of Burdock Hut,&rdquo; returned the
+other, with the air somehow of one whose fortunes had
+been of his own making; &ldquo;all I know is, that the late
+Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time;
+eye like Lochiel&rsquo;s; finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount&rsquo;s;
+and with but two little oddities&mdash;seldom stirred
+without his rifle, and hated Indians like snakes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of
+Misanthrope Hall&mdash;the Woods. No very sleek creature,
+the colonel, I fancy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky
+bearded and curly headed, and to all but Indians juicy
+as a peach. But Indians&mdash;how the late Colonel John
+Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians, to
+be sure!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never heard of such a thing. Hate Indians? Why
+should he or anybody else hate Indians? <i>I</i> admire
+Indians. Indians I have always heard to be one of the
+finest of the primitive races, possessed of many heroic
+virtues. Some noble women, too. When I think of
+Pocahontas, I am ready to love Indians. Then there&rsquo;s
+Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and Tecumseh,
+and Red-Jacket, and Logan&mdash;all heroes; and there&rsquo;s the
+Five Nations, and Araucanians&mdash;federations and communities
+of heroes. God bless me; hate Indians? Surely
+the late Colonel John Moredock must have wandered in
+his mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wandered in the woods considerably, but never
+wandered elsewhere, that I ever heard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you in earnest? Was there ever one who so
+made it his particular mission to hate Indians that, to
+designate him, a special word has been coined&mdash;Indian-hater?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Even so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me, you take it very calmly.&mdash;But really, I
+would like to know something about this Indian-hating,
+I can hardly believe such a thing to be. Could you
+favor me with a little history of the extraordinary man
+you mentioned?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; and immediately stepping from
+the porch, gestured the cosmopolitan to a settee near
+by, on deck. &ldquo;There, sir, sit you there, and I will sit
+here beside you&mdash;you desire to hear of Colonel John
+Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with
+a white stone&mdash;the day I saw the colonel&rsquo;s rifle, powder-horn
+attached, hanging in a cabin on the West bank
+of the Wabash river. I was going westward a long journey
+through the wilderness with my father. It was
+nigh noon, and we had stopped at the cabin to unsaddle
+and bait. The man at the cabin pointed out the rifle, and
+told whose it was, adding that the colonel was that
+moment sleeping on wolf-skins in the corn-loft above,
+so we must not talk very loud, for the colonel had been
+out all night hunting (Indians, mind), and it would be
+cruel to disturb his sleep. Curious to see one so famous,
+we waited two hours over, in hopes he would come
+forth; but he did not. So, it being necessary to get to
+the next cabin before nightfall, we had at last to ride off
+without the wished-for satisfaction. Though, to tell the
+truth, I, for one, did not go away entirely ungratified,
+for, while my father was watering the horses, I slipped
+back into the cabin, and stepping a round or two up the
+ladder, pushed my head through the trap, and peered
+about. Not much light in the loft; but off, in the further
+corner, I saw what I took to be the wolf-skins, and
+on them a bundle of something, like a drift of leaves;
+and at one end, what seemed a moss-ball; and over it,
+deer-antlers branched; and close by, a small squirrel
+sprang out from a maple-bowl of nuts, brushed the moss-ball
+with his tail, through a hole, and vanished, squeaking.
+That bit of woodland scene was all I saw. No
+Colonel Moredock there, unless that moss-ball was his
+curly head, seen in the back view. I would have gone
+clear up, but the man below had warned me, that
+though, from his camping habits, the colonel could sleep
+through thunder, he was for the same cause amazing
+quick to waken at the sound of footsteps, however soft,
+and especially if human.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said the other, softly laying his hand
+on the narrator&rsquo;s wrist, &ldquo;but I fear the colonel was of
+a distrustful nature&mdash;little or no confidence. He <i>was</i> a
+little suspicious-minded, wasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a bit. Knew too much. Suspected nobody,
+but was not ignorant of Indians. Well: though, as
+you may gather, I never fully saw the man, yet, have I,
+one way and another, heard about as much of him as
+any other; in particular, have I heard his history again
+and again from my father&rsquo;s friend, James Hall, the judge,
+you know. In every company being called upon to
+give this history, which none could better do, the judge
+at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have
+thought he spoke less to mere auditors than to an invisible
+amanuensis; seemed talking for the press; very impressive
+way with him indeed. And I, having an equally
+impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can
+render you the judge upon the colonel almost word for
+word.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do so, by all means,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, well
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall I give you the judge&rsquo;s philosophy, and all?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; rejoined the other gravely, pausing over
+the pipe-bowl he was filling, &ldquo;the desirableness, to a
+man of a certain mind, of having another man&rsquo;s philosophy
+given, depends considerably upon what school of
+philosophy that other man belongs to. Of what school
+or system was the judge, pray?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, though he knew how to read and write, the
+judge never had much schooling. But, I should say he
+belonged, if anything, to the free-school system. Yes, a
+true patriot, the judge went in strong for free-schools.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In philosophy? The man of a certain mind, then,
+while respecting the judge&rsquo;s patriotism, and not blind
+to the judge&rsquo;s capacity for narrative, such as he may
+prove to have, might, perhaps, with prudence, waive an
+opinion of the judge&rsquo;s probable philosophy. But I am
+no rigorist; proceed, I beg; his philosophy or not, as
+you please.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I would mostly skip that part, only, to begin,
+some reconnoitering of the ground in a philosophical
+way the judge always deemed indispensable with strangers.
+For you must know that Indian-hating was no
+monopoly of Colonel Moredock&rsquo;s; but a passion, in one
+form or other, and to a degree, greater or less, largely
+shared among the class to which he belonged. And
+Indian-hating still exists; and, no doubt, will continue
+to exist, so long as Indians do. Indian-hating, then,
+shall be my first theme, and Colonel Moredock, the Indian-hater,
+my next and last.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which the stranger, settling himself in his seat,
+commenced&mdash;the hearer paying marked regard, slowly
+smoking, his glance, meanwhile, steadfastly abstracted
+towards the deck, but his right ear so disposed towards
+the speaker that each word came through as little atmospheric
+intervention as possible. To intensify the
+sense of hearing, he seemed to sink the sense of sight.
+No complaisance of mere speech could have been so
+flattering, or expressed such striking politeness as this
+mute eloquence of thoroughly digesting attention.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>CONTAINING THE METAPHYSICS OF INDIAN-HATING, ACCORDING TO THE
+VIEWS OF ONE EVIDENTLY NOT SO PREPOSSESSED AS ROUSSEAU IN
+FAVOR OF SAVAGES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The judge always began in these words: &lsquo;The
+backwoodsman&rsquo;s hatred of the Indian has been a topic
+for some remark. In the earlier times of the frontier
+the passion was thought to be readily accounted for.
+But Indian rapine having mostly ceased through regions
+where it once prevailed, the philanthropist is surprised
+that Indian-hating has not in like degree ceased with it.
+He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the
+red man in much the same spirit that a jury does a
+murderer, or a trapper a wild cat&mdash;a creature, in whose
+behalf mercy were not wisdom; truce is vain; he must
+be executed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;A curious point,&rsquo; the judge would continue, &lsquo;which
+perhaps not everybody, even upon explanation, may fully
+understand; while, in order for any one to approach to
+an understanding, it is necessary for him to learn, or if
+he already know, to bear in mind, what manner of man
+the backwoodsman is; as for what manner of man the
+Indian is, many know, either from history or experience.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful
+man. He is a man strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive,
+he is what some might call unprincipled. At
+any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less hearkens
+to what others may say about things, than looks for
+himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits,
+there are few to help; he must depend upon himself;
+he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance,
+to the degree of standing by his own judgment,
+though it stand alone. Not that he deems himself
+infallible; too many mistakes in following trails prove
+the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines such
+sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the
+&rsquo;possum. To these fellow-beings of the wilds their
+untutored sagacity is their best dependence. If with
+either it prove faulty, if the &rsquo;possum&rsquo;s betray it to the
+trap, or the backwoodsman&rsquo;s mislead him into ambuscade,
+there are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame.
+As with the &rsquo;possum, instincts prevail with
+the backwoodsman over precepts. Like the &rsquo;possum,
+the backwoodsman presents the spectacle of a creature
+dwelling exclusively among the works of God, yet
+these, truth must confess, breed little in him of a godly
+mind. Small bowing and scraping is his, further than
+when with bent knee he points his rifle, or picks its
+flint. With few companions, solitude by necessity his
+lengthened lot, he stands the trial&mdash;no slight one, since,
+next to dying, solitude, rightly borne, is perhaps of
+fortitude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
+backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases
+is anxious to be so. The sight of smoke ten miles off is
+provocation to one more remove from man, one step
+deeper into nature. Is it that he feels that whatever man
+may be, man is not the universe? that glory, beauty,
+kindness, are not all engrossed by him? that as the
+presence of man frights birds away, so, many bird-like
+thoughts? Be that how it will, the backwoodsman is
+not without some fineness to his nature. Hairy Orson as
+he looks, it may be with him as with the Shetland seal&mdash;beneath
+the bristles lurks the fur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Though held in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman
+would seem to America what Alexander was to
+Asia&mdash;captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization.
+Whatever the nation&rsquo;s growing opulence or power, does
+it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security
+to those who come after him, for himself he asks
+nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with
+Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in Gaul,
+who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered
+or mounted legions, marched so through the elements,
+day after day. The tide of emigration, let it roll as it
+will, never overwhelms the backwoodsman into itself;
+he rides upon advance, as the Polynesian upon the comb
+of the surf.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Thus, though he keep moving on through life, he
+maintains with respect to nature much the same unaltered
+relation throughout; with her creatures, too,
+including panthers and Indians. Hence, it is not
+unlikely that, accurate as the theory of the Peace Congress
+may be with respect to those two varieties of
+beings, among others, yet the backwoodsman might be
+qualified to throw out some practical suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;As the child born to a backwoodsman must in turn
+lead his father&rsquo;s life&mdash;a life which, as related to humanity,
+is related mainly to Indians&mdash;it is thought best
+not to mince matters, out of delicacy; but to tell the boy
+pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must expect
+from him. For however charitable it may be to
+view Indians as members of the Society of Friends, yet
+to affirm them such to one ignorant of Indians, whose
+lonely path lies a long way through their lands, this, in
+the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel.
+At least something of this kind would seem the maxim
+upon which <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'backswood'.">backwoods</ins>&rsquo; education is based. Accordingly,
+if in youth the backwoodsman incline to knowledge,
+as is generally the case, he hears little from his
+schoolmasters, the old chroniclers of the forest, but histories
+of Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing,
+Indian fraud and perfidy, Indian want of
+conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian diabolism&mdash;histories
+which, though of wild woods, are almost as
+full of things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the
+Annals of Europe. In these Indian narratives and traditions
+the lad is thoroughly grounded. &ldquo;As the twig
+is bent the tree&rsquo;s inclined.&rdquo; The instinct of antipathy
+against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the
+sense of good and bad, right and wrong. In one breath
+he learns that a brother is to be loved, and an Indian to
+be hated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Such are the facts,&rsquo; the judge would say, &lsquo;upon
+which, if one seek to moralize, he must do so with an
+eye to them. It is terrible that one creature should so
+regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an
+entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising?
+Surprising, that one should hate a race which he believes to
+be red from a cause akin to that which makes some tribes
+of garden insects green? A race whose name is upon
+the frontier a <i>memento mori</i>; painted to him in every evil
+light; now a horse-thief like those in Moyamensing;
+now an assassin like a New York rowdy; now a treaty-breaker
+like an Austrian; now a Palmer with poisoned
+arrows; now a judicial murderer and Jeffries, after a
+fierce farce of trial condemning his victim to bloody
+death; or a Jew with hospitable speeches cozening
+some fainting stranger into ambuscade, there to burk
+him, and account it a deed grateful to Manitou, his god.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians
+than as examples of the backwoodsman&rsquo;s impression of
+them&mdash;in which the charitable may think he does them
+some injustice. Certain it is, the Indians themselves
+think so; quite unanimously, too. The Indians, in
+deed, protest against the backwoodsman&rsquo;s view of
+them; and some think that one cause of their returning
+his antipathy so sincerely as they do, is their moral indignation
+at being so libeled by him, as they really believe
+and say. But whether, on this or any point, the
+Indians should be permitted to testify for themselves,
+to the exclusion of other testimony, is a question that
+may be left to the Supreme Court. At any rate, it has
+been observed that when an Indian becomes a genuine
+proselyte to Christianity (such cases, however, not being
+very many; though, indeed, entire tribes are sometimes
+nominally brought to the true light,) he will not in that
+case conceal his enlightened conviction, that his race&rsquo;s
+portion by nature is total depravity; and, in that way,
+as much as admits that the backwoodsman&rsquo;s worst idea
+of it is not very far from true; while, on the other hand,
+those red men who are the greatest sticklers for the
+theory of Indian virtue, and Indian loving-kindness, are
+sometimes the arrantest horse-thieves and tomahawkers
+among them. So, at least, avers the backwoodsman.
+And though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he
+does, he fancies he is not ignorant that an Indian may
+in some points deceive himself almost as effectually as in
+bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and his practice
+as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency
+so extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it
+on the supposition that when a tomahawking red-man
+advances the notion of the benignity of the red race,
+<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'it it'.">it is</ins> but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which
+he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general
+conduct of life.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with
+which the backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge
+used to think it might perhaps a little help, to consider
+what kind of stimulus to it is furnished in those forest
+histories and traditions before spoken of. In which behalf,
+he would tell the story of the little colony of
+Wrights and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia,
+who, after successive removals with their families,
+at last established themselves near the southern frontier
+of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: &lsquo;They were strong,
+brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those
+days, theirs was no love of conflict for conflict&rsquo;s sake.
+Step by step they had been lured to their lonely resting-place
+by the ever-beckoning seductions of a fertile and
+virgin land, with a singular exemption, during the march,
+from Indian molestation. But clearings made and
+houses built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other
+side. After repeated persecutions and eventual hostilities,
+forced on them by a dwindled tribe in their
+neighborhood&mdash;persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
+cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number,
+illy to be spared, besides others getting painful
+wounds&mdash;the five remaining cousins made, with some
+serious concessions, a kind of treaty with Mocmohoc,
+the chief&mdash;being to this induced by the harryings of
+the enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were
+further prompted, indeed, first incited, by the suddenly
+changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though hitherto
+deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet
+now put on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to
+bury the hatchet, smoke the pipe, and be friends forever;
+not friends in the mere sense of renouncing
+enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly
+blind them to what the chief had been; so that, though
+in no small degree influenced by his change of bearing,
+they still distrusted him enough to covenant with him,
+among other articles on their side, that though friendly
+visits should be exchanged between the wigwams and
+the cabins, yet the five cousins should never, on any
+account, be expected to enter the chief&rsquo;s lodge together.
+The intention was, though they reserved it, that if ever,
+under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them
+mischief, and effect it, it should be but partially; so that
+some of the five might survive, not only for their families&rsquo;
+sake, but also for retribution&rsquo;s. Nevertheless, Mocmohoc
+did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
+carriage win their confidence, that he brought them
+all together to a feast of bear&rsquo;s meat, and there, by stratagem,
+ended them. Years after, over their calcined bones
+and those of all their families, the chief, reproached for
+his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
+jeered out, &ldquo;Treachery? pale face! &rsquo;Twas they
+who broke their covenant first, in coming all together;
+they that broke it first, in trusting Mocmohoc.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his
+hand, and rolling his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough
+voice, &lsquo;Circling wiles and bloody lusts. The acuteness
+and genius of the chief but make him the more atrocious.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;After another pause, he would begin an imaginary
+kind of dialogue between a backwoodsman and a questioner:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But are all Indians like Mocmohoc?&mdash;Not all have
+proved such; but in the least harmful may lie his germ.
+There is an Indian nature. &ldquo;Indian blood is in me,&rdquo; is the
+half-breed&rsquo;s threat.&mdash;But are not some Indians kind?&mdash;Yes,
+but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed
+simple&mdash;at all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the
+red men being taken from the active, and those accounted
+wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind Indians
+have but proportionate influence. And kind
+Indians may be forced to do unkind biddings. So &ldquo;beware
+the Indian, kind or unkind,&rdquo; said Daniel Boone, who
+lost his sons by them.&mdash;But, have all you backwoodsmen
+been some way victimized by Indians?&mdash;No.&mdash;Well,
+and in certain cases may not at least some few of you be
+favored by them?&mdash;Yes, but scarce one among us so
+self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his personal
+exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off
+against the contrary experience of so many others, as
+that he must needs, in a general way, think well of Indians;
+or, if he do, an arrow in his flank might suggest a
+pertinent doubt.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In short,&rsquo; according to the judge, &lsquo;if we at all credit
+the backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be
+taken aright, must be considered as being not so much
+on his own account as on others&rsquo;, or jointly on both
+accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some
+member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed
+or scalped. What avails, then, that some one Indian, or
+some two or three, treat a backwoodsman friendly-like?
+He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from me, give
+him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how
+know I what involuntary preparations may be going
+on in him for things as unbeknown in present time to
+him as me&mdash;a sort of chemical preparation in the soul
+for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for
+malady.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words,
+you see, but the judge found him expression for his
+meaning. And this point he would conclude with saying,
+that, &lsquo;what is called a &ldquo;friendly Indian&rdquo; is a very rare
+sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness
+exceeds that of a &ldquo;friendly Indian&rdquo; turned enemy.
+A coward friend, he makes a valiant foe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But, thus far the passion in question has been
+viewed in a general way as that of a community. When
+to his due share of this the backwoodsman adds his private
+passion, we have then the stock out of which is
+formed, if formed at all, the Indian-hater <i>par excellence</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Indian-hater <i>par excellence</i> the judge defined to
+be one &lsquo;who, having with his mother&rsquo;s milk drank in
+small love for red men, in youth or early manhood, ere
+the sensibilities become osseous, receives at their hand
+some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same,
+some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature
+all around him by her solitudes wooing or bidding him
+muse upon this matter, he accordingly does so, till the
+thought develops such attraction, that much as straggling
+vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so
+straggling thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus
+thought, assimilate with it, and swell it. At last,
+taking counsel with the elements, he comes to his resolution.
+An intenser Hannibal, he makes a vow, the hate
+of which is a vortex from whose suction scarce the
+remotest chip of the guilty race may reasonably feel
+secure. Next, he declares himself and settles his temporal
+affairs. With the solemnity of a Spaniard turned
+monk, he takes leave of his kin; or rather, these leave-takings
+have something of the still more impressive
+finality of death-bed adieus. Last, he commits himself
+to the forest primeval; there, so long as life shall be his,
+to act upon a calm, cloistered scheme of strategical, implacable,
+and lonesome vengeance. Ever on the noiseless
+trail; cool, collected, patient; less seen than felt;
+snuffing, smelling&mdash;a Leather-stocking Nemesis. In the
+settlements he will not be seen again; in eyes of old
+companions tears may start at some chance thing that
+speaks of him; but they never look for him, nor call;
+they know he will not come. Suns and seasons fleet;
+the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap in
+their mothers&rsquo; arms; but, the Indian-hater is good as
+gone to his long home, and &ldquo;Terror&rdquo; is his epitaph.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here the judge, not unaffected, would pause again,
+but presently resume: &lsquo;How evident that in strict speech
+there can be no biography of an Indian-hater <i>par excellence</i>,
+any more than one of a sword-fish, or other deep-sea
+denizen; or, which is still less imaginable, one of a
+dead man. The career of the Indian-hater <i>par excellence</i>
+has the impenetrability of the fate of a lost steamer.
+Doubtless, events, terrible ones, have happened, must
+have happened; but the powers that be in nature have
+taken order that they shall never become news.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
+Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely
+as his brain. Soft enticements of domestic life too,
+often draw him from the ascetic trail; a monk who
+apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too,
+though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in
+some green harbor which he does not forget. It is with
+him as with the Papist converts in Senegal; fasting and
+mortification prove hard to bear.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The judge, with his usual judgment, always thought
+that the intense solitude to which the Indian-hater
+consigns himself, has, by its overawing influence, no little
+to do with relaxing his vow. He would relate instances
+where, after some months&rsquo; lonely scoutings, the
+Indian-hater is suddenly seized with a sort of calenture;
+hurries openly towards the first smoke, though he knows
+it is an Indian&rsquo;s, announces himself as a lost hunter,
+gives the savage his rifle, throws himself upon his charity,
+embraces him with much affection, imploring the
+privilege of living a while in his sweet companionship.
+What is too often the sequel of so distempered a procedure
+may be best known by those who best know the
+Indian. Upon the whole, the judge, by two and thirty
+good and sufficient reasons, would maintain that there
+was no known vocation whose consistent following calls
+for such self-containings as that of the Indian-hater <i>par
+excellence</i>. In the highest view, he considered such a soul
+one peeping out but once an age.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For the diluted Indian-hater, although the vacations
+he permits himself impair the keeping of the character,
+yet, it should not be overlooked that this is the man
+who, by his very infirmity, enables us to form surmises,
+however inadequate, of what Indian-hating in its perfection
+is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One moment,&rdquo; gently interrupted the cosmopolitan
+here, &ldquo;and let me refill my calumet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Which being done, the other proceeded:&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>SOME ACCOUNT OF A MAN OF QUESTIONABLE MORALITY, BUT WHO,
+NEVERTHELESS, WOULD SEEM ENTITLED TO THE ESTEEM OF THAT EMINENT
+ENGLISH MORALIST WHO SAID HE LIKED A GOOD HATER.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus
+far said was but the introduction, the judge, who, like
+you, was a great smoker, would insist upon all the company
+taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one himself,
+rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice, say&mdash;
+&lsquo;Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John
+Moredock;&rsquo; when, after several whiffs taken standing in
+deep silence and deeper reverie, he would resume his
+seat and his discourse, something in these words:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater
+<i>par excellence</i>, he yet cherished a kind of sentiment
+towards the red man, and in that degree, and so acted
+out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the tribute
+just rendered to his memory.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;John Moredock was the son of a woman married
+thrice, and thrice widowed by a tomahawk. The three
+successive husbands of this woman had been pioneers,
+and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
+wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children,
+she at last found herself at a little clearing, afterwards
+Vincennes. There she joined a company about to remove
+to the new country of Illinois. On the eastern
+side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on
+the west side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were,
+near the mouth of the Kaskaskia, some old hamlets
+of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets, very innocent
+and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock&rsquo;s
+party was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines,
+they meant to settle. They embarked upon the Wabash
+in boats, proposing descending that stream into the
+Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
+towards the point to be reached. All went well
+till they made the rock of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi,
+where they had to land and drag their boats
+round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party
+of Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered
+nearly all of them. The widow was among the victims
+with her children, John excepted, who, some fifty miles
+distant, was following with a second party.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left
+in nature sole survivor of his race. Other youngsters
+might have turned mourners; he turned avenger.
+His nerves were electric wires&mdash;sensitive, but steel. He
+was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither
+to flush nor pale. It is said that when the tidings
+were brought him, he was ashore sitting beneath a hemlock
+eating his dinner of venison&mdash;and as the tidings
+were told him, after the first start he kept on eating,
+but slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news
+with the wild meat, as if both together, turned to chyle,
+together should sinew him to his intent. From that meal
+he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms, prevailed
+upon some comrades to join him, and without delay
+started to discover who were the actual transgressors.
+They proved to belong to a band of twenty renegades
+from various tribes, outlaws even among Indians, and
+who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew.
+No opportunity for action being at the time presented,
+he dismissed his friends; told them to go on, thanking
+them, and saying he would ask their aid at some future
+day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds, he
+watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable
+chance having occurred&mdash;it being midwinter, and the
+savages encamped, apparently to remain so&mdash;he anew
+mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,
+getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in
+such panic that everything was left behind but their
+weapons. During the winter, much the same thing
+happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next
+year he sought them at the head of a party pledged to
+serve him for forty days. At last the hour came. It
+was on the shore of the Mississippi. From their covert,
+Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains
+in the red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled
+island in mid-stream, there the more securely to lodge;
+for Moredock&rsquo;s retributive spirit in the wilderness spoke
+ever to their trepidations now, like the voice calling
+through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the
+whites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden
+with their arms. On landing, Moredock cut the fastenings
+of the enemy&rsquo;s canoes, and turned them, with his
+own raft, adrift; resolved that there should be neither
+escape for the Indians, nor safety, except in victory, for
+the whites. Victorious the whites were; but three of
+the Indians saved themselves by taking to the stream.
+Moredock&rsquo;s band lost not a man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Three of the murderers survived. He knew their
+names and persons. In the course of three years each
+successively fell by his own hand. All were now dead.
+But this did not suffice. He made no avowal, but to
+kill Indians had become his passion. As an athlete, he
+had few equals; as a shot, none; in single combat, not
+to be beaten. Master of that woodland-cunning enabling
+the adept to subsist where the tyro would perish, and
+expert in all those arts by which an enemy is pursued
+for weeks, perhaps months, without once suspecting it,
+he kept to the forest. The solitary Indian that met him,
+died. When a murder was descried, he would either
+secretly pursue their track for some chance to strike at
+least one blow; or if, while thus engaged, he himself
+was discovered, he would elude them by superior skill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Many years he spent thus; and though after a time
+he was, in a degree, restored to the ordinary life of the
+region and period, yet it is believed that John Moredock
+never let pass an opportunity of quenching an Indian.
+Sins of commission in that kind may have been his, but
+none of omission.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It were to err to suppose,&rsquo; the judge would say, &lsquo;that
+this gentleman was naturally ferocious, or peculiarly
+possessed of those qualities, which, unhelped by provocation
+of events, tend to withdraw man from social life.
+On the contrary, Moredock was an example of something
+apparently self-contradicting, certainly curious, but, at
+the same time, undeniable: namely, that nearly all Indian-haters
+have at bottom loving hearts; at any rate,
+hearts, if anything, more generous than the average.
+Certain it is, that, to the degree in which he mingled in
+the life of the settlements, Moredock showed himself
+not without humane feelings. No cold husband or colder
+father, he; and, though often and long away from his
+household, bore its needs in mind, and provided for them.
+He could be very convivial; told a good story (though
+never of his more private exploits), and sung a capital
+song. Hospitable, not backward to help a neighbor; by
+report, benevolent, as retributive, in secret; while, in a
+general manner, though sometimes grave&mdash;as is not unusual
+with men of his complexion, a sultry and tragical
+brown&mdash;yet with nobody, Indians excepted, otherwise
+than courteous in a manly fashion; a moccasined
+gentleman, admired and loved. In fact, no one more
+popular, as an incident to follow may prove.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;His bravery, whether in Indian fight or any other,
+was unquestionable. An officer in the ranging service
+during the war of 1812, he acquitted himself with more
+than credit. Of his soldierly character, this anecdote is
+told: Not long after Hull&rsquo;s dubious surrender at Detroit,
+Moredock with some of his rangers rode up at night to a
+log-house, there to rest till morning. The horses being
+attended to, supper over, and sleeping-places assigned
+the troop, the host showed the colonel his best bed,
+not on the ground like the rest, but a bed that stood on
+legs. But out of delicacy, the guest declined to monopolize
+it, or, indeed, to occupy it at all; when, to increase
+the inducement, as the host thought, he was told that a
+general officer had once slept in that bed. &ldquo;Who, pray?&rdquo;
+asked the colonel. &ldquo;General Hull.&rdquo; &ldquo;Then you must
+not take offense,&rdquo; said the colonel, buttoning up his coat,
+&ldquo;but, really, no coward&rsquo;s bed, for me, however comfortable.&rdquo;
+Accordingly he took up with valor&rsquo;s bed&mdash;a cold
+one on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial
+council of Illinois, and at the formation of the
+state government, was pressed to become candidate for
+governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he
+declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those
+who best knew him the cause was not wholly unsurmised.
+In his official capacity he might be called upon
+to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes, a thing
+not to be thought of. And even did no such contingecy
+arise, yet he felt there would be an impropriety in
+the Governor of Illinois stealing out now and then,
+during a recess of the legislative bodies, for a few days&rsquo;
+shooting at human beings, within the limits of his paternal
+chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large
+honors, from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices.
+These were incompatibles. In short, he was not unaware
+that to be a consistent Indian-hater involves the
+renunciation of ambition, with its objects&mdash;the pomps
+and glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing
+such things vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them,
+therefore, so far as this goes, Indian-hating, whatever
+may be thought of it in other respects, may be regarded
+as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout sentiment.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the narrator paused. Then, after his long and
+irksome sitting, started to his feet, and regulating his
+disordered shirt-frill, and at the same time adjustingly
+shaking his legs down in his rumpled pantaloons, concluded:
+&ldquo;There, I have done; having given you, not
+my story, mind, or my thoughts, but another&rsquo;s. And
+now, for your friend Coonskins, I doubt not, that, if the
+judge were here, he would pronounce him a sort of
+comprehensive Colonel Moredock, who, too much spreading
+his passion, shallows it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charity, charity!&rdquo; exclaimed the cosmopolitan,
+&ldquo;never a sound judgment without charity. When man
+judges man, charity is less a bounty from our mercy
+than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of human
+fallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should
+be what you hint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly.
+His outside deceived you; at first it came
+near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,
+owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself
+a little open; I seized that lucky chance, I say, to
+inspect his heart, and found it an inviting oyster in a forbidding
+shell. His outside is but put on. Ashamed of his
+own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange old
+uncles in romances do their nephews&mdash;snapping at them
+all the time and yet loving them as the apple of their
+eye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is
+not what I took him for. Yes, for aught I know, you
+may be right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be
+cultivated, if only for its being graceful. And now, since
+you have renounced your notion, I should be happy,
+would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too. That,
+story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder.
+To me some parts don&rsquo;t hang together. If the
+man of hate, how could John Moredock be also the
+man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulous
+as Hercules&rsquo;; or else, those being true, what was
+thrown in about his geniality is but garnish. In short,
+if ever there was such a man as Moredock, he, in my
+way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;
+and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused
+on one race of men. Though, like suicide, man-hatred
+would seem peculiarly a Roman and a Grecian
+passion&mdash;that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome
+nor Greece can produce the equal in man-hatred of
+Colonel Moredock, as the judge and you have painted
+him. As for this Indian-hating in general, I can only
+say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbon
+earthquake: &lsquo;Sir, I don&rsquo;t believe it.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t believe it? Why not? Clashed with any
+little prejudice of his?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain
+other person,&rdquo; with an ingenuous smile, &ldquo;he had
+sensibilities, and those were pained.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose he had been something else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders
+alleged to have been perpetrated under the pall of
+smoke and ashes. The infidels of the time were quick
+to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,
+while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies,
+in certain cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent,
+infidelity, which claims to despise credulity, is sometimes
+swift to it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not jumble them; they are coordinates. For
+misanthropy, springing from the same root with disbelief
+of religion, is twin with that. It springs from
+the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and
+what is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not,
+see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and
+what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will
+not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don&rsquo;t
+you see? In either case the vice consists in a want of
+confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is
+hydrophobia. Don&rsquo;t know; never had it. But I have
+often wondered what it can be like. Can a misanthrope
+feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable
+with himself? Can a misanthrope smoke
+a cigar and muse? How fares he in solitude? Has
+the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a
+peach refresh him? The effervescence of champagne,
+with what eye does he behold it? Is summer good to
+him? Of long winters how much can he sleep? What
+are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, when
+suddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades
+of thunder?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like you,&rdquo; said the stranger, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand the
+misanthrope. So far as my experience goes, either mankind
+is worthy one&rsquo;s best love, or else I have been lucky.
+Never has it been my lot to have been wronged, though
+but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting, superciliousness,
+disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that
+brood, I know but by report. Cold regards tossed over
+the sinister shoulder of a former friend, ingratitude in
+a beneficiary, treachery in a confidant&mdash;such things may
+be; but I must take somebody&rsquo;s word for it. Now the
+bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not
+praise it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so.
+Man is a noble fellow, and in an age of satirists, I am
+not displeased to find one who has confidence in him,
+and bravely stands up for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what
+is more, am always ready to do a good deed for
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a man after my own heart,&rdquo; responded the
+cosmopolitan, with a candor which lost nothing by its
+calmness. &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;our sentiments agree
+so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,
+few but the nicest critics might determine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Since we are thus joined in mind,&rdquo; said the stranger,
+&ldquo;why not be joined in hand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My hand is always at the service of virtue,&rdquo; frankly
+extending it to him as to virtue personified.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said the stranger, cordially retaining his
+hand, &ldquo;you know our fashion here at the West. It may
+be a little low, but it is kind. Briefly, we being newly-made
+friends must drink together. What say you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so
+many old friends, all free-hearted, convivial gentlemen,
+that really, really, though for the present I succeed in
+mastering it, I am at bottom almost in the condition of
+a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, ere
+night reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity
+than his heart.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At the allusion to old friends, the stranger&rsquo;s countenance
+a little fell, as a jealous lover&rsquo;s might at hearing
+from his sweetheart of former ones. But rallying, he
+said: &ldquo;No doubt they treated you to something strong;
+but wine&mdash;surely, that gentle creature, wine; come, let
+us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables
+here. Come, come.&rdquo; Then essaying to roll about like
+a full pipe in the sea, sang in a voice which had had more
+of good-fellowship, had there been less of a latent squeak
+to it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;Let us drink of the wine of the vine benign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sparkles warm in Zansovine.&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood
+as sorely tempted and wavering a moment; then, abruptly
+stepping towards him, with a look of dissolved surrender,
+said: &ldquo;When mermaid songs move figure-heads,
+then may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments
+on me. But a good fellow, singing a good song,
+he woos forth my every spike, so that my whole hull,
+like a ship&rsquo;s, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with
+acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain
+sort, it is in vain trying to be resolute.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE BOON COMPANIONS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The wine, port, being called for, and the two seated
+at the little table, a natural pause of convivial expectancy
+ensued; the stranger&rsquo;s eye turned towards the bar
+near by, watching the red-cheeked, white-aproned man
+there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly arranging
+the salver and glasses; when, with a sudden impulse
+turning round his head towards his companion, he said,
+&ldquo;Ours is friendship at first sight, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; was the placidly pleased reply: &ldquo;and the
+same may be said of friendship at first sight as of love
+at first sight: it is the only true one, the only noble
+one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding
+his way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by
+night, into an enemy&rsquo;s harbor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right. Boldly in before the wind. Agreeable, how
+we always agree. By-the-way, though but a formality,
+friends should know each other&rsquo;s names. What is yours,
+pray?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Francis Goodman. But those who love me, call me
+Frank. And yours?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charles Arnold Noble. But do you call me
+Charlie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will, Charlie; nothing like preserving in manhood
+the fraternal familiarities of youth. It proves the heart
+a rosy boy to the last.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My sentiments again. Ah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was a smiling waiter, with the smiling bottle, the
+cork drawn; a common quart bottle, but for the occasion
+fitted at bottom into a little bark basket, braided
+with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian fashion.
+This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it
+with affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand,
+or else to pretend not to, a handsome red label pasted
+on the bottle, bearing the capital letters, P. W.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;P. W.,&rdquo; said he at last, perplexedly eying the pleasing
+poser, &ldquo;now what does P. W. mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan gravely,
+&ldquo;if it stood for port wine. You called for port wine,
+didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why so it is, so it is!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I find some little mysteries not very hard to clear
+up,&rdquo; said the other, quietly crossing his legs.</p>
+
+<p>This commonplace seemed to escape the stranger&rsquo;s
+hearing, for, full of his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat
+sallow hands over it, and with a strange kind of
+cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: &ldquo;Good wine, good
+wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?&rdquo;
+Then brimming both glasses, pushed one over, saying,
+with what seemed intended for an air of fine disdain:
+&ldquo;Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that
+now-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; that almost
+every variety on sale is less the vintage of vineyards
+than laboratories; that most bar-keepers are but a set
+of male Brinvilliarses, with complaisant arts practicing
+against the lives of their best friends, their customers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A shade passed over the cosmopolitan. After a few
+minutes&rsquo; down-cast musing, he lifted his eyes and said:
+&ldquo;I have long thought, my dear Charlie, that the spirit
+in which wine is regarded by too many in these days is
+one of the most painful examples of want of confidence.
+Look at these glasses. He who could mistrust poison
+in this wine would mistrust consumption in Hebe&rsquo;s
+cheek. While, as for suspicions against the dealers in
+wine and sellers of it, those who cherish such suspicions
+can have but limited trust in the human heart. Each
+human heart they must think to be much like each bottle
+of port, not such port as this, but such port as they
+hold to. Strange traducers, who see good faith in nothing,
+however sacred. Not medicines, not the wine in
+sacraments, has escaped them. The doctor with his
+phial, and the priest with his chalice, they deem equally
+the unconscious dispensers of bogus cordials to the
+dying.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dreadful!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dreadful indeed,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan solemnly.
+&ldquo;These distrusters stab at the very soul of confidence.
+If this wine,&rdquo; impressively holding up his full glass, &ldquo;if
+this wine with its bright promise be not true, how shall
+man be, whose promise can be no brighter? But if wine
+be false, while men are true, whither shall fly convivial
+geniality? To think of sincerely-genial souls drinking
+each other&rsquo;s health at unawares in perfidious and murderous
+drugs!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Horrible!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Much too much so to be true, Charlie. Let us forget
+it. Come, you are my entertainer on this occasion,
+and yet you don&rsquo;t pledge me. I have been waiting for
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon, pardon,&rdquo; half confusedly and half ostentatiously
+lifting his glass. &ldquo;I pledge you, Frank, with
+my whole heart, believe me,&rdquo; taking a draught too decorous
+to be large, but which, small though it was, was
+followed by a slight involuntary wryness to the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I return you the pledge, Charlie, heart-warm
+as it came to me, and honest as this wine I drink it in,&rdquo;
+reciprocated the cosmopolitan with princely kindliness in
+his gesture, taking a generous swallow, concluding in a
+smack, which, though audible, was not so much so as to
+be unpleasing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Talking of alleged spuriousness of wines,&rdquo; said he,
+tranquilly setting down his glass, and then sloping back
+his head and with friendly fixedness eying the wine,
+&ldquo;perhaps the strangest part of those allegings is, that
+there is, as claimed, a kind of man who, while convinced
+that on this continent most wines are shams, yet still
+drinks away at them; accounting wine so fine a thing,
+that even the sham article is better than none at all. And
+if the temperance people urge that, by this course, he
+will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers,
+&lsquo;And do you think I don&rsquo;t know that? But health
+without cheer I hold a bore; and cheer, even of the
+spurious sort, has its price, which I am willing to
+pay.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably
+bacchanalian.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, if such a man there be, which I don&rsquo;t credit.
+It is a fable, but a fable from which I once heard a person
+of less genius than grotesqueness draw a moral even
+more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that it
+illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition
+ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly
+associate with men, though, at the same time, he believed
+the greater part of men false-hearted&mdash;accounting society
+so sweet a thing that even the spurious sort was
+better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites
+urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined
+in security, he answers, &lsquo;And do you think I
+don&rsquo;t know that? But security without society I hold
+a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort, has its
+price, which I am willing to pay.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A most singular theory,&rdquo; said the stranger with a
+slight fidget, eying his companion with some inquisitiveness,
+&ldquo;indeed, Frank, a most slanderous thought,&rdquo; he
+exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary look
+almost of being personally aggrieved.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In one sense it merits all you say, and more,&rdquo; rejoined
+the other with wonted mildness, &ldquo;but, for a kind
+of drollery in it, charity might, perhaps, overlook something
+of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so blessed a
+thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the
+human mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes,
+some philosophers are clement enough to affirm that
+those nine good jokes should redeem all the wicked
+thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At
+any rate, this same humor has something, there is no
+telling what, of beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon
+and charm&mdash;nearly all men agreeing in relishing it,
+though they may agree in little else&mdash;and in its way it
+undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the
+world, that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man
+of humor, a man capable of a good loud laugh&mdash;seem
+how he may in other things&mdash;can hardly be a heartless
+scamp.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha, ha, ha!&rdquo; laughed the other, pointing to the
+figure of a pale pauper-boy on the deck below, whose
+pitiableness was touched, as it were, with ludicrousness
+by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some mason&rsquo;s
+discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime,
+and curled up about the toe like a bassoon. &ldquo;Look&mdash;ha,
+ha, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation,
+but of a kind expressing an eye to the grotesque,
+without blindness to what in this case accompanied
+it, &ldquo;I see; and the way in which it moves you,
+Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I
+was speaking of. Indeed, had you intended this effect,
+it could not have been more so. For who that heard
+that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a
+sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a
+man may smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain;
+but it is not said that a man may laugh, and laugh, and
+laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha, ha, ha!&mdash;no no, no no.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why Charlie, your explosions illustrate my remarks
+almost as aptly as the chemist&rsquo;s imitation volcano did
+his lectures. But even if experience did not sanction
+the proverb, that a good laugher cannot be a bad man, I
+should yet feel bound in confidence to believe it, since
+it is a saying current among the people, and I doubt
+not originated among them, and hence <i>must</i> be true; for
+the voice of the people is the voice of truth. Don&rsquo;t
+you think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do. If Truth don&rsquo;t speak through the
+people, it never speaks at all; so I heard one say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A true saying. But we stray. The popular notion
+of humor, considered as index to the heart, would seem
+curiously confirmed by Aristotle&mdash;I think, in his &lsquo;Politics,&rsquo;
+(a work, by-the-by, which, however it may be
+viewed upon the whole, yet, from the tenor of certain
+sections, should not, without precaution, be placed in
+the hands of youth)&mdash;who remarks that the least lovable
+men in history seem to have had for humor not only a
+disrelish, but a hatred; and this, in some cases, along
+with an extraordinary dry taste for practical punning.
+I remember it is related of Phalaris, the capricious
+tyrant of Sicily, that he once caused a poor fellow to be
+beheaded on a horse-block, for no other cause than having
+a horse-laugh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Funny Phalaris!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cruel Phalaris!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As after fire-crackers, there was a pause, both looking
+downward on the table as if mutually struck by the
+contrast of exclamations, and pondering upon its significance,
+if any. So, at least, it seemed; but on one side
+it might have been otherwise: for presently glancing up,
+the cosmopolitan said: &ldquo;In the instance of the moral,
+drolly cynic, drawn from the queer bacchanalian fellow
+we were speaking of, who had his reasons for still drinking
+spurious wine, though knowing it to be such&mdash;there,
+I say, we have an example of what is certainly a wicked
+thought, but conceived in humor. I will now give you
+one of a wicked thought conceived in wickedness. You
+shall compare the two, and answer, whether in the one
+case the sting is not neutralized by the humor, and
+whether in the other the absence of humor does not
+leave the sting free play. I once heard a wit, a mere
+wit, mind, an irreligious Parisian wit, say, with regard
+to the temperance movement, that none, to their personal
+benefit, joined it sooner than niggards and knaves;
+because, as he affirmed, the one by it saved money and
+the other made money, as in ship-owners cutting off
+the spirit ration without giving its equivalent, and
+gamblers and all sorts of subtle tricksters sticking to
+cold water, the better to keep a cool head for business.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A wicked thought, indeed!&rdquo; cried the stranger,
+feelingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; leaning over the table on his elbow and genially
+gesturing at him with his forefinger: &ldquo;yes, and, as
+I said, you don&rsquo;t remark the sting of it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do, indeed. Most calumnious thought, Frank!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No humor in it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a bit!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well now, Charlie,&rdquo; eying him with moist regard,
+&ldquo;let us drink. It appears to me you don&rsquo;t drink
+freely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, oh&mdash;indeed, indeed&mdash;I am not backward there.
+I protest, a freer drinker than friend Charlie you will
+find nowhere,&rdquo; with feverish zeal snatching his glass,
+but only in the sequel to dally with it. &ldquo;By-the-way,
+Frank,&rdquo; said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention
+from himself, &ldquo;by-the-way, I saw a good thing
+the other day; capital thing; a panegyric on the press,
+It pleased me so, I got it by heart at two readings. It
+is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in something
+the same relation to blank verse which that does
+to rhyme. A sort of free-and-easy chant with refrains
+to it. Shall I recite it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to
+hear,&rdquo; rejoined the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;the more so,&rdquo; he
+gravely proceeded, &ldquo;as of late I have observed in some
+quarters a disposition to disparage the press.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Disparage the press?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Even so; some gloomy souls affirming that it is
+proving with that great invention as with brandy or
+eau-de-vie, which, upon its first discovery, was believed
+by the doctors to be, as its French name implies, a panacea&mdash;a
+notion which experience, it may be thought,
+has not fully verified.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You surprise me, Frank. Are there really those who
+so decry the press? Tell me more. Their reasons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Reasons they have none, but affirmations they have
+many; among other things affirming that, while under
+dynastic despotisms, the press is to the people little but
+an improvisatore, under popular ones it is too apt to be
+their Jack Cade. In fine, these sour sages regard the
+press in the light of a Colt&rsquo;s revolver, pledged to no
+cause but his in whose chance hands it may be; deeming
+the one invention an improvement upon the pen,
+much akin to what the other is upon the pistol; involving,
+along with the multiplication of the barrel, no consecration
+of the aim. The term &lsquo;freedom of the press&rsquo;
+they consider on a par with <i>freedom of Colt&rsquo;s revolver</i>.
+Hence, for truth and the right, they hold, to indulge
+hopes from the one is little more sensible than for Kossuth
+and Mazzini to indulge hopes from the other.
+Heart-breaking views enough, you think; but their
+refutation is in every true reformer&rsquo;s contempt. Is it
+not so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Without doubt. But go on, go on. I like to hear
+you,&rdquo; flatteringly brimming up his glass for him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For one,&rdquo; continued the cosmopolitan, grandly
+swelling his chest, &ldquo;I hold the press to be neither the
+people&rsquo;s improvisatore, nor Jack Cade; neither their
+paid fool, nor conceited drudge. I think interest never
+prevails with it over duty. The press still speaks for
+truth though impaled, in the teeth of lies though intrenched.
+Disdaining for it the poor name of cheap
+diffuser of news, I claim for it the independent apostleship
+of Advancer of Knowledge:&mdash;the iron Paul!
+Paul, I say; for not only does the press advance knowledge,
+but righteousness. In the press, as in the sun,
+resides, my dear Charlie, a dedicated principle of beneficent
+force and light. For the Satanic press, by its
+coappearance with the apostolic, it is no more an aspersion
+to that, than to the true sun is the coappearance
+of the mock one. For all the baleful-looking parhelion,
+god Apollo dispenses the day. In a word, Charlie, what
+the sovereign of England is titularly, I hold the press to
+be actually&mdash;Defender of the Faith!&mdash;defender of the
+faith in the final triumph of truth over error, metaphysics
+over superstition, theory over falsehood, machinery
+over nature, and the good man over the bad. Such are
+my views, which, if stated at some length, you, Charlie,
+must pardon, for it is a theme upon which I cannot
+speak with cold brevity. And now I am impatient for
+your panegyric, which, I doubt not, will put mine to
+the blush.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is rather in the blush-giving vein,&rdquo; smiled the
+other; &ldquo;but such as it is, Frank, you shall have it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me when you are about to begin,&rdquo; said the
+cosmopolitan, &ldquo;for, when at public dinners the press is
+toasted, I always drink the toast standing, and shall
+stand while you pronounce the panegyric.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good, Frank; you may stand up now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He accordingly did so, when the stranger likewise
+rose, and uplifting the ruby wine-flask, began.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>OPENING WITH A POETICAL EULOGY OF THE PRESS AND CONTINUING
+WITH TALK INSPIRED BY THE SAME.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Praise be unto the press, not Faust&rsquo;s, but Noah&rsquo;s;
+let us extol and magnify the press, the true press of
+Noah, from which breaketh the true morning. Praise
+be unto the press, not the black press but the red;
+let us extol and magnify the press, the red press of Noah,
+from which cometh inspiration. Ye pressmen of the
+Rhineland and the Rhine, join in with all ye who tread
+out the glad tidings on isle Madeira or Mitylene.&mdash;Who
+giveth redness of eyes by making men long to tarry at
+the fine print?&mdash;Praise be unto the press, the rosy press
+of Noah, which giveth rosiness of hearts, by making men
+long to tarry at the rosy wine.&mdash;Who hath babblings and
+contentions? Who, without cause, inflicteth wounds?
+Praise be unto the press, the kindly press of Noah,
+which knitteth friends, which fuseth foes.&mdash;Who may be
+bribed?&mdash;Who may be bound?&mdash;Praise be unto the press,
+the free press of Noah, which will not lie for tyrants,
+but make tyrants speak the truth.&mdash;Then praise be unto
+the press, the frank old press of Noah; then let us
+extol and magnify the press, the brave old press of Noah;
+then let us with roses garland and enwreath the press,
+the grand old press of Noah, from which flow streams of
+knowledge which give man a bliss no more unreal than
+his pain.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You deceived me,&rdquo; smiled the cosmopolitan, as both
+now resumed their seats; &ldquo;you roguishly took advantage
+of my simplicity; you archly played upon my enthusiasm.
+But never mind; the offense, if any, was so charming,
+I almost wish you would offend again. As for certain
+poetic left-handers in your panegyric, those I cheerfully
+concede to the indefinite privileges of the poet. Upon
+the whole, it was quite in the lyric style&mdash;a style I always
+admire on account of that spirit of Sibyllic confidence
+and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime ingredient.
+But come,&rdquo; glancing at his companion&rsquo;s glass, &ldquo;for a
+lyrist, you let the bottle stay with you too long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The lyre and the vine forever!&rdquo; cried the other in
+his rapture, or what seemed such, heedless of the hint,
+&ldquo;the vine, the vine! is it not the most graceful and
+bounteous of all growths? And, by its being such, is
+not something meant&mdash;divinely meant? As I live, a
+vine, a Catawba vine, shall be planted on my grave!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A genial thought; but your glass there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, oh,&rdquo; taking a moderate sip, &ldquo;but you, why don&rsquo;t
+you drink?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have forgotten, my dear Charlie, what I told
+you of my previous convivialities to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried the other, now in manner quite abandoned
+to the lyric mood, not without contrast to the easy
+sociability of his companion. &ldquo;Oh, one can&rsquo;t drink too
+much of good old wine&mdash;the genuine, mellow old port.
+Pooh, pooh! drink away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then keep me company.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; with a flourish, taking another sip&mdash;&ldquo;suppose
+we have cigars. Never mind your pipe there;
+a pipe is best when alone. I say, waiter, bring some
+cigars&mdash;your best.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were brought in a pretty little bit of western
+pottery, representing some kind of Indian utensil, mummy-colored,
+set down in a mass of tobacco leaves, whose
+long, green fans, fancifully grouped, formed with peeps
+of red the sides of the receptacle.</p>
+
+<p>Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of
+pottery, but smaller, both globes; one in guise of an
+apple flushed with red and gold to the life, and, through
+a cleft at top, you saw it was hollow. This was for the
+ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the
+likeness of a wasp&rsquo;s nest, was the match-box.
+&ldquo;There,&rdquo; said the stranger, pushing over the cigar-stand,
+&ldquo;help yourself, and I will touch you off,&rdquo; taking
+a match. &ldquo;Nothing like tobacco,&rdquo; he added, when the
+fumes of the cigar began to wreathe, glancing from the
+smoker to the pottery, &ldquo;I will have a Virginia tobacco-plant
+set over my grave beside the Catawba vine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself
+was good&mdash;but you don&rsquo;t smoke.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Presently, presently&mdash;let me fill your glass again.
+You don&rsquo;t drink.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you; but no more just now. Fill <i>your</i>
+glass.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never
+mind me. Now that it strikes me, let me say, that he
+who, out of superfine gentility or fanatic morality,
+denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious abatement
+in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron
+boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him
+who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing
+at which philanthropists must weep, to see such an one,
+again and again, madly returning to the cigar, which,
+for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while
+still, after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of
+the impossible good goads him on to his fierce misery
+once more&mdash;poor eunuch!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I agree with you,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, still gravely
+social, &ldquo;but you don&rsquo;t smoke.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was
+saying about&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But <i>why</i> don&rsquo;t you smoke&mdash;come. You don&rsquo;t think
+that tobacco, when in league with wine, too much enhances
+the latter&rsquo;s vinous quality&mdash;in short, with certain
+constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To think that, were treason to good fellowship,&rdquo;
+was the warm disclaimer. &ldquo;No, no. But the fact is,
+there is an unpropitious flavor in my mouth just now.
+Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan&rsquo;t smoke
+till I have washed away the lingering memento of it
+with wine. But smoke away, you, and pray, don&rsquo;t
+forget to drink. By-the-way, while we sit here so
+companionably, giving loose to any companionable
+nothing, your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by
+pure contrast, brought to recollection. If he were but
+here now, he would see how much of real heart-joy he
+denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing
+his cigar, &ldquo;I thought I had undeceived you there. I
+thought you had come to a better understanding of my
+eccentric friend.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will
+return, you know. In truth, now that I think of it, I
+am led to conjecture from chance things which dropped
+from Coonskins, during the little interview I had with
+him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago
+came West here, a young misanthrope from the other
+side of the Alleghanies, less to make his fortune, than to
+flee man. Now, since they say trifles sometimes effect
+great results, I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder, if his history were
+probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave
+his sad bias to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood
+the advice of Polonius to Laertes&mdash;advice which, in
+the selfishness it inculcates, is almost on a par with a sort
+of ballad upon the economies of money-making, to be
+occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small retail
+traders in New England.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do hope now, my dear <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'fellew'.">fellow</ins>,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan
+with an air of bland protest, &ldquo;that, in my presence
+at least, you will throw out nothing to the prejudice of
+the sons of the Puritans.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey-day and high times indeed,&rdquo; exclaimed the
+other, nettled, &ldquo;sons of the Puritans forsooth! And
+who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must do them
+reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios,
+whom Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard
+to Polonius,&rdquo; observed the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance,
+expressive of the patience of a superior mind
+at the petulance of an inferior one; &ldquo;how do you characterize
+his advice to Laertes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As false, fatal, and calumnious,&rdquo; exclaimed the other,
+with a degree of ardor befitting one resenting a stigma
+upon the family escutcheon, &ldquo;and for a father to give
+his son&mdash;monstrous. The case you see is this: The son
+is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father?
+Invoke God&rsquo;s blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible
+in his trunk? No. Crams him with maxims smacking
+of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France, with
+maxims of Italy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not
+among other things say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&lsquo;The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel&rsquo;?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class='noin'>Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes it is, Frank. Don&rsquo;t you see? Laertes is to
+take the best of care of his friends&mdash;his proved friends,
+on the same <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'principal'.">principle</ins> that a wine-corker takes the best
+of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle gets a
+sharp knock and don&rsquo;t break, he says, &lsquo;Ah, I&rsquo;ll keep that
+bottle.&rsquo; Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular
+use for it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear, dear!&rdquo; appealingly turning in distress, &ldquo;that&mdash;that
+kind of criticism is&mdash;is&mdash;in fact&mdash;it won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with
+everybody, do but consider the tone of the speech.
+Now I put it to you, Frank; is there anything in it
+hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything
+like &lsquo;sell all thou hast and give to the poor?&rsquo; And,
+in other points, what desire seems most in the father&rsquo;s
+mind, that his son should cherish nobleness for himself,
+or be on his guard against the contrary thing in others?
+An irreligious warner, Frank&mdash;no devout counselor, is
+Polonius. I hate him. Nor can I bear to hear your
+veterans of the world affirm, that he who steers through
+life by the advice of old Polonius will not steer among
+the breakers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no&mdash;I hope nobody affirms that,&rdquo; rejoined the
+cosmopolitan, with tranquil abandonment; sideways reposing
+his arm at full length upon the table. &ldquo;I hope
+nobody affirms that; because, if Polonius&rsquo; advice be
+taken in your sense, then the recommendation of it by
+men of experience would appear to involve more or less
+of an unhandsome sort of reflection upon human nature.
+And yet,&rdquo; with a perplexed air, &ldquo;your suggestions have
+put things in such a strange light to me as in fact a
+little to disturb my previous notions of Polonius and
+what he says. To be frank, by your ingenuity you have
+unsettled me there, to that degree that were it not for
+our coincidence of opinion in general, I should almost
+think I was now at length beginning to feel the ill effect
+of an immature mind, too much consorting with a
+mature one, except on the ground of first principles in
+common.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really and truly,&rdquo; cried the other with a kind of
+tickled modesty and pleased concern, &ldquo;mine is an understanding
+too weak to throw out grapnels and hug another
+to it. I have indeed heard of some great scholars
+in these days, whose boast is less that they have made
+disciples than victims. But for me, had I the power to
+do such things, I have not the heart to desire.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe you, my dear Charlie. And yet, I repeat,
+by your commentaries on Polonius you have, I know
+not how, unsettled me; so that now I don&rsquo;t exactly see
+how Shakespeare meant the words he puts in Polonius&rsquo;
+mouth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some say that he meant them to open people&rsquo;s eyes;
+but I don&rsquo;t think so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Open their eyes?&rdquo; echoed the cosmopolitan, slowly
+expanding his; &ldquo;what is there in this world for one to
+open his eyes to? I mean in the sort of invidious sense
+you cite?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, others say he meant to corrupt people&rsquo;s morals;
+and still others, that he had no express intention at
+all, but in effect opens their eyes and corrupts their
+morals in one operation. All of which I reject.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you reject so crude an hypothesis; and yet,
+to confess, in reading Shakespeare in my closet, struck
+by some passage, I have laid down the volume, and said:
+&lsquo;This Shakespeare is a queer man.&rsquo; At times seeming
+irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There
+appears to be a certain&mdash;what shall I call it?&mdash;hidden
+sun, say, about him, at once enlightening and mystifying.
+Now, I should be afraid to say what I have sometimes
+thought that hidden sun might be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think it was the true light?&rdquo; with clandestine
+geniality again filling the other&rsquo;s glass.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I would prefer to decline answering a categorical
+question there. Shakespeare has got to be a kind of
+deity. Prudent minds, having certain latent thoughts
+concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of lasting
+probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations,
+we are permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to be
+adored, not arraigned; but, so we do it with humility, we
+may a little canvass his characters. There&rsquo;s his Autolycus
+now, a fellow that always puzzled me. How is one
+to take Autolycus? A rogue so happy, so lucky, so
+triumphant, of so almost captivatingly vicious a career
+that a virtuous man reduced to the poor-house (were
+such a contingency conceivable), might almost long to
+change sides with him. And yet, see the words put into
+his mouth: &lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; cries Autolycus, as he comes galloping,
+gay as a buck, upon the stage, &lsquo;oh,&rsquo; he laughs, &lsquo;oh what
+a fool is Honesty, and Trust, his sworn brother, a very
+simple gentleman.&rsquo; Think of that. Trust, that is, confidence&mdash;that
+is, the thing in this universe the sacredest&mdash;is
+rattlingly pronounced just the simplest. And the
+scenes in which the rogue figures seem purposely devised
+for verification of his principles. Mind, Charlie, I
+do not say it <i>is</i> so, far from it; but I <i>do</i> say it seems so.
+Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon
+the persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets
+than picking them, more to be made by an expert knave
+than a bungling beggar; and for this reason, as he
+thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft hearts.
+The devil&rsquo;s drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he
+wore the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the
+character and career of one thus wicked and thus happy,
+my sole consolation is in the fact that no such creature
+ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which
+evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he
+is, though only a poet was his maker. It may be, that
+in that paper-and-ink investiture of his, Autolycus acts
+more effectively upon mankind than he would in a flesh-and-blood
+one. Can his influence be salutary? True,
+in Autolycus there is humor; but though, according to
+my principle, humor is in general to be held a saving
+quality, yet the case of Autolycus is an exception;
+because it is his humor which, so to speak, oils his
+mischievousness. The bravadoing mischievousness of
+Autolycus is slid into the world on humor, as a pirate
+schooner, with colors flying, is launched into the sea on
+greased ways.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I approve of Autolycus as little as you,&rdquo; said the
+stranger, who, during his companion&rsquo;s commonplaces,
+had seemed less attentive to them than to maturing with
+in his own mind the original conceptions destined to
+eclipse them. &ldquo;But I cannot believe that Autolycus,
+mischievous as he must prove upon the stage, can be
+near so much so as such a character as Polonius.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; bluntly, and yet not
+impolitely, returned the cosmopolitan; &ldquo;to be sure, accepting
+your view of the old courtier, then if between
+him and Autolycus you raise the question of unprepossessingness,
+I grant you the latter comes off best. For a
+moist rogue may tickle the midriff, while a dry worldling
+may but wrinkle the spleen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Polonius is not dry,&rdquo; said the other excitedly;
+&ldquo;he drules. One sees the fly-blown old fop drule and
+look wise. His vile wisdom is made the viler by his
+vile rheuminess. The bowing and cringing, time-serving
+old sinner&mdash;is such an one to give manly precepts to
+youth? The discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state;
+senile prudence; fatuous soullessness! The ribanded
+old dog is paralytic all down one side, and that the side
+of nobleness. His soul is gone out. Only nature&rsquo;s automatonism
+keeps him on his legs. As with some old
+trees, the bark survives the pith, and will still stand
+stiffly up, though but to rim round punk, so the body
+of old Polonius has outlived his soul.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan with serious air,
+almost displeased; &ldquo;though I yield to none in admiration
+of earnestness, yet, I think, even earnestness may have
+limits. To human minds, strong language is always
+more or less distressing. Besides, Polonius is an old
+man&mdash;as I remember him upon the stage&mdash;with snowy
+locks. Now charity requires that such a figure&mdash;think
+of it how you will&mdash;should at least be treated with
+civility. Moreover, old age is ripeness, and I once
+heard say, &lsquo;Better ripe than raw.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But not better rotten than raw!&rdquo; bringing down his
+hand with energy on the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, bless me,&rdquo; in mild surprise contemplating his
+heated comrade, &ldquo;how you fly out against this unfortunate
+Polonius&mdash;a being that never was, nor will be.
+And yet, viewed in a Christian light,&rdquo; he added pensively,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that anger against this man of straw
+is a whit less wise than anger against a man of flesh,
+Madness, to be mad with anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That may be, or may not be,&rdquo; returned the other, a
+little testily, perhaps; &ldquo;but I stick to what I said, that
+it is better to be raw than rotten. And what is to be
+feared on that head, may be known from this: that it is
+with the best of hearts as with the best of pears&mdash;a dangerous
+experiment to linger too long upon the scene.
+This did Polonius. Thank fortune, Frank, I am young,
+every tooth sound in my head, and if good wine can
+keep me where I am, long shall I remain so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; with a smile. &ldquo;But wine, to do good, must
+be drunk. You have talked much and well, Charlie;
+but drunk little and indifferently&mdash;fill up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Presently, presently,&rdquo; with a hasty and preoccupied
+air. &ldquo;If I remember right, Polonius hints as much as
+that one should, under no circumstances, commit the indiscretion
+of aiding in a pecuniary way an unfortunate
+friend. He drules out some stale stuff about &lsquo;loan losing
+both itself and friend,&rsquo; don&rsquo;t he? But our bottle; is it
+glued fast? Keep it moving, my dear Frank. Good
+wine, and upon my soul I begin to feel it, and through
+me old Polonius&mdash;yes, this wine, I fear, is what excites
+me so against that detestable old dog without a tooth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, the cosmopolitan, cigar in mouth, slowly
+raised the bottle, and brought it slowly to the light,
+looking at it steadfastly, as one might at a thermometer
+in August, to see not how low it was, but how high.
+Then whiffing out a puff, set it down, and said: &ldquo;Well,
+Charlie, if what wine you have drunk came out of this
+bottle, in that case I should say that if&mdash;supposing a
+case&mdash;that if one fellow had an object in getting another
+fellow fuddled, and this fellow to be fuddled was of
+your capacity, the operation would be comparatively
+inexpensive. What do you think, Charlie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I think I don&rsquo;t much admire the supposition,&rdquo;
+said Charlie, with a look of resentment; &ldquo;it ain&rsquo;t safe,
+depend upon it, Frank, to venture upon too jocose suppositions
+with one&rsquo;s friends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, bless you, Frank, my supposition wasn&rsquo;t personal,
+but general. You mustn&rsquo;t be so touchy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I am touchy it is the wine. Sometimes, when I
+freely drink, <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'it it'.">it</ins> has a touchy effect on me, I have observed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Freely drink? you haven&rsquo;t drunk the perfect measure
+of one glass, yet. While for me, this must be my
+fourth or fifth, thanks to your importunity; not to speak
+of all I drank this morning, for old acquaintance&rsquo; sake.
+Drink, drink; you must drink.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I drink while you are talking,&rdquo; laughed the
+other; &ldquo;you have not noticed it, but I have drunk my
+share. Have a queer way I learned from a sedate old
+uncle, who used to tip off his glass-unperceived. Do
+you fill up, and my glass, too. There! Now away
+with that stump, and have a new cigar. Good fellowship
+forever!&rdquo; again in the lyric mood, &ldquo;Say, Frank,
+are we not men? I say are we not human? Tell me,
+were they not human who engendered us, as before
+heaven I believe they shall be whom we shall engender?
+Fill up, up, up, my friend. Let the ruby tide aspire,
+and all ruby aspirations with it! Up, fill up! Be we
+convivial. And conviviality, what is it? The word, I
+mean; what expresses it? A living together. But
+bats live together, and did you ever hear of convivial
+bats?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I ever did,&rdquo; observed the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;it has
+quite slipped my recollection.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But <i>why</i> did you never hear of convivial bats, nor
+anybody else? Because bats, though they live together,
+live not together genially. Bats are not genial souls.
+But men are; and how delightful to think that the word
+which among men signifies the highest pitch of geniality,
+implies, as indispensable auxiliary, the cheery
+benediction of the bottle. Yes, Frank, to live together
+in the finest sense, we must drink together. And so,
+what wonder that he who loves not wine, that sober
+wretch has a lean heart&mdash;a heart like a wrung-out old
+bluing-bag, and loves not his kind? Out upon him, to
+the rag-house with him, hang him&mdash;the ungenial
+soul!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, now, now, can&rsquo;t you be convivial without being
+censorious? I like easy, unexcited conviviality. For
+the sober man, really, though for my part I naturally
+love a cheerful glass, I will not prescribe my nature as
+the law to other natures. So don&rsquo;t abuse the sober
+man. Conviviality is one good thing, and sobriety is
+another good thing. So don&rsquo;t be one-sided.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if I am one-sided, it is the wine. Indeed, indeed,
+I have indulged too genially. My excitement
+upon slight provocation shows it. But yours is a
+stronger head; drink you. By the way, talking of geniality,
+it is much on the increase in these days, ain&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is, and I hail the fact. Nothing better attests
+the advance of the humanitarian spirit. In former and
+less humanitarian ages&mdash;the ages of amphitheatres and
+gladiators&mdash;geniality was mostly confined to the fireside
+and table. But in our age&mdash;the age of joint-stock companies
+and free-and-easies&mdash;it is with this precious
+quality as with precious gold in old Peru, which Pizarro
+found making up the scullion&rsquo;s sauce-pot as the Inca&rsquo;s
+crown. Yes, we golden boys, the moderns, have geniality
+<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'everwhere'.">everywhere</ins>&mdash;a bounty broadcast like noonlight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True, true; my sentiments again. Geniality has
+invaded each department and profession. We have genial
+senators, genial authors, genial lecturers, genial
+doctors, genial clergymen, genial surgeons, and the next
+thing we shall have genial hangmen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As to the last-named sort of person,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan,
+&ldquo;I trust that the advancing spirit of geniality
+will at last enable us to dispense with him. No murderers&mdash;no
+hangmen. And surely, when the whole
+world shall have been genialized, it will be as out of
+place to talk of murderers, as in a Christianized world
+to talk of sinners.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To pursue the thought,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;every
+blessing is attended with some evil, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;that may be better
+let pass for a loose saying, than for hopeful doctrine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, assuming the saying&rsquo;s truth, it would apply
+to the future supremacy of the genial spirit, since then
+it will fare with the hangman as it did with the weaver
+when the spinning-jenny whizzed into the ascendant.
+Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch
+turn his hand to? Butchering?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That he could turn his hand to it seems probable;
+but that, under the circumstances, it would be appropriate,
+might in some minds admit of a question. For one,
+I am inclined to think&mdash;and I trust it will not be held
+fastidiousness&mdash;that it would hardly be suitable to the
+dignity of our nature, that an individual, once employed
+in attending the last hours of human unfortunates,
+should, that office being extinct, transfer himself to the
+business of attending the last hours of unfortunate cattle.
+I would suggest that the individual turn valet&mdash;a
+vocation to which he would, perhaps, appear not wholly
+inadapted by his familiar dexterity about the person. In
+particular, for giving a finishing tie to a gentleman&rsquo;s
+cravat, I know few who would, in all likelihood, be,
+from previous occupation, better fitted than the professional
+person in question.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you in earnest?&rdquo; regarding the serene speaker
+with unaffected curiosity; &ldquo;are you really in earnest?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I trust I am never otherwise,&rdquo; was the mildly earnest
+reply; &ldquo;but talking of the advance of geniality, I
+am not without hopes that it will eventually exert its
+influence even upon so difficult a subject as the misanthrope.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A genial misanthrope! I thought I had stretched
+the rope pretty hard in talking of genial hangmen. A
+genial misanthrope is no more conceivable than a surly
+philanthropist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; lightly depositing in an unbroken little
+cylinder the ashes of his cigar, &ldquo;true, the two you
+name are well opposed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, you talk as if there <i>was</i> such a being as a
+surly philanthropist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do. My eccentric friend, whom you call Coonskins,
+is an example. Does he not, as I explained to
+you, hide under a surly air a philanthropic heart?
+Now, the genial misanthrope, when, in the process of
+eras, he shall turn up, will be the converse of this; under
+an affable air, he will hide a misanthropical heart.
+In short, the genial misanthrope will be a new kind of
+monster, but still no small improvement upon the original
+one, since, instead of making faces and throwing
+stones at people, like that poor old crazy man, Timon,
+he will take steps, fiddle in hand, and set the tickled
+world a&rsquo;dancing. In a word, as the progress of Christianization
+mellows those in manner whom it cannot
+mend in mind, much the same will it prove with the
+progress of genialization. And so, thanks to geniality,
+the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish address, will
+take on refinement and softness&mdash;to so genial a degree,
+indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope
+of the coming century will be almost as popular as, I
+am sincerely sorry to say, some philanthropists of the
+present time would seem not to be, as witness my eccentric
+friend named before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; cried the other, a little weary, perhaps, of a
+speculation so abstract, &ldquo;well, however it may be with
+the century to come, certainly in the century which is,
+whatever else one may be, he must be genial or he is
+nothing. So fill up, fill up, and be genial!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am trying my best,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, still
+calmly companionable. &ldquo;A moment since, we talked
+of Pizarro, gold, and Peru; no doubt, now, you remember
+that when the Spaniard first entered Atahalpa&rsquo;s treasure-chamber,
+and saw such profusion of plate stacked
+up, right and left, with the wantonness of old barrels in
+a brewer&rsquo;s yard, the needy fellow felt a twinge of misgiving,
+of want of confidence, as to the genuineness of
+an opulence so profuse. He went about rapping the
+shining vases with his knuckles. But it was all gold,
+pure gold, good gold, sterling gold, which how cheerfully
+would have been stamped such at Goldsmiths&rsquo;
+Hall. And just so those needy minds, which, through
+their own insincerity, having no confidence in mankind,
+doubt lest the liberal geniality of this age be spurious.
+They are small Pizarros in their way&mdash;by the
+very princeliness of men&rsquo;s geniality stunned into distrust
+of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Far be such distrust from you and me, my genial
+friend,&rdquo; cried the other fervently; &ldquo;fill up, fill up!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, this all along seems a division of labor,&rdquo;
+smiled the cosmopolitan. &ldquo;I do about all the drinking,
+and you do about all&mdash;the genial. But yours is a nature
+competent to do that to a large population. And now,
+my friend,&rdquo; with a peculiarly grave air, evidently foreshadowing
+something not unimportant, and very likely
+of close personal interest; &ldquo;wine, you know, opens the
+heart, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Opens it!&rdquo; with exultation, &ldquo;it thaws it right out.
+Every heart is ice-bound till wine melt it, and reveal the
+tender grass and sweet herbage budding below, with
+every dear secret, hidden before like a dropped jewel in a
+snow-bank, lying there unsuspected through winter till
+spring.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And just in that way, my dear Charlie, is one of
+my little secrets now to be shown forth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; eagerly moving round his chair, &ldquo;what is it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be not so impetuous, my dear Charlie. Let me
+explain. You see, naturally, I am a man not overgifted
+with assurance; in general, I am, if anything, diffidently
+reserved; so, if I shall presently seem otherwise, the reason
+is, that you, by the geniality you have evinced in all
+your talk, and especially the noble way in which, while
+affirming your good opinion of men, you intimated that
+you never could prove false to any man, but most by
+your indignation at a particularly illiberal passage in
+Polonius&rsquo; advice&mdash;in short, in short,&rdquo; with extreme embarrassment,
+&ldquo;how shall I express what I mean, unless
+I add that by your whole character you impel me to
+throw myself upon your nobleness; in one word, put
+confidence in you, a generous confidence?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, I see,&rdquo; with heightened interest, &ldquo;something
+of moment you wish to confide. Now, what is it,
+Frank? Love affair?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, not that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, then, my <i>dear</i> Frank? Speak&mdash;depend upon
+me to the last. Out with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Out it shall come, then,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan.
+&ldquo;I am in want, urgent want, of money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>A METAMORPHOSIS MORE <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'SUPRISING'.">SURPRISING</ins> THAN ANY IN OVID.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In want of money!&rdquo; pushing back his chair as
+from a suddenly-disclosed man-trap or crater.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; na&iuml;vely assented the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;and you
+are going to loan me fifty dollars. I could almost wish
+I was in need of more, only for your sake. Yes, my
+dear Charlie, for your sake; that you might the better
+prove your noble, kindliness, my dear Charlie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;None of your dear Charlies,&rdquo; cried the other,
+springing to his feet, and buttoning up his coat, as if
+hastily to depart upon a long journey.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, why, why?&rdquo; painfully looking up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;None of your why, why, whys!&rdquo; tossing out a foot,
+&ldquo;go to the devil, sir! Beggar, impostor!&mdash;never so
+deceived in a man in my life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>SHOWING THAT THE AGE OF MAGIC AND MAGICIANS IS NOT YET OVER.</span></h2>
+
+<p>While speaking or rather hissing those words, the
+boon companion underwent much such a change as one
+reads of in fairy-books. Out of old materials sprang a
+new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake.</p>
+
+<p>The cosmopolitan rose, the traces of previous feeling
+vanished; looked steadfastly at his transformed friend a
+moment, then, taking ten half-eagles from his pocket,
+stooped down, and laid them, one by one, in a circle
+round him; and, retiring a pace, waved his long tasseled
+pipe with the air of a necromancer, an air heightened
+by his costume, accompanying each wave with a solemn
+murmur of cabalistical words.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, he within the magic-ring stood suddenly
+rapt, exhibiting every symptom of a successful charm&mdash;a
+turned cheek, a fixed attitude, a frozen eye; spellbound,
+not more by the waving wand than by the ten
+invincible talismans on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Reappear, reappear, reappear, oh, my former friend!
+Replace this hideous apparition with thy blest shape,
+and be the token of thy return the words, &lsquo;My dear
+Frank.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Frank,&rdquo; now cried the restored friend,
+cordially stepping out of the ring, with regained self-possession
+regaining lost identity, &ldquo;My dear Frank,
+what a funny man you are; full of fun as an egg of
+meat. How could you tell me that absurd story of
+your being in need? But I relish a good joke too well
+to spoil it by letting on. Of course, I humored the
+thing; and, on my side, put on all the cruel airs you
+would have me. Come, this little episode of fictitious
+estrangement will but enhance the delightful reality.
+Let us sit down again, and finish our bottle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, dropping
+the necromancer with the same facility with which he
+had assumed it. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he added, soberly picking
+up the gold pieces, and returning them with a chink to
+his pocket, &ldquo;yes, I am something of a funny man now
+and then; while for you, Charlie,&rdquo; eying him in tenderness,
+&ldquo;what you say about your humoring the thing is
+true enough; never did man second a joke better than
+you did just now. You played your part better than I
+did mine; you played it, Charlie, to the life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, I once belonged to an amateur play
+company; that accounts for it. But come, fill up,
+and let&rsquo;s talk of something else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; acquiesced the cosmopolitan, seating himself,
+and quietly brimming his glass, &ldquo;what shall we talk
+about?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, anything you please,&rdquo; a sort of nervously
+accommodating.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, suppose we talk about Charlemont?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charlemont? What&rsquo;s Charlemont? Who&rsquo;s Charlemont?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You shall hear, my dear Charlie,&rdquo; answered the
+cosmopolitan. &ldquo;I will tell you the story of Charlemont,
+the gentleman-madman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>WHICH MAY PASS FOR WHATEVER IT MAY PROVE TO BE WORTH.</span></h2>
+
+<p>But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont,
+a reply must in civility be made to a certain voice
+which methinks I hear, that, in view of past chapters,
+and more particularly the last, where certain antics appear,
+exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever
+dress or act like your cosmopolitan? And who, it
+might be returned, did ever dress or act like harlequin?</p>
+
+<p>Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe
+fidelity to real life should be exacted by any one, who,
+by taking up such a work, sufficiently shows that he is
+not unwilling to drop real life, and turn, for a time, to
+something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any
+one should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any
+one, who, for any cause, finds real life dull, should yet
+demand of him who is to divert his attention from it,
+that he should be true to that dullness.</p>
+
+<p>There is another class, and with this class we side,
+who sit down to a work of amusement tolerantly as they
+sit at a play, and with much the same expectations and
+feelings. They look that fancy shall evoke scenes different
+from those of the same old crowd round the custom-house
+counter, and same old dishes on the boardinghouse
+table, with characters unlike those of the same
+old acquaintances they meet in the same old way every
+day in the same old street. And as, in real life, the proprieties
+will not allow people to act out themselves with
+that unreserve permitted to the stage; so, in books of
+fiction, they look not only for more entertainment, but,
+at bottom, even for more reality, than real life itself can
+show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want
+nature, too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect
+transformed. In this way of thinking, the people in a
+fiction, like the people in a play, must dress as nobody
+exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act as
+nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion:
+it should present another world, and yet one to which
+we feel the tie.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant
+endeavor, surely a little is to be allowed to that writer
+who, in all his scenes, does but seek to minister to what,
+as he understands it, is the implied wish of the more
+indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin
+can never appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut
+capers too fantastic.</p>
+
+<p>One word more. Though every one knows how
+bootless it is to be in all cases vindicating one&rsquo;s self, never
+mind how convinced one may be that he is never in the
+wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation of
+his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary
+censure applied to but a work of imagination, is no easy
+thing. The mention of this weakness will explain why
+such readers as may think they perceive something
+harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the
+cosmopolitan with the bristling cynic, and his restrained
+good-nature with the boon-companion, are now referred
+to that chapter where some similar apparent inconsistency
+in another character is, on general principles,
+modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN TELLS THE STORY OF THE GENTLEMAN
+MADMAN.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charlemont was a young merchant of French
+descent, living in St. Louis&mdash;a man not deficient in
+mind, and possessed of that sterling and captivating
+kindliness, seldom in perfection seen but in youthful
+bachelors, united at times to a remarkable sort of gracefully
+devil-may-care and witty good-humor. Of course, he
+was admired by everybody, and loved, as only mankind
+can love, by not a few. But in his twenty-ninth year
+a change came over him. Like one whose hair turns
+gray in a night, so in a day Charlemont turned from
+affable to morose. His acquaintances were passed without
+greeting; while, as for his confidential friends, them
+he pointedly, unscrupulously, and with a kind of fierceness,
+cut dead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One, provoked by such conduct, would fain have
+resented it with words as disdainful; while another,
+shocked by the change, and, in concern for a friend,
+magnanimously overlooking affronts, implored to know
+what sudden, secret grief had distempered him. But
+from resentment and from tenderness Charlemont alike
+turned away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ere long, to the general surprise, the merchant
+Charlemont was gazetted, and the same day it was reported
+that he had withdrawn from town, but not
+before placing his entire property in the hands of responsible
+assignees for the benefit of creditors.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whither he had vanished, none could guess. At
+length, nothing being heard, it was surmised that he
+must have made away with himself&mdash;a surmise, doubtless,
+originating in the remembrance of the change some
+months previous to his bankruptcy&mdash;a change of a sort
+only to be ascribed to a mind suddenly thrown from its
+balance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Years passed. It was spring-time, and lo, one
+bright morning, Charlemont lounged into the St. Louis
+coffee-houses&mdash;gay, polite, humane, companionable, and
+dressed in the height of costly elegance. Not only was
+he alive, but he was himself again. Upon meeting with
+old acquaintances, he made the first advances, and in
+such a manner that it was impossible not to meet him
+half-way. Upon other old friends, whom he did not
+chance casually to meet, he either personally called, or
+left his card and compliments for them; and to several,
+sent presents of game or hampers of wine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They say the world is sometimes harshly unforgiving,
+but it was not so to Charlemont. The world
+feels a return of love for one who returns to it as he
+did. Expressive of its renewed interest was a whisper,
+an inquiring whisper, how now, exactly, so long after
+his bankruptcy, it fared with Charlemont&rsquo;s purse.
+Rumor, seldom at a loss for answers, replied that he had
+spent nine years in Marseilles in France, and there acquiring
+a second fortune, had returned with it, a man
+devoted henceforth to genial friendships.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Added years went by, and the restored wanderer
+still the same; or rather, by his noble qualities, grew up
+like golden maize in the encouraging sun of good
+opinions. But still the latent wonder was, what had
+caused that change in him at a period when, pretty much
+as now, he was, to all appearance, in the possession of
+the same fortune, the same friends, the same popularity.
+But nobody thought it would be the thing to question
+him here.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At last, at a dinner at his house, when all the guests
+but one had successively departed; this remaining
+guest, an old acquaintance, being just enough under
+the influence of wine to set aside the fear of touching
+upon a delicate point, ventured, in a way which perhaps
+spoke more favorably for his heart than his tact, to beg
+of his host to explain the one enigma of his life. Deep
+melancholy overspread the before cheery face of Charlemont;
+he sat for some moments tremulously silent; then
+pushing a full decanter towards the guest, in a choked
+voice, said: &lsquo;No, no! when by art, and care, and time,
+flowers are made to bloom over a grave, who would
+seek to dig all up again only to know the mystery?&mdash;The
+wine.&rsquo; When both glasses were filled, Charlemont
+took his, and lifting it, added lowly: &lsquo;If ever, in days
+to come, you shall see ruin at hand, and, thinking you
+understand mankind, shall tremble for your friendships,
+and tremble for your pride; and, partly through love
+for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be
+beforehand with the world, and save it from a sin by
+prospectively taking that sin to yourself, then will you
+do as one I now dream of once did, and like him will
+you suffer; but how fortunate and how grateful should
+you be, if like him, after all that had happened, you
+could be a little happy again.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When the guest went away, it was with the persuasion,
+that though outwardly restored in mind as in
+fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont&rsquo;s old malady
+survived, and that it was not well for friends to touch
+one dangerous string.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN STRIKINGLY EVINCES THE ARTLESSNESS
+OF HIS NATURE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what do you think of the story of Charlemont?&rdquo;
+mildly asked he who had told it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A very strange one,&rdquo; answered the auditor, who had
+been such not with perfect ease, &ldquo;but is it true?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not; it is a story which I told with
+the purpose of every story-teller&mdash;to amuse. Hence, if
+it seem strange to you, that strangeness is the romance;
+it is what contrasts it with real life; it is the invention,
+in brief, the fiction as opposed to the fact. For do but
+ask yourself, my dear Charlie,&rdquo; lovingly leaning over towards
+him, &ldquo;I rest it with your own heart now, whether
+such a forereaching motive as Charlemont hinted
+he had acted on in his change&mdash;whether such a motive,
+I say, were a sort of one at all justified by the nature
+of human society? Would you, for one, turn the
+cold shoulder to a friend&mdash;a convivial one, say, whose
+pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can you ask me, my dear Frank? You know
+I would scorn such meanness.&rdquo; But rising somewhat
+disconcerted&mdash;&ldquo;really, early as it is, I think I must retire;
+my head,&rdquo; putting up his hand to it, &ldquo;feels unpleasantly;
+this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I
+drank of it, has played the deuce with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Little as you drank of this elixir of logwood? Why,
+Charlie, you are losing your mind. To talk so of the
+genuine, mellow old port. Yes, I think that by all
+means you had better away, and sleep it off. There&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+apologize&mdash;don&rsquo;t explain&mdash;go, go&mdash;I understand
+you exactly. I will see you to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON
+ENSUES PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.</span></h2>
+
+<p>As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew,
+a stranger advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan,
+said: &ldquo;I think I heard you say you would see that
+man again. Be warned; don&rsquo;t you do so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man,
+sandy-haired, and Saxon-looking; perhaps five and
+forty; tall, and, but for a certain angularity, well made;
+little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a look of
+plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
+dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow,
+placidly thoughtful, than by his general aspect, which
+had that look of youthfulness in maturity, peculiar
+sometimes to habitual health of body, the original gift
+of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance
+of the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution
+as much as morality. A neat, comely, almost
+ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red clover-blossom at
+coolish dawn&mdash;the color of warmth preserved by the
+virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what
+of shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled;
+in that way, he seemed a kind of cross between
+a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it seemed
+as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability
+play second fiddle to the last.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with
+slow dignity, &ldquo;if I cannot with unmixed satisfaction
+hail a hint pointed at one who has just been clinking
+the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
+disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present
+case, could alone have prompted such an intimation.
+My friend, whose seat is still warm, has retired for the
+night, leaving more or less in his bottle here. Pray, sit
+down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if
+you choose to hint aught further unfavorable to the man,
+the genial warmth of whose person in part passes into
+yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders through
+you&mdash;be it so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite beautiful conceits,&rdquo; said the stranger, now
+scholastically and artistically eying the picturesque
+speaker, as if he were a statue in the Pitti Palace;
+&ldquo;very beautiful:&rdquo; then with the gravest interest,
+&ldquo;yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul&mdash;one
+full of all love and truth; for where beauty is,
+there must those be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A pleasing belief,&rdquo; rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning
+with an even air, &ldquo;and to confess, long ago it
+pleased me. Yes, with you and Schiller, I am pleased
+to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible with
+ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence
+in the latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the
+rattle-snake, whose lithe neck and burnished maze of
+tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft in the sun, who on
+the prairie can behold without wonder?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter
+into their spirit&mdash;as some earnest descriptive speakers
+will&mdash;as unconsciously to wreathe his form and sidelong
+crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature described.
+Meantime, the stranger regarded him with
+little surprise, apparently, though with much contemplativeness
+of a mystical sort, and presently said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it
+never occur to you to change personalities with him?
+to feel what it was to be a snake? to glide unsuspected
+in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole beautiful
+body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short,
+did the wish never occur to you to feel yourself exempt
+from knowledge, and conscience, and revel for a while
+in the carefree, joyous life of a perfectly instinctive,
+unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such a wish,&rdquo; replied the other, not perceptibly
+disturbed, &ldquo;I must confess, never consciously was
+mine. Such a wish, indeed, could hardly occur to ordinary
+imaginations, and mine I cannot think much
+above the average.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But now that the idea is suggested,&rdquo; said the
+stranger, with infantile intellectuality, &ldquo;does it not
+raise the desire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly. For though I do not think I have any uncharitable
+prejudice against the rattle-snake, still, I
+should not like to be one. If I were a rattle-snake now,
+there would be no such thing as being genial with men&mdash;men
+would be afraid of me, and then I should be a very
+lonesome and miserable rattle-snake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True, men would be afraid of you. And why?
+Because of your rattle, your hollow rattle&mdash;a sound, as
+I have been told, like the shaking together of small, dry
+skulls in a tune of the Waltz of Death. And here we
+have another beautiful truth. When any creature is by
+its make inimical to other creatures, nature in effect
+labels that creature, much as an apothecary does a
+poison. So that whoever is destroyed by a rattle-snake,
+or other harmful agent, it is his own fault. He should
+have respected the label. Hence that significant passage
+in Scripture, &lsquo;Who will pity the charmer that is
+bitten with a serpent?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>I</i> would pity him,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, a little
+bluntly, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; rejoined the other, still maintaining
+his passionless air, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think, that for a
+man to pity where nature is pitiless, is a little presuming?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion
+the heart decides for itself. But, sir,&rdquo; deepening in
+seriousness, &ldquo;as I now for the first realize, you but a
+moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a
+way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of a tolerant
+spirit, as I hope, I try my best never to be
+frightened at any speculation, so long as it is pursued in
+honesty, yet, for once, I must acknowledge that you do
+really, in the point cited, cause me uneasiness; because
+a proper view of the universe, that view which is suited
+to breed a proper confidence, teaches, if I err not, that
+since all things are justly presided over, not very many
+living agents but must be some way accountable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is a rattle-snake accountable?&rdquo; asked the stranger
+with such a preternaturally cold, gemmy glance out of
+his pellucid blue eye, that he seemed more a metaphysical
+merman than a feeling man; &ldquo;is a rattle-snake
+accountable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I will not affirm that it is,&rdquo; returned the other,
+with the caution of no inexperienced thinker, &ldquo;neither
+will I deny it. But if we suppose it so, I need not say
+that such accountability is neither to you, nor me, nor
+the Court of Common Pleas, but to something superior.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was proceeding, when the stranger would have
+interrupted him; but as reading his argument in his eye,
+the cosmopolitan, without waiting for it to be put into
+words, at once spoke to it: &ldquo;You object to my supposition,
+for but such it is, that the rattle-snake&rsquo;s
+accountability is not by nature manifest; but might not
+much the same thing be urged against man&rsquo;s? A
+<i>reductio ad absurdum</i>, proving the objection vain. But
+if now,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;you consider what capacity
+for mischief there is in a rattle-snake (observe, I do not
+charge it with being mischievous, I but say it has the
+capacity), could you well avoid admitting that that
+would be no symmetrical view of the universe which
+should maintain that, while to man it is forbidden to
+kill, without judicial cause, his fellow, yet the rattle-snake
+has an implied permit of unaccountability to
+murder any creature it takes capricious umbrage at&mdash;man
+included?&mdash;But,&rdquo; with a wearied air, &ldquo;this is no genial
+talk; at least it is not so to me. Zeal at unawares embarked
+me in it. I regret it. Pray, sit down, and take
+some of this wine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your suggestions are new to me,&rdquo; said the other,
+with a kind of condescending appreciativeness, as of
+one who, out of devotion to knowledge, disdains not to
+appropriate the least crumb of it, even from a pauper&rsquo;s
+board; &ldquo;and, as I am a very Athenian in hailing a new
+thought, I cannot consent to let it drop so abruptly.
+Now, the rattle-snake&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing more about rattle-snakes, I beseech,&rdquo; in
+distress; &ldquo;I must positively decline to reenter upon
+that subject. Sit down, sir, I beg, and take some of this
+wine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To invite me to sit down with you is hospitable,&rdquo;
+collectedly acquiescing now in the change of topics;
+&ldquo;and hospitality being fabled to be of oriental origin,
+and forming, as it does, the subject of a pleasing Arabian
+romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in itself&mdash;hence
+I always hear the expressions of hospitality
+with pleasure. But, as for the wine, my regard for
+that beverage is so extreme, and I am so fearful of letting
+it sate me, that I keep my love for it in the lasting
+condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I quaff
+immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but
+wine from a cup I seldom as much as sip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The cosmopolitan turned a mild glance upon the
+speaker, who, now occupying the chair opposite him, sat
+there purely and coldly radiant as a prism. It seemed
+as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and
+ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting
+with a sign, the cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of
+ice-water. &ldquo;Ice it well, waiter,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and now,&rdquo;
+turning to the stranger, &ldquo;will you, if you please, give
+me your reason for the warning words you first addressed
+to me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings
+are,&rdquo; said the stranger; &ldquo;warnings which do not
+forewarn, but in mockery come after the fact. And yet
+something in you bids me think now, that whatever
+latent design your impostor friend might have had upon
+you, it as yet remains unaccomplished. You read his
+label.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what did it say? &lsquo;This is a genial soul,&rsquo; So
+you see you must either give up your doctrine of labels,
+or else your prejudice against my friend. But tell me,&rdquo;
+with renewed earnestness, &ldquo;what do you take him for?
+What is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who
+anybody is. The data which life furnishes, towards
+forming a true estimate of any being, are as insufficient
+to that end as in geometry one side given would be to
+determine the triangle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent
+with your doctrine of labels?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent.
+In a philosophical view, consistency is a certain
+level at all times, maintained in all the thoughts of
+one&rsquo;s mind. But, since nature is nearly all hill and
+dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in knowledge
+without submitting to the natural inequalities in
+the progress? Advance into knowledge is just like
+advance upon the grand Erie canal, where, from the
+character of the country, change of level is inevitable;
+you are locked up and locked down with perpetual
+inconsistencies, and yet all the time you get on; while
+the dullest part of the whole route is what the boatmen
+call the &lsquo;long level&rsquo;&mdash;a consistently-flat surface of sixty
+miles through stagnant swamps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In one particular,&rdquo; rejoined the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;your
+simile is, perhaps, unfortunate. For, after all these
+weary lockings-up and lockings-down, upon how much
+of a higher plain do you finally stand? Enough to make
+it an object? Having from youth been taught reverence
+for knowledge, you must pardon me if, on but this one
+account, I reject your analogy. But really you someway
+bewitch me with your tempting discourse, so that
+I keep straying from my point unawares. You tell me
+you cannot certainly know who or what my friend is;
+pray, what do you conjecture him to be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I conjecture him to be what, among the ancient
+Egyptians, was called a &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; using some unknown
+word.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A &mdash;&mdash;! And what is that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A &mdash;&mdash; is what Proclus, in a little note to his third
+book on the theology of Plato, defines as &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+coming out with a sentence of Greek.</p>
+
+<p>Holding up his glass, and steadily looking through its
+transparency, the cosmopolitan rejoined: &ldquo;That, in so
+defining the thing, Proclus set it to modern understandings
+in the most crystal light it was susceptible of, I
+will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition
+in words suited to perceptions like mine, I should
+take it for a favor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A favor!&rdquo; slightly lifting his cool eyebrows; &ldquo;a
+bridal favor I understand, a knot of white ribands, a
+very beautiful type of the purity of true marriage; but of
+other favors I am yet to learn; and still, in a vague way,
+the word, as you employ it, strikes me as unpleasingly
+significant in general of some poor, unheroic submission
+to being done good to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the goblet of iced-water was brought, and, in
+compliance with a sign from the cosmopolitan, was
+placed before the stranger, who, not before expressing
+acknowledgments, took a draught, apparently refreshing&mdash;its
+very coldness, as with some is the case, proving
+not entirely uncongenial.</p>
+
+<p>At last, setting down the goblet, and gently wiping
+from his lips the beads of water freshly clinging there
+as to the valve of a coral-shell upon a reef, he turned
+upon the cosmopolitan, and, in a manner the most cool,
+self-possessed, and matter-of-fact possible, said: &ldquo;I hold
+to the metempsychosis; and whoever I may be now, I
+feel that I was once the stoic Arrian, and have inklings
+of having been equally puzzled by a word in the current
+language of that former time, very probably answering
+to your word <i>favor</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you favor me by explaining?&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan,
+blandly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; responded the stranger, with a very slight
+degree of severity, &ldquo;I like lucidity, of all things, and
+am afraid I shall hardly be able to converse satisfactorily
+with you, unless you bear it in mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The cosmopolitan ruminatingly eyed him awhile, then
+said: &ldquo;The best way, as I have heard, to get out of a
+labyrinth, is to retrace one&rsquo;s steps. I will accordingly
+retrace mine, and beg you will accompany me. In
+short, once again to return to the point: for what
+reason did you warn me against my friend?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Briefly, then, and clearly, because, as before said, I
+conjecture him to be what, among the ancient Egyptians&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, now,&rdquo; earnestly deprecated the cosmopolitan,
+&ldquo;pray, now, why disturb the repose of those ancient
+Egyptians? What to us are their words or their
+thoughts? Are we pauper Arabs, without a house of
+our own, that, with the mummies, we must turn squatters
+among the dust of the Catacombs?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pharaoh&rsquo;s poorest brick-maker lies proudlier in his
+rags than the Emperor of all the Russias in his hollands,&rdquo;
+oracularly said the stranger; &ldquo;for death, though
+in a worm, is majestic; while life, though in a king, is
+contemptible. So talk not against mummies. It is a
+part of my mission to teach mankind a due reverence
+for mummies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, to arrest these incoherencies, or rather,
+to vary them, a haggard, inspired-looking man now approached&mdash;a
+crazy beggar, asking alms under the form
+of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by himself,
+and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship.
+Though ragged and dirty, there was about him
+no touch of vulgarity; for, by nature, his manner was
+not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared the more
+so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled
+over with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a
+still deeper tinge upon a complexion like that of a
+shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed his look of picturesque
+Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by
+what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient
+to do him any lasting good, but enough, perhaps,
+to suggest a torment of latent doubts at times, whether
+his addled dream of glory were true.</p>
+
+<p>Accepting the tract offered him, the cosmopolitan
+glanced over it, and, seeming to see just what it was, closed
+it, put it in his pocket, eyed the man a moment, then,
+leaning over and presenting him with a shilling, said to
+him, in tones kind and considerate: &ldquo;I am sorry, my
+friend, that I happen to be engaged just now; but,
+having purchased your work, I promise myself much
+satisfaction in its perusal at my earliest leisure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In his tattered, single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned
+meagerly up to his chin, the shutter-brain made him a
+bow, which, for courtesy, would not have misbecome a
+viscount, then turned with silent appeal to the stranger.
+But the stranger sat more like a cold prism than ever,
+while an expression of keen Yankee cuteness, now replacing
+his former mystical one, lent added icicles to his
+aspect. His whole air said: &ldquo;Nothing from me.&rdquo; The
+repulsed petitioner threw a look full of resentful pride
+and cracked disdain upon him, and went his way.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, now,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, a little reproachfully,
+&ldquo;you ought to have sympathized with that man;
+tell me, did you feel no fellow-feeling? Look at his
+tract here, quite in the transcendental vein.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said the stranger, declining the tract,
+&ldquo;I never patronize scoundrels.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Scoundrels?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I detected in him, sir, a damning peep of sense&mdash;damning,
+I say; for sense in a seeming madman is scoundrelism.
+I take him for a cunning vagabond, who picks
+up a vagabond living by adroitly playing the madman.
+Did you not remark how he flinched under my eye?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really?&rdquo; drawing a long, astonished breath, &ldquo;I could
+hardly have divined in you a temper so subtlely distrustful.
+Flinched? to be sure he did, poor fellow;
+you received him with so lame a welcome. As for his
+adroitly playing the madman, invidious critics might
+object the same to some one or two strolling magi of
+these days. But that is a matter I know nothing about.
+But, once more, and for the last time, to return to the
+point: why sir, did you warn me against my friend? I
+shall rejoice, if, as I think it will prove, your want of
+confidence in my friend rests upon a basis equally slender
+with your distrust of the lunatic. Come, why did you
+warn me? Put it, I beseech, in few words, and those
+English.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I warned you against him because he is suspected
+for what on these boats is known&mdash;so they tell me&mdash;as
+a Mississippi operator.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An operator, ah? he operates, does he? My friend,
+then, is something like what the Indians call a Great
+Medicine, is he? He operates, he purges, he drains off
+the repletions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I perceive, sir,&rdquo; said the stranger, constitutionally
+obtuse to the pleasant drollery, &ldquo;that your notion, of
+what is called a Great Medicine, needs correction. The
+Great Medicine among the Indians is less a bolus than a
+man in grave esteem for his politic sagacity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And is not my friend politic? Is not my friend sagacious?
+By your own definition, is not my friend a Great
+Medicine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, he is an operator, a Mississippi operator; an
+equivocal character. That he is such, I little doubt,
+having had him pointed out to me as such by one desirous
+of initiating me into any little novelty of this
+western region, where I never before traveled. And,
+sir, if I am not mistaken, you also are a stranger here
+(but, indeed, where in this strange universe is not one a
+stranger?) and that is a reason why I felt moved to warn
+you against a companion who could not be otherwise
+than perilous to one of a free and trustful disposition.
+But I repeat the hope, that, thus far at least, he has not
+succeeded with you, and trust that, for the future, he
+will not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you for your concern; but hardly can I equally
+thank you for so steadily maintaining the hypothesis
+of my friend&rsquo;s objectionableness. True, I but made his
+acquaintance for the first to-day, and know little of his
+antecedents; but that would seem no just reason why a
+nature like his should not of itself inspire confidence.
+And since your own knowledge of the gentleman is not,
+by your account, so exact as it might be, you will pardon
+me if I decline to welcome any further suggestions unflattering
+to him. Indeed, sir,&rdquo; with friendly decision,
+&ldquo;let us change the subject.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE MYSTICAL MASTER INTRODUCES THE PRACTICAL DISCIPLE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Both, the subject and the interlocutor,&rdquo; replied
+the stranger rising, and waiting the return towards him
+of a promenader, that moment turning at the further
+end of his walk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Egbert!&rdquo; said he, calling.</p>
+
+<p>Egbert, a well-dressed, commercial-looking gentleman
+of about thirty, responded in a way strikingly deferential,
+and in a moment stood near, in the attitude less of
+an equal companion apparently than a confidential follower.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; said the stranger, taking Egbert by the hand
+and leading him to the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;this is Egbert, a
+disciple. I wish you to know Egbert. Egbert was the
+first among mankind to reduce to practice the principles
+of Mark Winsome&mdash;principles previously accounted as
+less adapted to life than the closet. Egbert,&rdquo; turning
+to the disciple, who, with seeming modesty, a little
+shrank under these compliments, &ldquo;Egbert, this,&rdquo; with
+a salute towards the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;is, like all of us, a
+stranger. I wish you, Egbert, to know this brother
+stranger; be communicative with him. Particularly if,
+by anything hitherto dropped, his curiosity has been
+roused as to the precise nature of my philosophy, I trust
+you will not leave such curiosity ungratified. You,
+Egbert, by simply setting forth your practice, can do
+more to enlighten one as to my theory, than I myself
+can by mere speech. Indeed, it is by you that I myself
+best understand myself. For to every philosophy are
+certain rear parts, very important parts, and these, like
+the rear of one&rsquo;s head, are best seen by reflection.
+Now, as in a glass, you, Egbert, in your life, reflect
+to me the more important part of my system. He, who
+approves you, approves the philosophy of Mark Winsome.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Though portions of this harangue may, perhaps, in the
+phraseology seem self-complaisant, yet no trace of self-complacency
+was perceptible in the speaker&rsquo;s manner,
+which throughout was plain, unassuming, dignified, and
+manly; the teacher and prophet seemed to lurk more
+in the idea, so to speak, than in the mere bearing of him
+who was the vehicle of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, who seemed not a little
+interested in this new aspect of matters, &ldquo;you speak of
+a certain philosophy, and a more or less occult one it
+may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life; pray,
+tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the
+same formation of character with the experiences of the
+world?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It does; and that is the test of its truth; for any
+philosophy that, being in operation contradictory to the
+ways of the world, tends to produce a character at odds
+with it, such a philosophy must necessarily be but a
+cheat and a dream.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You a little surprise me,&rdquo; answered the cosmopolitan;
+&ldquo;for, from an occasional profundity in you, and also
+from your allusions to a profound work on the theology
+of Plato, it would seem but natural to surmise that, if
+you are the originator of any philosophy, it must needs
+so partake of the abstruse, as to exalt it above the comparatively
+vile uses of life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No uncommon mistake with regard to me,&rdquo; rejoined
+the other. Then meekly standing like a Raphael: &ldquo;If
+still in golden accents old Memnon murmurs his riddle,
+none the less does the balance-sheet of every man&rsquo;s
+ledger unriddle the profit or loss of life. Sir,&rdquo; with calm
+energy, &ldquo;man came into this world, not to sit down and
+muse, not to befog himself with vain subtleties, but to
+gird up his loins and to work. Mystery is in the morning,
+and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery
+is everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that
+mouth and purse must be filled. If, hitherto, you have
+supposed me a visionary, be undeceived. I am no one-ideaed
+one, either; no more than the seers before me.
+Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg,
+though with one eye on the invisible, did he
+not keep the other on the main chance? Along with
+whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a man of
+serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know
+me for such. And as for my disciple here,&rdquo; turning towards
+him, &ldquo;if you look to find any soft Utopianisms
+and last year&rsquo;s sunsets in him, I smile to think how he
+will set you right. The doctrines I have taught him
+will, I trust, lead him neither to the mad-house nor the
+poor-house, as so many other doctrines have served credulous
+sticklers. Furthermore,&rdquo; glancing upon him
+paternally, &ldquo;Egbert is both my disciple and my poet.
+For poetry is not a thing of ink and rhyme, but of
+thought and act, and, in the latter way, is by any one to
+be found anywhere, when in useful action sought. In
+a word, my disciple here is a thriving young merchant,
+a practical poet in the West India trade. There,&rdquo; presenting
+Egbert&rsquo;s hand to the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;I join you,
+and leave you.&rdquo; With which words, and without bowing,
+the master withdrew.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE DISCIPLE UNBENDS, AND CONSENTS TO ACT A SOCIAL PART.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In the master&rsquo;s presence the disciple had stood as one
+not ignorant of his place; modesty was in his expression,
+with a sort of reverential depression. But the
+presence of the superior withdrawn, he seemed lithely
+to shoot up erect from beneath it, like one of those wire
+men from a toy snuff-box.</p>
+
+<p>He was, as before said, a young man of about thirty.
+His countenance of that neuter sort, which, in repose,
+is neither prepossessing nor disagreeable; so that it
+seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out. His
+dress was neat, with just enough of the mode to save it
+from the reproach of originality; in which general
+respect, though with a readjustment of details, his costume
+seemed modeled upon his master&rsquo;s. But, upon the
+whole, he was, to all appearances, the last person in the
+world that one would take for the disciple of any transcendental
+philosophy; though, indeed, something
+about his sharp nose and shaved chin seemed to hint
+that if mysticism, as a lesson, ever came in his way, he
+might, with the characteristic knack of a true New-Englander,
+turn even so profitless a thing to some profitable
+account.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well&rdquo; said he, now familiarly seating himself in the
+vacated chair, &ldquo;what do you think of Mark? Sublime
+fellow, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That each member of the human guild is worthy
+respect my friend,&rdquo; rejoined the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;is a
+fact which no admirer of that guild will question; but
+that, in view of higher natures, the word sublime, so frequently
+applied to them, can, without confusion, be also
+applied to man, is a point which man will decide for
+himself; though, indeed, if he decide it in the affirmative,
+it is not for me to object. But I am curious to
+know more of that philosophy of which, at present, I
+have but inklings. You, its first disciple among men,
+it seems, are peculiarly qualified to expound it. Have
+you any objections to begin now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;None at all,&rdquo; squaring himself to the table. &ldquo;Where
+shall I begin? At first principles?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You remember that it was in a practical way that
+you were represented as being fitted for the clear exposition.
+Now, what you call first principles, I have, in
+some things, found to be more or less vague. Permit
+me, then, in a plain way, to suppose some common case
+in real life, and that done, I would like you to tell me
+how you, the practical disciple of the philosophy I wish
+to know about, would, in that case, conduct.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A business-like view. Propose the case.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not only the case, but the persons. The case is
+this: There are two friends, friends from childhood,
+bosom-friends; one of whom, for the first time, being in
+need, for the first time seeks a loan from the other, who,
+so far as fortune goes, is more than competent to grant
+it. And the persons are to be you and I: you, the friend
+from whom the loan is sought&mdash;I, the friend who seeks
+it; you, the disciple of the philosophy in question&mdash;I,
+a common man, with no more philosophy than to know
+that when I am comfortably warm I don&rsquo;t feel cold,
+and when I have the ague I shake. Mind, now, you
+must work up your imagination, and, as much as possible,
+talk and behave just as if the case supposed were
+a fact. For brevity, you shall call me Frank, and I will
+call you Charlie. Are you agreed?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perfectly. You begin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The cosmopolitan paused a moment, then, assuming a
+serious and care-worn air, suitable to the part to be
+enacted, addressed his hypothesized <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'freind'.">friend</ins>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You always have, and with reason. What is it
+Frank?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charlie, I am in want&mdash;urgent want of money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it <i>will</i> be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred
+dollars. I would not ask this of you, only my
+need is sore, and you and I have so long shared hearts
+and minds together, however unequally on my side, that
+nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the
+same inequality on my side, to share purses. You will
+do me the favor won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do
+you a favor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to
+talk so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But won&rsquo;t you loan me the money?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, Frank.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but
+never loan it; and of course the man who calls himself
+my friend is above receiving alms. The negotiation
+of a loan is a business transaction. And I will
+transact no business with a friend. What a friend is, he
+is socially and intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual
+friendship too high to degrade it on either
+side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure there are,
+and I have, what is called business friends; that is, commercial
+acquaintances, very convenient persons. But
+I draw a red-ink line between them and my friends
+in the true sense&mdash;my friends social and intellectual.
+In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
+he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such
+unfriendly accommodations as are to be had from the
+soulless corporation of a bank, by giving the regular
+security and paying the regular discount.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An <i>unfriendly</i> accommodation? Do those words go
+together handsomely?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like the poor farmer&rsquo;s team, of an old man and
+a cow&mdash;not handsomely, but to the purpose. Look,
+Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale of money
+on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an
+accommodation, but where is the friendliness? Few
+men in their senses, except operators, borrow money on
+interest, except upon a necessity akin to starvation.
+Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
+starving man have, say, the money&rsquo;s worth of a barrel of
+flour upon the condition that, on a given day, he shall let
+me have the money&rsquo;s worth of a barrel and a half of flour;
+especially if I add this further proviso, that if he fail so
+to do, I shall then, to secure to myself the money&rsquo;s
+worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up
+at public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families,
+throw in his wife&rsquo;s and children&rsquo;s?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; with a pathetic shudder; &ldquo;but even
+did it come to that, such a step on the creditor&rsquo;s part,
+let us, for the honor of human nature, hope, were less
+the intention than the contingency.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in
+the taking beforehand of due securities.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a
+friend&rsquo;s act?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the auction in the last place an enemy&rsquo;s act.
+Don&rsquo;t you see? The enmity lies couched in the friendship,
+just as the ruin in the relief.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really,
+I can&rsquo;t understand this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but
+it strikes me that in going into the philosophy of the
+subject, you go somewhat out of your depth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but
+the ocean replied: &lsquo;It is just the other way, my wet
+friend,&rsquo; and drowned him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the
+ocean, as some of &AElig;sop&rsquo;s are to the animals. The ocean
+is a magnanimous element, and would scorn to assassinate
+a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
+But I don&rsquo;t understand what you say about enmity
+couched in friendship, and ruin in relief.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train
+slipped off the rail. He who loans him money on interest
+is the one who, by way of accommodation, helps
+get the train back where it belongs; but then, by way
+of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an
+agent, thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just
+there, on his account, a beam across the track. Your
+needy man&rsquo;s principle-and-interest friend is, I say
+again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my
+dear friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me
+without interest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That would be alms again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the
+alms. Seeing that it is you, Charlie, gratefully will I
+accept the alms of the interest. No humiliation between
+friends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you
+suffer yourself to talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me.
+For though I am not of the sour mind of Solomon, that,
+in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a brother;
+yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his
+Essay on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a
+terrestrial convenience, not to his friend celestial (or
+friend social and intellectual) would he go; no: for his
+terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or humbler
+business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the
+reason: Because, for the superior nature, which on no
+account can ever descend to do good, to be annoyed
+with requests to do it, when the inferior one, which by no
+instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands
+always inclined to it&mdash;this is unsuitable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial,
+but as the other.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I&rsquo;ll do it.
+We are business friends; business is business. You want to
+negotiate a loan. Very good. On what paper? Will you pay
+three per cent a month? Where is your security?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surely, you will not exact those formalities from
+your old schoolmate&mdash;him with whom you have so often
+sauntered down the groves of Academe, discoursing of
+the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in kindliness&mdash;and
+all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being fellow-academics,
+and friends from childhood up, is security.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics
+is the worst of securities; while, our having been
+friends from childhood up is just no security at all.
+You forget we are now business friends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your
+business friend I can give you no security; my need
+being so sore that I cannot get an indorser.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No indorser, then, no business loan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other
+sort of friend you have defined, can I prevail with you;
+how if, combining the two, I sue as both?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you a centaur?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When all is said then, what good have I of your
+friendship, regarded in what light you will?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome,
+as reduced to practice by a practical disciple.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And why don&rsquo;t you add, much good may the philosophy
+of Mark Winsome do me? Ah,&rdquo; turning invokingly,
+&ldquo;what is friendship, if it be not the helping hand
+and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out
+at need the purse as the vial!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, my dear Frank, don&rsquo;t be childish. Through
+tears never did man see his way in the dark. I should
+hold you unworthy that sincere friendship I bear you,
+could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
+you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank,
+that you would seriously shake the foundations of our
+love, if ever again you should repeat the present scene.
+The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest way,
+teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most
+suitable time, candidly disclose certain circumstances
+you seem in ignorance of. Though our friendship began
+in boyhood, think not that, on my side at least, it began
+injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
+juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable
+points at the time; not the least of which were your good
+manners, handsome dress, and your parents&rsquo; rank and
+repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man, boy
+though I was, I went into the market and chose me my
+mutton, not for its leanness, but its fatness. In other
+words, there seemed in you, the schoolboy who always
+had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probability that
+you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if
+my early impression has not been verified by the event,
+it is only because of the caprice of fortune producing a
+fallibility of human expectations, however discreet.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear
+Frank, wouldn&rsquo;t do you any harm, let me tell you.
+Cold-blooded? You say that, because my disclosure
+seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not
+so. My reason for choosing you in part for the points I
+have mentioned, was solely with a view of preserving
+inviolate the delicacy of the connection. For&mdash;do but
+think of it&mdash;what more distressing to delicate friendship,
+formed early, than your friend&rsquo;s eventually, in manhood,
+dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five
+dollars or so? Can delicate friendship stand that?
+And, on the other side, would delicate friendship, so
+long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Would you
+not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry,
+&lsquo;I have been deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this
+man; he is no true friend that, in platonic love to demand
+love-rites?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately
+claiming those rights, as you call them, you
+shake those foundations I hinted of. For though, as it
+turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fair house
+on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished
+on that house, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I
+would not lose the sweet boon of your friendship, Frank.
+But beware.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie!
+you talk not to a god, a being who in himself holds his
+own estate, but to a man who, being a man, is the sport
+of fate&rsquo;s wind and wave, and who mounts towards heaven
+or sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough
+or on crest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that
+comes to&mdash;no poor drifting sea-weed of the universe.
+Man has a soul; which, if he will, puts him beyond fortune&rsquo;s
+finger and the future&rsquo;s spite. Don&rsquo;t whine
+like fortune&rsquo;s whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true
+friend, I will cut ye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the quick.
+Call to mind the days we went nutting, the times we walked
+in the woods, arms wreathed about each other, showing
+trunks invined like the trees:&mdash;oh, Charlie!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pish! we were boys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold
+in the grave ere maturity struck them with a sharper
+frost.&mdash;Charlie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fie! you&rsquo;re a girl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Help, help, Charlie, I want help!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something
+wrong about the man who wants help. There is
+somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying
+need, somewhere about that man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So there is, Charlie.&mdash;Help, Help!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself
+the proof of undesert of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some
+ventriloquist who usurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome
+that speaks, not Charlie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is
+not alien but congenial to my larynx. If the philosophy
+of that illustrious teacher find little response among
+mankind at large, it is less that they do not possess
+teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate
+as not to have natures predisposed to accord with him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, that compliment to humanity,&rdquo; exclaimed
+Frank with energy, &ldquo;the truer because unintended.
+And long in this respect may humanity remain what
+you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardly
+feeling how subject it is to straits, and hence
+how precious is help, will, for selfishness&rsquo; sake, if no
+other, long postpone ratifying a philosophy that banishes
+help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie! speak as
+you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case
+reversed, not less freely would I loan you the money
+than you would ask me to loan it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>I</i> ask? <i>I</i> ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under
+no circumstances would I accept a loan, though without
+asking pressed on me. The experience of China
+Aster might warn me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what was that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not very unlike the experience of the man that
+built himself a palace of moon-beams, and when the moon
+set was surprised that his palace vanished with it. I
+will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do so
+in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller
+here has so tyrannized over me, that it is quite
+impossible for me to repeat his incidents without sliding
+into his style. I forewarn you of this, that you may
+not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story
+would seem to make its narrator. It is too bad that
+any intellect, especially in so small a matter, should
+have such power to impose itself upon another, against
+its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to
+know that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully
+approve. But, to begin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE STORY OF CHINA ASTER IS AT SECOND-HAND TOLD BY
+ONE WHO, WHILE NOT DISAPPROVING THE MORAL, DISCLAIMS THE
+SPIRIT OF THE STYLE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;China Aster was a young candle-maker of Marietta,
+at the mouth of the Muskingum&mdash;one whose trade would
+seem a kind of subordinate branch of that parent craft
+and mystery of the hosts of heaven, to be the means,
+effectively or otherwise, of shedding some light through
+the darkness of a planet benighted. But he made little
+money by the business. Much ado had poor China
+Aster and his family to live; he could, if he chose, light
+up from his stores a whole street, but not so easily
+could he light up with prosperity the hearts of his
+household.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, China Aster, it so happened, had a friend,
+Orchis, a shoemaker; one whose calling it is to defend
+the understandings of men from naked contact with the
+substance of things: a very useful vocation, and which,
+spite of all the wiseacres may prophesy, will hardly go
+out of fashion so long as rocks are hard and flints will
+gall. All at once, by a capital prize in a lottery, this
+useful shoemaker was raised from a bench to a sofa. A
+small nabob was the shoemaker now, and the understandings
+of men, let them shift for themselves. Not
+that Orchis was, by prosperity, elated into heartlessness.
+Not at all. Because, in his fine apparel, strolling one
+morning into the candlery, and gayly switching about
+at the candle-boxes with his gold-headed cane&mdash;while
+poor China Aster, with his greasy paper cap and leather
+apron, was selling one candle for one penny to a poor
+orange-woman, who, with the patronizing coolness of a
+liberal customer, required it to be carefully rolled up
+and tied in a half sheet of paper&mdash;lively Orchis, the
+woman being gone, discontinued his gay switchings and
+said: &lsquo;This is poor business for you, friend China
+Aster; your capital is too small. You must drop this
+vile tallow and hold up pure spermaceti to the world.
+I tell you what it is, you shall have one thousand dollars
+to extend with. In fact, you must make money,
+China Aster. I don&rsquo;t like to see your little boy paddling
+about without shoes, as he does.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Heaven bless your goodness, friend Orchis,&rsquo; replied
+the candle-maker, &lsquo;but don&rsquo;t take it illy if I call to
+mind the word of my uncle, the blacksmith, who, when
+a loan was offered him, declined it, saying: &ldquo;To ply my
+own hammer, light though it be, I think best, rather
+than piece it out heavier by welding to it a bit off a
+neighbor&rsquo;s hammer, though that may have some weight
+to spare; otherwise, were the borrowed bit suddenly
+wanted again, it might not split off at the welding, but
+too much to one side or the other.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Nonsense, friend China Aster, don&rsquo;t be so honest;
+your boy is barefoot. Besides, a rich man lose by a
+poor man? Or a friend be the worse by a friend?
+China Aster, I am afraid that, in leaning over into your
+vats here, this, morning, you have spilled out your wisdom.
+Hush! I won&rsquo;t hear any more. Where&rsquo;s your
+desk? Oh, here.&rsquo; With that, Orchis dashed off a check
+on his bank, and off-handedly presenting it, said:
+&lsquo;There, friend China Aster, is your one thousand dollars;
+when you make it ten thousand, as you soon
+enough will (for experience, the only true knowledge,
+teaches me that, for every one, good luck is in store),
+then, China Aster, why, then you can return me the
+money or not, just as you please. But, in any event,
+give yourself no concern, for I shall never demand payment.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, as kind heaven will so have it that to a
+hungry man bread is a great temptation, and, therefore,
+he is not too harshly to be blamed, if, when freely
+offered, he take it, even though it be uncertain whether
+he shall ever be able to reciprocate; so, to a poor man,
+proffered money is equally enticing, and the worst that
+can be said of him, if he accept it, is just what can be
+said in the other case of the hungry man. In short, the
+poor candle-maker&rsquo;s scrupulous morality succumbed to
+his unscrupulous necessity, as is now and then apt to be
+the case. He took the check, and was about carefully
+putting it away for the present, when Orchis, switching
+about again with his gold-headed cane, said: &lsquo;By-the-way,
+China Aster, it don&rsquo;t mean anything, but suppose
+you make a little memorandum of this; won&rsquo;t do any
+harm, you know.&rsquo; So China Aster gave Orchis his note
+for one thousand dollars on demand. Orchis took it, and
+looked at it a moment, &lsquo;Pooh, I told you, friend China
+Aster, I wasn&rsquo;t going ever to make any <i>demand</i>.&rsquo; Then
+tearing up the note, and switching away again at the
+candle-boxes, said, carelessly; &lsquo;Put it at four years.&rsquo;
+So China Aster gave Orchis his note for one thousand
+dollars at four years. &lsquo;You see I&rsquo;ll never trouble you
+about this,&rsquo; said Orchis, slipping it in his pocket-book,
+&lsquo;give yourself no further thought, friend China Aster,
+than how best to invest your money. And don&rsquo;t forget
+my hint about spermaceti. Go into that, and I&rsquo;ll buy
+all my light of you,&rsquo; with which encouraging words, he,
+with wonted, rattling kindness, took leave.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;China Aster remained standing just where Orchis
+had left him; when, suddenly, two elderly friends,
+having nothing better to do, dropped in for a chat.
+The chat over, China Aster, in greasy cap and apron,
+ran after Orchis, and said: &lsquo;Friend Orchis, heaven
+will reward you for your good intentions, but here is
+your check, and now give me my note.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Your honesty is a bore, China Aster,&rsquo; said Orchis, not
+without displeasure. &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t take the check from you.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Then you must take it from the pavement, Orchis,&rsquo;
+said China Aster; and, picking up a stone, he placed
+the check under it on the walk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;China Aster,&rsquo; said Orchis, inquisitively eying him,
+after my leaving the candlery just now, what asses
+dropped in there to advise with you, that now you hurry
+after me, and act so like a fool? Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder
+if it was those two old asses that the boys nickname
+Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Yes, it was those two, Orchis, but don&rsquo;t call them names.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;A brace of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk
+had a shrew for a wife, and that&rsquo;s made him shrewish;
+and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an apple-stall,
+and that discouraged him for life. No better sport
+for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk
+wheeze out his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands
+by, leaning on his staff, wagging his frosty old pow, and
+chiming in at every clause.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;How can you speak so, friend Orchis, of those who
+were my father&rsquo;s friends?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Save me from my friends, if those old croakers were
+Old Honesty&rsquo;s friends. I call your father so, for every
+one used to. Why did they let him go in his old age on
+the town? Why, China Aster, I&rsquo;ve often heard from
+my mother, the chronicler, that those two old fellows,
+with Old Conscience&mdash;as the boys called the crabbed old
+quaker, that&rsquo;s dead now&mdash;they three used to go to the
+poor-house when your father was there, and get round
+his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz,
+Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes,
+Job&rsquo;s comforters were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence,
+and Old Conscience, to your poor old father.
+Friends? I should like to know who you call foes?
+With their everlasting croaking and reproaching they
+tormented poor Old Honesty, your father, to death.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy
+parent, China Aster could not restrain some tears. Upon
+which Orchis said: &lsquo;Why, China Aster, you are the
+dolefulest creature. Why don&rsquo;t you, China Aster, take
+a bright view of life? You will never get on in your
+business or anything else, if you don&rsquo;t take the bright view
+of life. It&rsquo;s the ruination of a man to take the dismal
+one.&rsquo; Then, gayly poking at him with his gold-headed
+cane, &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you, then? Why don&rsquo;t you be bright
+and hopeful, like me? Why don&rsquo;t you have confidence,
+China Aster?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know, friend Orchis,&rsquo; soberly
+replied China Aster, &lsquo;but may be my not having
+drawn a lottery-prize, like you, may make some difference.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense! before I knew anything about the prize
+I was gay as a lark, just as gay as I am now. In fact,
+it has always been a principle with me to hold to the
+bright view.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Upon this, China Aster looked a little hard at Orchis,
+because the truth was, that until the lucky prize came
+to him, Orchis had gone under the nickname of Doleful
+Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a hypochondriac
+turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars
+of his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to
+groan so much about.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you what it is, now, friend China Aster,&rsquo; said
+Orchis, pointing down to the check under the stone, and
+then slapping his pocket, &lsquo;the check shall lie there if
+you say so, but your note shan&rsquo;t keep it company. In
+fact, China Aster, I am too sincerely your friend to take
+advantage of a passing fit of the blues in you. You <i>shall</i>
+reap the benefit of my friendship.&rsquo; With which, buttoning
+up his coat in a jiffy, away he ran, leaving the
+check behind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At first, China Aster was going to tear it up, but
+thinking that this ought not to be done except in the
+presence of the drawer of the check, he mused a while,
+and picking it up, trudged back to the candlery, fully
+resolved to call upon Orchis soon as his day&rsquo;s work was
+over, and destroy the check before his eyes. But it so
+happened that when China Aster called, Orchis was out,
+and, having waited for him a weary time in vain, China
+Aster went home, still with the check, but still resolved
+not to keep it another day. Bright and early next
+morning he would a second time go after Orchis, and
+would, no doubt, make a sure thing of it, by finding him
+in his bed; for since the lottery-prize came to him, Orchis,
+besides becoming more cheery, had also grown a
+little lazy. But as destiny would have it, that same
+night China Aster had a dream, in which a being in the
+guise of a smiling angel, and holding a kind of cornucopia
+in her hand, hovered over him, pouring down
+showers of small gold dollars, thick as kernels of corn.
+&lsquo;I am Bright Future, friend China Aster,&rsquo; said the angel,
+&lsquo;and if you do what friend Orchis would have you
+do, just see what will come of it.&rsquo; With which Bright
+Future, with another swing of her cornucopia, poured
+such another shower of small gold dollars upon him,
+that it seemed to bank him up all round, and he waded
+about in it like a maltster in malt.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, dreams are wonderful things, as everybody
+knows&mdash;so wonderful, indeed, that some people stop not
+short of ascribing them directly to heaven; and China
+Aster, who was of a proper turn of mind in everything,
+thought that in consideration of the dream, it would be
+but well to wait a little, ere seeking Orchis again. During
+the day, China Aster&rsquo;s mind dwelling continually
+upon the dream, he was so full of it, that when Old
+Plain Talk dropped in to see him, just before dinnertime,
+as he often did, out of the interest he took in Old
+Honesty&rsquo;s son, China Aster told all about his vision,
+adding that he could not think that so radiant an angel
+could deceive; and, indeed, talked at such a rate that
+one would have thought he believed the angel some
+beautiful human philanthropist. Something in this sort
+Old Plain Talk understood him, and, accordingly, in his
+plain way, said: &lsquo;China Aster, you tell me that an angel
+appeared to you in a dream. Now, what does that
+amount to but this, that you dreamed an angel appeared
+to you? Go right away, China Aster, and return the
+check, as I advised you before. If friend Prudence were
+here, he would say just the same thing.&rsquo; With which
+words Old Plain Talk went off to find friend Prudence,
+but not succeeding, was returning to the candlery himself,
+when, at distance mistaking him for a dun who had
+long annoyed him, China Aster in a panic barred all his
+doors, and ran to the back part of the candlery, where
+no knock could be heard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By this sad mistake, being left with no friend to argue
+the other side of the question, China Aster was so
+worked upon at last, by musing over his dream, that
+nothing would do but he must get the check cashed, and
+lay out the money the very same day in buying a good
+lot of spermaceti to make into candles, by which operation
+he counted upon turning a better penny than he
+ever had before in his life; in fact, this he believed
+would prove the foundation of that famous fortune
+which the angel had promised him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, in using the money, China Aster was resolved
+punctually to pay the interest every six months till the
+principal should be returned, howbeit not a word about
+such a thing had been breathed by Orchis; though,
+indeed, according to custom, as well as law, in such
+matters, interest would legitimately accrue on the loan,
+nothing to the contrary having been put in the bond.
+Whether Orchis at the time had this in mind or not,
+there is no sure telling; but, to all appearance, he never
+so much as cared to think about the matter, one way or
+other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Though the spermaceti venture rather disappointed
+China Aster&rsquo;s sanguine expectations, yet he made out to
+pay the first six months&rsquo; interest, and though his next
+venture turned out still less prosperously, yet by pinching
+his family in the matter of fresh meat, and, what
+pained him still more, his boys&rsquo; schooling, he contrived
+to pay the second six months&rsquo; interest, sincerely grieved
+that integrity, as well as its opposite, though not in an
+equal degree, costs something, sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by
+advice of a physician; it so happening that, since the
+lottery-prize came to him, it had been discovered to Orchis
+that his health was not very firm, though he had
+never complained of anything before but a slight ailing
+of the spleen, scarce worth talking about at the time.
+So Orchis, being abroad, could not help China Aster&rsquo;s
+paying his interest as he did, however much he might
+have been opposed to it; for China Aster paid it to
+Orchis&rsquo;s agent, who was of too business-like a turn to
+decline interest regularly paid in on a loan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But overmuch to trouble the agent on that score was
+not again to be the fate of China Aster; for, not being
+of that skeptical spirit which refuses to trust customers,
+his third venture resulted, through bad debts, in
+almost a total loss&mdash;a bad blow for the candle-maker.
+Neither did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect
+the opportunity to read him an uncheerful enough lesson
+upon the consequences of his disregarding their advice
+in the matter of having nothing to do with borrowed
+money. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all just as I predicted,&rsquo; said Old Plain
+Talk, blowing his old nose with his old bandana. &lsquo;Yea,
+indeed is it,&rsquo; chimed in Old Prudence, rapping his staff
+on the floor, and then leaning upon it, looking with
+solemn forebodings upon China Aster. Low-spirited
+enough felt the poor candle-maker; till all at once who
+should come with a bright face to him but his bright
+friend, the angel, in another dream. Again the cornucopia
+poured out its treasure, and promised still more.
+Revived by the vision, he resolved not to be down-hearted,
+but up and at it once more&mdash;contrary to the
+advice of Old Plain Talk, backed as usual by his crony,
+which was to the effect, that, under present circumstances,
+the best thing China Aster could do, would be to
+wind up his business, settle, if he could, all his liabilities,
+and then go to work as a journeyman, by which
+he could earn good wages, and give up, from that time
+henceforth, all thoughts of rising above being a paid subordinate
+to men more able than himself, for China Aster&rsquo;s
+career thus far plainly proved him the legitimate son of
+Old Honesty, who, as every one knew, had never shown
+much business-talent, so little, in fact, that many said
+of him that he had no business to be in business. And
+just this plain saying Plain Talk now plainly applied
+to China Aster, and Old Prudence never disagreed with
+him. But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain
+Talk, put quite other notions into the candle-maker.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He considered what he should do towards re&euml;stablishing
+himself. Doubtless, had Orchis been in the country,
+he would have aided him in this strait. As it was, he
+applied to others; and as in the world, much as some may
+hint to the contrary, an honest man in misfortune still
+can find friends to stay by him and help him, even so
+it proved with China Aster, who at last succeeded in borrowing
+from a rich old farmer the sum of six hundred
+dollars, at the usual interest of money-lenders, upon the
+security of a secret bond signed by China Aster&rsquo;s wife
+and himself, to the effect that all such right and title to
+any property that should be left her by a well-to-do
+childless uncle, an invalid tanner, such property should,
+in the event of China Aster&rsquo;s failing to return the borrowed
+sum on the given day, be the lawful possession
+of the money-lender. True, it was just as much as
+China Aster could possibly do to induce his wife, a careful
+woman, to sign this bond; because she had always
+regarded her promised share in her uncle&rsquo;s estate as an
+anchor well to windward of the hard times in which
+China Aster had always been more or less involved, and
+from which, in her bosom, she never had seen much
+chance of his freeing himself. Some notion may be had
+of China Aster&rsquo;s standing in the heart and head of his
+wife, by a short sentence commonly used in reply to
+such persons as happened to sound her on the point.
+&lsquo;China Aster,&rsquo; she would say, &lsquo;is a good husband, but
+a bad business man!&rsquo; Indeed, she was a connection on
+the maternal side of Old Plain Talk&rsquo;s. But had not
+China Aster taken good care not to let Old Plain Talk
+and Old Prudence hear of his dealings with the old
+farmer, ten to one they would, in some way, have interfered
+with his success in that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It has been hinted that the honesty of China Aster
+was what mainly induced the money-lender to befriend
+him in his misfortune, and this must be apparent; for,
+had China Aster been a different man, the money-lender
+might have dreaded lest, in the event of his failing to
+meet his note, he might some way prove slippery&mdash;more
+especially as, in the hour of distress, worked upon by
+remorse for so jeopardizing his wife&rsquo;s money, his heart
+might prove a traitor to his bond, not to hint that it
+was more than doubtful how such a secret security and
+claim, as in the last resort would be the old farmer&rsquo;s,
+would stand in a court of law. But though one inference
+from all this may be, that had China Aster been
+something else than what he was, he would not have
+been trusted, and, therefore, he would have been effectually
+shut out from running his own and wife&rsquo;s head
+into the usurer&rsquo;s noose; yet those who, when everything
+at last came out, maintained that, in this view
+and to this extent, the honesty of the candle-maker was
+no advantage to him, in so saying, such persons said
+what every good heart must deplore, and no prudent
+tongue will admit.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It may be mentioned, that the old farmer made
+China Aster take part of his loan in three old dried-up
+cows and one lame horse, not improved by the glanders.
+These were thrown in at a pretty high figure, the old
+money-lender having a singular prejudice in regard to
+the high value of any sort of stock raised on his farm.
+With a great deal of difficulty, and at more loss, China
+Aster disposed of his cattle at public auction, no private
+purchaser being found who could be prevailed
+upon to invest. And now, raking and scraping in every
+way, and working early and late, China Aster at last
+started afresh, nor without again largely and confidently
+extending himself. However, he did not try his
+hand at the spermaceti again, but, admonished by experience,
+returned to tallow. But, having bought a
+good lot of it, by the time he got it into candles, tallow
+fell so low, and candles with it, that his candles per
+pound barely sold for what he had paid for the tallow.
+Meantime, a year&rsquo;s unpaid interest had accrued on Orchis&rsquo;
+loan, but China Aster gave himself not so much
+concern about that as about the interest now due to
+the old farmer. But he was glad that the principal
+there had yet some time to run. However, the skinny
+old fellow gave him some trouble by coming after him
+every day or two on a scraggy old white horse, furnished
+with a musty old saddle, and goaded into his
+shambling old paces with a withered old raw hide. All
+the neighbors said that surely Death himself on the
+pale horse was after poor China Aster now. And
+something so it proved; for, ere long, China Aster
+found himself involved in troubles mortal enough.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture Orchis was heard of. Orchis, it seemed
+had returned from his travels, and clandestinely married,
+and, in a kind of queer way, was living in Pennsylvania
+among his wife&rsquo;s relations, who, among other
+things, had induced him to join a church, or rather
+semi-religious school, of Come-Outers; and what was
+still more, Orchis, without coming to the spot himself,
+had sent word to his agent to dispose of some of his
+property in Marietta, and remit him the proceeds.
+Within a year after, China Aster received a letter from
+Orchis, commending him for his punctuality in paying
+the first year&rsquo;s interest, and regretting the necessity
+that he (Orchis) was now under of using all his dividends;
+so he relied upon China Aster&rsquo;s paying the
+next six months&rsquo; interest, and of course with the back
+interest. Not more surprised than alarmed, China
+Aster thought of taking steamboat to go and see Orchis,
+but he was saved that expense by the unexpected
+arrival in Marietta of Orchis in person, suddenly called
+there by that strange kind of capriciousness lately characterizing
+him. No sooner did China Aster hear of
+his old friend&rsquo;s arrival than he hurried to call upon him.
+He found him curiously rusty in dress, sallow in cheek,
+and decidedly less gay and cordial in manner, which
+the more surprised China Aster, because, in former
+days, he had more than once heard Orchis, in his light
+rattling way, declare that all he (Orchis) wanted to
+make him a perfectly happy, hilarious, and benignant
+man, was a voyage to Europe and a wife, with a free
+development of his inmost nature.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Upon China Aster&rsquo;s stating his case, his trusted
+friend was silent for a time; then, in an odd way, said
+that he would not crowd China Aster, but still his
+(Orchis&rsquo;) necessities were urgent. Could not China
+Aster mortgage the candlery? He was honest, and
+must have moneyed friends; and could he not press
+his sales of candles? Could not the market be forced
+a little in that particular? The profits on candles
+must be very great. Seeing, now, that Orchis had
+the notion that the candle-making business was a very
+profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an
+error was here, China Aster tried to undeceive him.
+But he could not drive the truth into Orchis&mdash;Orchis
+being very obtuse here, and, at the same time,
+strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis
+glanced off from so unpleasing a subject into the most
+unexpected reflections, taken from a religious point
+of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of
+the human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced
+something of that sort of thing, China Aster
+did not take exception to his friend&rsquo;s observations,
+but still refrained from so doing, almost as much for
+the sake of sympathetic sociality as anything else.
+Presently, Orchis, without much ceremony, rose, and
+saying he must write a letter to his wife, bade his
+friend good-bye, but without warmly shaking him by
+the hand as of old.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In much concern at the change, China Aster made
+earnest inquiries in suitable quarters, as to what things,
+as yet unheard of, had befallen Orchis, to bring about
+such a revolution; and learned at last that, besides traveling,
+and getting married, and joining the sect of
+Come-Outers, Orchis had somehow got a bad dyspepsia,
+and lost considerable property through a breach of
+trust on the part of a factor in New York. Telling
+these things to Old Plain Talk, that man of some
+knowledge of the world shook his old head, and told
+China Aster that, though he hoped it might prove otherwise,
+yet it seemed to him that all he had communicated
+about Orchis worked together for bad omens as to
+his future forbearance&mdash;especially, he added with a
+grim sort of smile, in view of his joining the sect of
+Come-Outers; for, if some men knew what was their
+inmost natures, instead of coming out with it, they
+would try their best to keep it in, which, indeed, was
+the way with the prudent sort. In all which sour notions
+Old Prudence, as usual, chimed in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When interest-day came again, China Aster, by the
+utmost exertions, could only pay Orchis&rsquo; agent a small
+part of what was due, and a part of that was made up
+by his children&rsquo;s gift money (bright tenpenny pieces
+and new quarters, kept in their little money-boxes), and
+pawning his best clothes, with those of his wife and
+children, so that all were subjected to the hardship of
+staying away from church. And the old usurer, too,
+now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid
+him his interest and some other pressing debts with
+money got by, at last, mortgaging the candlery.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When next interest-day came round for Orchis, not
+a penny could be raised. With much grief of heart,
+China Aster so informed Orchis&rsquo; agent. Meantime, the
+note to the old usurer fell due, and nothing from China
+Aster was ready to meet it; yet, as heaven sends its
+rain on the just and unjust alike, by a coincidence not
+unfavorable to the old farmer, the well-to-do uncle, the
+tanner, having died, the usurer entered upon possession
+of such part of his property left by will to the wife
+of China Aster. When still the next interest-day for
+Orchis came round, it found China Aster worse off than
+ever; for, besides his other troubles, he was now weak
+with sickness. Feebly dragging himself to Orchis&rsquo;
+agent, he met him in the street, told him just how it
+was; upon which the agent, with a grave enough face,
+said that he had instructions from his employer not to
+crowd him about the interest at present, but to say to
+him that about the time the note would mature, Orchis
+would have heavy liabilities to meet, and therefore the
+note must at that time be certainly paid, and, of course,
+the back interest with it; and not only so, but, as Orchis
+had had to allow the interest for good part of the
+time, he hoped that, for the back interest, China Aster
+would, in reciprocation, have no objections to allowing
+interest on the interest annually. To be sure, this was
+not the law; but, between friends who accommodate
+each other, it was the custom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just then, Old Plain Talk with Old Prudence turned
+the corner, coming plump upon China Aster as the
+agent left him; and whether it was a sun-stroke, or
+whether they accidentally ran against him, or whether
+it was his being so weak, or whether it was everything
+together, or how it was exactly, there is no telling, but
+poor China Aster fell to the earth, and, striking his head
+sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a day in July;
+such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of
+the inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home
+on a door; lingered a few days with a wandering mind,
+and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead of night,
+when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into
+the other world.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom
+ever omitted attending any funeral, which, indeed, was
+their chief exercise&mdash;these two were among the sincerest
+mourners who followed the remains of the son of
+their ancient friend to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is needless to tell of the executions that followed;
+how that the candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how
+Orchis never got a penny for his loan; and how, in the
+case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered with
+mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
+childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of
+complaint, at what she impatiently called the bitterness
+of her lot and the hardness of the world, so preyed upon
+her, as ere long to hurry her from the obscurity of
+indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But though the straits in which China Aster had left
+his family had, besides apparently dimming the world&rsquo;s
+regard, likewise seemed to dim its sense of the probity
+of its deceased head, and though this, as some thought,
+did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this
+case, as in others, that, though the world may for a time
+seem insensible to that merit which lies under a cloud,
+yet, sooner or later, it always renders honor where honor
+is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the freemen
+of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and
+an expression of their conviction of his high moral
+worth, passed a resolution, that, until they attained maturity,
+his children should be considered the town&rsquo;s
+guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of some
+public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were
+officially installed in that hospitable edifice where their
+worthy grandfather, the town&rsquo;s guest before them, had
+breathed his last breath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But sometimes honor maybe paid to the memory of
+an honest man, and still his mound remain without a
+monument. Not so, however, with the candle-maker.
+At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
+and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two
+to place upon it, when there was discovered, in China
+Aster&rsquo;s otherwise empty wallet, an epitaph, written,
+probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended
+with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent
+with him for some months prior to his end. A memorandum
+on the back expressed the wish that it might be
+placed over his grave. Though with the sentiment of
+the epitaph Plain Talk did not disagree, he himself being
+at times of a hypochondriac turn&mdash;at least, so many
+said&mdash;yet the language struck him as too much drawn
+out; so, after consultation with Old Prudence, he decided
+upon making use of the epitaph, yet not without verbal
+retrenchments. And though, when these were made,
+the thing still appeared wordy to him, nevertheless,
+thinking that, since a dead man was to be spoken about,
+it was but just to let him speak for himself, especially
+when he spoke sincerely, and when, by so doing, the
+more salutary lesson would be given, he had the retrenched
+inscription chiseled as follows upon the stone.</p>
+
+<p class='c sf75 noin'>&lsquo;HERE LIE<br />
+THE REMAINS OF<br />
+CHINA ASTER THE CANDLE-MAKER,<br />
+WHOSE CAREER<br />
+WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE, AS FOUND<br />
+IN THE<br />
+SOBER PHILOSOPHY<br />
+OF<br />
+SOLOMON THE WISE;<br />
+FOR HE WAS RUINED BY ALLOWING HIMSELF TO BE PERSUADED,<br />
+AGAINST HIS BETTER SENSE,<br />
+INTO THE FREE INDULGENCE OF CONFIDENCE,<br />
+AND<br />
+AN ARDENTLY BRIGHT VIEW OF LIFE,<br />
+TO THE EXCLUSION<br />
+OF<br />
+THAT COUNSEL WHICH COMES BY HEEDING<br />
+THE<br />
+OPPOSITE VIEW.&rsquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This inscription raised some talk in the town, and
+was rather severely criticised by the capitalist&mdash;one of a
+very cheerful turn&mdash;who had secured his loan to China
+Aster by the mortgage; and though it also proved
+obnoxious to the man who, in town-meeting, had first
+moved for the compliment to China Aster&rsquo;s memory,
+and, indeed, was deemed by him a sort of slur upon the
+candle-maker, to that degree that he refused to believe
+that the candle-maker himself had composed it, charging
+Old Plain Talk with the authorship, alleging that
+the internal evidence showed that none but that veteran
+old croaker could have penned such a jeremiade&mdash;yet,
+for all this, the stone stood. In everything, of course,
+Old Plain Talk was seconded by Old Prudence; who,
+one day going to the grave-yard, in great-coat and
+over-shoes&mdash;for, though it was a sunshiny morning, he
+thought that, owing to heavy dews, dampness might
+lurk in the ground&mdash;long stood before the stone, sharply
+leaning over on his staff, spectacles on nose, spelling out
+the epitaph word by word; and, afterwards meeting Old
+Plain Talk in the street, gave a great rap with his stick,
+and said: &lsquo;Friend, Plain Talk, that epitaph will do
+very well. Nevertheless, one short sentence is wanting.&rsquo;
+Upon which, Plain Talk said it was too late, the
+chiseled words being so arranged, after the usual manner
+of such inscriptions, that nothing could be interlined.
+Then,&rsquo; said Old Prudence, &lsquo;I will put it in
+the shape of a postscript.&rsquo; Accordingly, with the
+approbation of Old Plain Talk, he had the following
+words chiseled at the left-hand corner of the stone, and
+pretty low down:</p>
+
+<p class='c'>&lsquo;The root of all was a friendly loan.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With what heart,&rdquo; cried Frank, still in character,
+&ldquo;have you told me this story? A story I can no way
+approve; for its moral, if accepted, would drain me of
+all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my last
+courage in life. For, what was that bright view of
+China Aster but a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up
+a brave heart, worked hard, and ever hoped for the best,
+all at last would go well? If your purpose, Charlie, in
+telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you
+have succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence,
+I praise God you have not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Confidence?&rdquo; cried Charlie, who, on his side,
+seemed with his whole heart to enter into the spirit of
+the thing, &ldquo;what has confidence to do with the matter?
+That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
+you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend&rsquo;s helping
+a friend. For was not that loan of Orchis to China
+Aster the first step towards their estrangement? And
+did it not bring about what in effect was the enmity of
+Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
+precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And
+what more meddlesome between friends than a loan?
+A regular marplot. For how can you help that the
+helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
+friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most
+lenient case; since, out of lenity to forego one&rsquo;s claim,
+is less to be a friendly creditor than to cease to be a
+creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon this
+lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the
+worst, is subject to all mortal contingencies. He may
+travel, he may marry, he may join the Come-Outers,
+or some equally untoward school or sect, not to speak of
+other things that more or less tend to new-cast the
+character. And were there nothing else, who shall
+answer for his digestion, upon which so much depends?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Charlie, dear Charlie&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, wait.&mdash;You have hearkened to my story in
+vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and
+right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no
+guarantee for the future. And into the power of
+that uncertain personality which, through the mutability
+of my humanity, I may hereafter become,
+should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
+from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in
+your present need, be willing to accept a loan from a
+friend, securing him by a mortgage on your homestead,
+and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel satisfied
+that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred
+into the hands of a foe? Yet the difference
+between this man and that man is not so great as the
+difference between what the same man be to-day and
+what he may be in days to come. For there is no bent
+of heart or turn of thought which any man holds by
+virtue of an unalterable nature or will. Even those
+feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
+right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal
+persuasions, they may in reality be but the result
+of some chance tip of Fate&rsquo;s elbow in throwing her dice.
+For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and passing
+by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that
+habit of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you
+change this man&rsquo;s experiences or that man&rsquo;s books, will
+wisdom go surety for his unchanged convictions? As
+particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
+experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I
+will hear nothing of that fine babble about development
+and its laws; there is no development in opinion and
+feeling but the developments of time and tide. You
+may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids
+me show you how fundamental the reasons for treating
+you as I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are
+these? I thought that man was no poor drifting weed
+of the universe, as you phrased it; that, if so minded,
+he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of
+his own? But now you have turned everything upside
+down again, with an inconsistency that amazes and
+shocks me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Inconsistency? Bah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There speaks the ventriloquist again,&rdquo; sighed
+Frank, in bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion
+little flattering to his originality, however much so
+to his docility, the disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming:
+&ldquo;Yes, I turn over day and night, with
+indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master,
+and unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing
+<i>there</i> that leads me to think otherwise than I do. But
+enough: in this matter the experience of China Aster
+teaches a moral more to the point than anything Mark
+Winsome can offer, or I either.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China
+Aster, nor do I stand in his position. The loan to China
+Aster was to extend his business with; the loan I seek
+is to relieve my necessities.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your
+cheek is not gaunt. Why talk of necessities when
+nakedness and starvation beget the only real necessities?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now
+conjure you to forget that I was ever your friend, while
+I apply to you only as a fellow-being, whom, surely,
+you will not turn away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to
+the ground, and supplicate an alms of me in the way of
+London streets, and you shall not be a sturdy beggar in
+vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
+friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for
+the honor of noble friendship, I turn stranger.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; cried the other, rising, and with a toss of
+his shoulders seeming disdainfully to throw off the character
+he had assumed. &ldquo;Enough. I have had my fill
+of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put into action.
+And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
+philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself
+engaged I should find. But, miserable for my race
+should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when he
+claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that
+the study of it tended to much the same formation of
+character with the experiences of the world.&mdash;Apt disciple!
+Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil both
+of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool
+by the under ice of the heart? What your illustrious
+magian has taught you, any poor, old, broken-down,
+heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray, leave
+me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman
+philosophy. And here, take this shilling, and at the
+first wood-landing buy yourself a few chips to warm the
+frozen natures of you and your philosopher by.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan
+turned on his heel, leaving his companion at a loss to
+determine where exactly the fictitious character had
+been dropped, and the real one, if any, resumed. If
+any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to
+him, as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar
+lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&ldquo;All the world&rsquo;s a stage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the men and women merely players,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have their exits and their entrances,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one man in his time plays many parts.&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE
+BARBER&rsquo;S SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bless you, barber!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber
+had been all alone until within the ten minutes last
+passed; when, finding himself rather dullish company to
+himself, he thought he would have a good time with
+Souter John and Tam O&rsquo;Shanter, otherwise called Somnus
+and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one
+was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain,
+who, though much listened to by some, no wise
+man would believe under oath.</p>
+
+<p>In short, with back presented to the glare of his
+lamps, and so to the door, the honest barber was taking
+what are called cat-naps, and dreaming in his chair; so
+that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction above, pronounced
+in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake,
+he stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger
+stood behind. What with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments,
+therefore, the voice seemed a sort of spiritual
+manifestation to him; so that, for the moment,
+he stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds
+there with salt?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; turning round disenchanted, &ldquo;it is only a
+man, then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Only</i> a man? As if to be but a man were nothing.
+But don&rsquo;t be too sure what I am. You call me <i>man</i>,
+just as the townsfolk called the angels who, in man&rsquo;s
+form, came to Lot&rsquo;s house; just as the Jew rustics called
+the devils who, in man&rsquo;s form, haunted the tombs.
+You can conclude nothing absolute from the human
+form, barber.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can conclude something from that sort of
+talk, with that sort of dress,&rdquo; shrewdly thought the
+barber, eying him with regained self-possession, and not
+without some latent touch of apprehension at being
+alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed
+divined by the other, who now, more rationally and
+gravely, and as if he expected it should be attended to,
+said: &ldquo;Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
+my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave,&rdquo;
+at the same time loosening his neck-cloth. &ldquo;Are you
+competent to a good shave, barber?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No broker more so, sir,&rdquo; answered the barber, whom
+the business-like proposition instinctively made confine
+to business-ends his views of the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Broker? What has a broker to do with lather?
+A broker I have always understood to be a worthy dealer
+in certain papers and metals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He, he!&rdquo; taking him now for some dry sort of joker,
+whose jokes, he being a customer, it might be as well
+to appreciate, &ldquo;he, he! You understand well enough,
+sir. Take this seat, sir,&rdquo; laying his hand on a great
+stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered,
+and raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed
+but to lack a canopy and quarterings, to make it in
+aspect quite a throne, &ldquo;take this seat, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; sitting down; &ldquo;and now, pray, explain
+that about the broker. But look, look&mdash;what&rsquo;s
+this?&rdquo; suddenly rising, and pointing, with his long pipe,
+towards a gilt notification swinging among colored fly-papers
+from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, &ldquo;<i>No Trust?</i>&rdquo;
+&ldquo;No trust means distrust; distrust means no confidence.
+Barber,&rdquo; turning upon him excitedly, &ldquo;what fell suspiciousness
+prompts this scandalous confession? My
+life!&rdquo; stamping his foot, &ldquo;if but to tell a dog that you
+have no confidence in him be matter for affront to the
+dog, what an insult to take that way the whole haughty
+race of man by the beard! By my heart, sir! but at
+least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites
+with the pluck of Agamemnon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line,&rdquo;
+said the barber, rather ruefully, being now again hopeless
+of his customer, and not without return of uneasiness;
+&ldquo;not in my line, sir,&rdquo; he emphatically repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit,
+barber, which I sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a
+disrespect for man. For how, indeed, may respectful
+conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual habit of
+taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too,
+clearly see the import of your notification, I do not, as
+yet, perceive the object. What is it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now you speak a little in my line, sir,&rdquo; said the
+barber, not unrelieved at this return to plain talk;
+&ldquo;that notification I find very useful, sparing me much
+work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good deal,
+off and on, before putting that up,&rdquo; gratefully glancing
+towards it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what is its object? Surely, you don&rsquo;t mean to
+say, in so many words, that you have no confidence?
+For instance, now,&rdquo; flinging aside his neck-cloth, throwing
+back his blouse, and reseating himself on the tonsorial
+throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber
+mechanically filled a cup with hot water from a copper
+vessel over a spirit-lamp, &ldquo;for instance, now, suppose I
+say to you, &lsquo;Barber, my dear barber, unhappily I have
+no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
+depend upon your money to-morrow&rsquo;&mdash;suppose I should
+say that now, you would put trust in me, wouldn&rsquo;t
+you? You would have confidence?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Seeing that it is you, sir,&rdquo; with complaisance
+replied the barber, now mixing the lather, &ldquo;seeing that
+it is <i>you</i> sir, I won&rsquo;t answer that question. No need to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, of course&mdash;in that view. But, as a supposition&mdash;you
+would have confidence in me, wouldn&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why&mdash;yes, yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then why that sign?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, sir, all people ain&rsquo;t like you,&rdquo; was the smooth
+reply, at the same time, as if smoothly to close the
+debate, beginning smoothly to apply the lather, which
+operation, however, was, by a motion, protested against
+by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which
+was done in these words:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All people ain&rsquo;t like me. Then I must be either
+better or worse than most people. Worse, you could
+not mean; no, barber, you could not mean that; hardly
+that. It remains, then, that you think me better than
+most people. But that I ain&rsquo;t vain enough to believe;
+though, from vanity, I confess, I could never yet, by my
+best wrestlings, entirely free myself; nor, indeed, to be
+frank, am I at bottom over anxious to&mdash;this same vanity,
+barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
+pleasingly preposterous a passion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk
+very well. But the lather is getting a little cold, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why
+that cold sign? Ah, I don&rsquo;t wonder you try to shirk
+the confession. You feel in your soul how ungenerous
+a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
+your eyes&mdash;which somehow speak to me of the mother
+that must have so often looked into them before me&mdash;I
+dare say, though you may not think it, that the spirit of
+that notification is not one with your nature. For look
+now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing
+in an abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber;
+supposing, I say, you see a stranger, his face accidentally
+averted, but his visible part very respectable-looking;
+what now, barber&mdash;I put it to your conscience, to your
+charity&mdash;what would be your impression of that man,
+in a moral point of view? Being in a signal sense a
+stranger, would you, for that, signally set him down for
+a knave?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly not, sir; by no means,&rdquo; cried the barber,
+humanely resentful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You would upon the face of him&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hold, sir,&rdquo; said the barber, &ldquo;nothing about the face;
+you remember, sir, that is out of sight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the
+<i>back</i> of him, conclude him to be, not improbably, some
+worthy sort of person; in short, an honest man: wouldn&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not unlikely I should, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well now&mdash;don&rsquo;t be so impatient with your brush,
+barber&mdash;suppose that honest man meet you by night in
+some dark corner of the boat where his face would still
+remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave&mdash;how
+then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t trust him, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is not an honest man to be trusted?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There! don&rsquo;t you see, now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See what?&rdquo; asked the disconcerted barber, rather
+vexedly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Barber,&rdquo; gravely, and after a pause of concern,
+&ldquo;the enemies of our race have a saying that insincerity
+is the most universal and inveterate vice of man&mdash;the
+lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of individuals
+or of the world. Don&rsquo;t you now, barber, by your stubbornness
+on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hity-tity!&rdquo; cried the barber, losing patience, and
+with it respect; &ldquo;stubbornness?&rdquo; Then clattering
+round the brush in the cup, &ldquo;Will you be shaved, or
+won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but,
+pray, don&rsquo;t raise your voice that way. Why, now, if
+you go through life gritting your teeth in that fashion,
+what a comfortless time you will have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I take as much comfort in this world as you or any
+other man,&rdquo; cried the barber, whom the other&rsquo;s sweetness
+of temper seemed rather to exasperate than soothe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness
+I have often observed to be peculiar to certain
+orders of men,&rdquo; said the other pensively, and half to
+himself, &ldquo;just as to be indifferent to that imputation,
+from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
+grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to
+other kinds of men. Pray, barber,&rdquo; innocently looking
+up, &ldquo;which think you is the superior creature?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All this sort of talk,&rdquo; cried the barber, still unmollified,
+&ldquo;is, as I told you once before, not in my line. In
+a few minutes I shall shut up this shop. Will you be
+shaved?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shave away, barber. What hinders?&rdquo; turning up
+his face like a flower.</p>
+
+<p>The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at
+length it became necessary to prepare to relather a
+little&mdash;affording an opportunity for resuming the subject,
+which, on one side, was not let slip.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Barber,&rdquo; with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling
+his way, &ldquo;barber, now have a little patience with me;
+do; trust me, I wish not to offend. I have been thinking
+over that supposed case of the man with the averted
+face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that,
+by your opposite replies to my questions at the time,
+you showed yourself much of a piece with a good many
+other men&mdash;that is, you have confidence, and then again,
+you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you
+think it sensible standing for a sensible man, one foot
+on confidence and the other on suspicion? Don&rsquo;t you
+think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don&rsquo;t you
+think consistency requires that you should either say &lsquo;I
+have confidence in all men,&rsquo; and take down your notification;
+or else say, &lsquo;I suspect all men,&rsquo; and keep it up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting
+the case, did not fail to impress the barber, and proportionately
+conciliate him. Likewise, from its pointedness,
+it served to make him thoughtful; for, instead of going
+to the copper vessel for more water, as he had purposed,
+he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
+hand, said: &ldquo;Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice.
+I don&rsquo;t say, and can&rsquo;t say, and wouldn&rsquo;t say, that
+I suspect all men; but I <i>do</i> say that strangers are not
+to be trusted, and so,&rdquo; pointing up to the sign, &ldquo;no
+trust.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But look, now, I beg, barber,&rdquo; rejoined the other
+deprecatingly, not presuming too much upon the barber&rsquo;s
+changed temper; &ldquo;look, now; to say that strangers
+are not to be trusted, does not that imply something
+like saying that mankind is not to be trusted;
+for the mass of mankind, are they not necessarily
+strangers to each individual man? Come, come,
+my friend,&rdquo; winningly, &ldquo;you are no Timon to hold
+the mass of mankind untrustworthy. Take down
+your notification; it is misanthropical; much the same
+sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of
+a skull stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber;
+take it down to-night. Trust men. Just try the experiment
+of trusting men for this one little trip. Come
+now, I&rsquo;m a philanthropist, and will insure you against
+losing a cent.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, &ldquo;Sir,
+you must excuse me. I have a family.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII<br />
+<span class='sf50'>VERY CHARMING.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So you are a philanthropist, sir,&rdquo; added the barber
+with an illuminated look; &ldquo;that accounts, then, for all.
+Very odd sort of man the philanthropist. You are the
+second one, sir, I have seen. Very odd sort of man,
+indeed, the philanthropist. Ah, sir,&rdquo; again meditatively
+stirring in the shaving-cup, &ldquo;I sadly fear, lest you
+philanthropists know better what goodness is, than
+what men are.&rdquo; Then, eying him as if he were some
+strange creature behind cage-bars, &ldquo;So you are a philanthropist,
+sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am Philanthropos, and love mankind. And, what
+is more than you do, barber, I trust them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the barber, casually recalled to his business,
+would have replenished his shaving-cup, but finding
+now that on his last visit to the water-vessel he had not
+replaced it over the lamp, he did so now; and, while
+waiting for it to heat again, became almost as sociable
+as if the heating water were meant for whisky-punch;
+and almost as pleasantly garrulous as the pleasant barbers
+in romances.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said he, taking a throne beside his customer
+(for in a row there were three thrones on the dais, as
+for the three kings of Cologne, those patron saints of the
+barber), &ldquo;sir, you say you trust men. Well, I suppose
+I might share some of your trust, were it not for
+this trade, that I follow, too much letting me in behind
+the scenes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I understand,&rdquo; with a saddened look; &ldquo;and
+much the same thing I have heard from persons in
+pursuits different from yours&mdash;from the lawyer, from
+the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others,
+each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming
+for his vocation the distinction of affording the
+surest inlets to the conviction that man is no better
+than he should be. All of which testimony, if reliable,
+would, by mutual corroboration, justify some disturbance
+in a good man&rsquo;s mind. But no, no; it is a mistake&mdash;all
+a mistake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True, sir, very true,&rdquo; assented the barber.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Glad to hear that,&rdquo; brightening up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not so fast, sir,&rdquo; said the barber; &ldquo;I agree with you
+in thinking that the lawyer, and the congressman, and
+the editor, are in error, but only in so far as each claims
+peculiar facilities for the sort of knowledge in question;
+because, you see, sir, the truth is, that every trade or
+pursuit which brings one into contact with the facts,
+sir, such trade or pursuit is equally an avenue to those
+facts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>How</i> exactly is that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, sir, in my opinion&mdash;and for the last twenty
+years I have, at odd times, turned the matter over some in
+my mind&mdash;he who comes to know man, will not remain
+in ignorance of man. I think I am not rash in saying
+that; am I, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Barber, you talk like an oracle&mdash;obscurely, barber,
+obscurely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; with some self-complacency, &ldquo;the barber
+has always been held an oracle, but as for the obscurity,
+that I don&rsquo;t admit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But pray, now, by your account, what precisely
+may be this mysterious knowledge gained in your trade?
+I grant you, indeed, as before hinted, that your trade,
+imposing on you the necessity of functionally tweaking
+the noses of mankind, is, in that respect, unfortunate,
+very much so; nevertheless, a well-regulated
+imagination should be proof even to such a provocation
+to improper conceits. But what I want to
+learn from you, barber, is, how does the mere handling
+of the outside of men&rsquo;s heads lead you to distrust the
+inside of their hearts?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, sir, to say nothing more, can one be forever
+dealing in macassar oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches,
+wigs, and toupees, and still believe that men are
+wholly what they look to be? What think you, sir, are a
+thoughtful barber&rsquo;s reflections, when, behind a careful
+curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and
+then dismisses it to the world, radiant in curling auburn?
+To contrast the shamefaced air behind the
+curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly
+discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the
+cheerful assurance and challenging pride with which
+the same man steps forth again, a gay deception, into
+the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow
+humbly gives him the wall! Ah, sir, they may talk of
+the courage of truth, but my trade teaches me that
+truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies, lies, sir, brave lies
+are the lions!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You twist the moral, barber; you sadly twist it.
+Look, now; take it this way: A modest man thrust out
+naked into the street, would he not be abashed? Take
+him in and clothe him; would not his confidence be
+restored? And in either case, is any reproach involved?
+Now, what is true of the whole, holds proportionably
+true of the part. The bald head is a nakedness which
+the wig is a coat to. To feel uneasy at the possibility
+of the exposure of one&rsquo;s nakedness at top, and to feel
+comforted by the consciousness of having it clothed&mdash;these
+feelings, instead of being dishonorable to a bold
+man, do, in fact, but attest a proper respect for himself
+and his fellows. And as for the deception, you may as
+well call the fine roof of a fine chateau a deception,
+since, like a fine wig, it also is an artificial cover to the
+head, and equally, in the common eye, decorates the
+wearer.&mdash;I have confuted you, my dear barber; I have
+confounded you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon,&rdquo; said the barber, &ldquo;but I do not see that you
+have. His coat and his roof no man pretends to palm
+off as a part of himself, but the bald man palms off hair,
+not his, for his own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not <i>his</i>, barber? If he have fairly purchased his
+hair, the law will protect him in its ownership, even
+against the claims of the head on which it grew. But
+it cannot be that you believe what you say, barber;
+you talk merely for the humor. I could not think so
+of you as to suppose that you would contentedly deal
+in the impostures you condemn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, sir, I must live.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And can&rsquo;t you do that without sinning against your
+conscience, as you believe? Take up some other calling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t mend the matter much, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think, then, barber, that, in a certain point,
+all the trades and callings of men are much on a par?
+Fatal, indeed,&rdquo; raising his hand, &ldquo;inexpressibly dreadful,
+the trade of the barber, if to such conclusions it
+necessarily leads. Barber,&rdquo; eying him not without
+emotion, &ldquo;you appear to me not so much a misbeliever,
+as a man misled. Now, let me set you on the right
+track; let me restore you to trust in human nature, and
+by no other means than the very trade that has brought
+you to suspect it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean, sir, you would have me try the experiment
+of taking down that notification,&rdquo; again pointing
+to it with his brush; &ldquo;but, dear me, while I sit chatting
+here, the water boils over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which words, and such a well-pleased, sly, snug,
+expression, as they say some men have when they think
+their little stratagem has succeeded, he hurried to the
+copper vessel, and soon had his cup foaming up with
+white bubbles, as if it were a mug of new ale.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the other would have fain gone on with
+the discourse; but the cunning barber lathered him with
+so generous a brush, so piled up the foam on him, that
+his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and vain
+to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in
+the sea to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing
+would do, but he must keep his mouth shut. Doubtless,
+the interval was not, in a meditative way, unimproved;
+for, upon the traces of the operation being at last removed,
+the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment,
+washed his face and hands; and having generally
+readjusted himself, began, at last, addressing the barber
+in a manner different, singularly so, from his previous
+one. Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any
+more than to hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign
+way, not wholly unlike the manner, fabled or otherwise,
+of certain creatures in nature, which have the power of
+persuasive fascination&mdash;the power of holding another
+creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite
+the serious disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest,
+of the victim. With this manner the conclusion of the
+matter was not out of keeping; for, in the end, all argument
+and expostulation proved vain, the barber being
+irresistibly persuaded to agree to try, for the remainder
+of the present trip, the experiment of trusting men, as
+both phrased it. True, to save his credit as a free agent,
+he was loud in averring that it was only for the novelty
+of the thing that he so agreed, and he required the other,
+as before volunteered, to go security to him against any
+loss that might ensue; but still the fact remained, that
+he engaged to trust men, a thing he had before said he
+would not do, at least not unreservedly. Still the more
+to save his credit, he now insisted upon it, as a last point,
+that the agreement should be put in black and white,
+especially the security part. The other made no demur;
+pen, ink, and paper were provided, and grave as any
+notary the cosmopolitan sat down, but, ere taking the
+pen, glanced up at the notification, and said: &ldquo;First
+down with that sign, barber&mdash;Timon&rsquo;s sign, there; down
+with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This, being in the agreement, was done&mdash;though a little
+reluctantly&mdash;with an eye to the future, the sign being
+carefully put away in a drawer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, then, for the writing,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan,
+squaring himself. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; with a sigh, &ldquo;I shall make a
+poor lawyer, I fear. Ain&rsquo;t used, you see, barber, to a
+business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds no
+nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber,&rdquo; taking up the
+blank paper, &ldquo;that such flimsy stuff as this should make
+such strong hawsers; vile hawsers, too. Barber,&rdquo;
+starting up, &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t put it in black and white. It
+were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your
+word, and you shall take mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But your memory may be none of the best, sir. Well
+for you, on your side, to have it in black and white, just
+for a memorandum like, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That, indeed! Yes, and it would help <i>your</i> memory,
+too, wouldn&rsquo;t it, barber? Yours, on your side, being a
+little weak, too, I dare say. Ah, barber! how ingenious
+we human beings are; and how kindly we reciprocate
+each other&rsquo;s little delicacies, don&rsquo;t we? What better
+proof, now, that we are kind, considerate fellows, with
+responsive fellow-feelings&mdash;eh, barber? But to business.
+Let me see. What&rsquo;s your name, barber?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;William Cream, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pondering a moment, he began to write; and, after
+some corrections, leaned back, and read aloud the following:</p>
+
+<div class="letter">
+<p class='c noin'>
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Agreement</span><br />
+Between<br />
+<span class="smcap">Frank Goodman</span>, Philanthropist, and Citizen of the World,<br />
+and<br />
+<span class="smcap">William Cream</span>, Barber of the Mississippi steamer, Fidèle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The first hereby agrees to make good to the last any loss that may
+come from his trusting mankind, in the way of his vocation, for the residue
+of the present trip; <span class="smcap lc">PROVIDED</span> that William Cream keep out of
+sight, for the given term, his notification of <span class="smcap">No Trust</span>, and by no other
+mode convey any, the least hint or intimation, tending to discourage
+men from soliciting trust from him, in the way of his vocation, for the
+time above specified; but, on the contrary, he do, by all proper and
+reasonable words, gestures, manners, and looks, evince a perfect confidence
+in all men, especially strangers; otherwise, this agreement to be
+void.
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Done, in good faith, this 1st day of April 18&mdash;, at a quarter to
+twelve o&rsquo;clock, <span class="smcap lc">P. M.</span>, in the shop of said William Cream, on board the
+said boat, Fidèle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;There, barber; will that do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That will do,&rdquo; said the barber, &ldquo;only now put down
+your name.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Both signatures being affixed, the question was started
+by the barber, who should have custody of the instrument;
+which point, however, he settled for himself, by
+proposing that both should go together to the captain,
+and give the document into his hands&mdash;the barber hinting
+that this would be a safe proceeding, because the
+captain was necessarily a party disinterested, and, what
+was more, could not, from the nature of the present
+case, make anything by a breach of trust. All of which
+was listened to with some surprise and concern.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, barber,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;this don&rsquo;t
+show the right spirit; for me, I have confidence in the
+captain purely because he is a man; but he shall have
+nothing to do with our affair; for if you have no confidence
+in me, barber, I have in you. There, keep the
+paper yourself,&rdquo; handing it magnanimously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said the barber, &ldquo;and now nothing remains
+but for me to receive the cash.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Though the mention of that word, or any of its singularly
+numerous equivalents, in serious neighborhood
+to a requisition upon one&rsquo;s purse, is attended with a
+more or less noteworthy effect upon the human countenance,
+producing in many an abrupt fall of it&mdash;in others,
+a writhing and screwing up of the features to a point
+not undistressing to behold, in some, attended with a
+blank pallor and fatal consternation&mdash;yet no trace of
+any of these symptoms was visible upon the countenance
+of the cosmopolitan, notwithstanding nothing could be
+more sudden and unexpected than the barber&rsquo;s demand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You speak of cash, barber; pray in what connection?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In a nearer one, sir,&rdquo; answered the barber, less
+blandly, &ldquo;than I thought the man with the sweet voice
+stood, who wanted me to trust him once for a shave, on
+the score of being a sort of thirteenth cousin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, and what did you say to him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Thank you, sir, but I don&rsquo;t see the connection,&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How could you so unsweetly answer one with a
+sweet voice?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because, I recalled what the son of Sirach says in
+the True Book: &lsquo;An enemy speaketh sweetly with his
+lips;&rsquo; and so I did what the son of Sirach advises in such
+cases: &lsquo;I believed not his many words.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, barber, do you say that such cynical sort of
+things are in the True Book, by which, of course, you
+mean the Bible?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and plenty more to the same effect. Read the
+Book of Proverbs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s strange, now, barber; for I never happen to
+have met with those passages you cite. Before I go
+to bed this night, I&rsquo;ll inspect the Bible I saw on the
+cabin-table, to-day. But mind, you mustn&rsquo;t quote the
+True Book that way to people coming in here; it would
+be impliedly a violation of the contract. But you don&rsquo;t
+know how glad I feel that you have for one while signed
+off all that sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir; not unless you down with the cash.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cash again! What do you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, in this paper here, you engage, sir, to insure
+me against a certain loss, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certain? Is it so <i>certain</i> you are going to lose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, that way of taking the word may not be
+amiss, but I didn&rsquo;t mean it so. I meant a <i>certain</i> loss;
+you understand, a <span class="smcap lc">CERTAIN</span> loss; that is to say, a certain
+loss. Now then, sir, what use your mere writing
+and saying you will insure me, unless beforehand you
+place in my hands a money-pledge, sufficient to that
+end?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see; the material pledge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and I will put it low; say fifty dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now what sort of a beginning is this? You, barber,
+for a given time engage to trust man, to put confidence
+in men, and, for your first step, make a demand
+implying no confidence in the very man you engage
+with. But fifty dollars is nothing, and I would let you
+have it cheerfully, only I unfortunately happen to have
+but little change with me just now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you have money in your trunk, though?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To be sure. But you see&mdash;in fact, barber, you
+must be consistent. No, I won&rsquo;t let you have the money
+now; I won&rsquo;t let you violate the inmost spirit of our
+contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, sir&rdquo;&mdash;humming and hawing&mdash;&ldquo;you have forgotten
+something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Handkerchief?&mdash;gloves? No, forgotten nothing.
+Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, sir&mdash;the&mdash;the shaving.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, I <i>did</i> forget that. But now that it strikes me,
+I shan&rsquo;t pay you at present. Look at your agreement;
+you must trust. Tut! against loss you hold the guarantee.
+Good-night, my dear barber.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which words he sauntered off, leaving the barber
+in a maze, staring after.</p>
+
+<p>But it holding true in fascination as in natural philosophy,
+that nothing can act where it is not, so the
+barber was not long now in being restored to his self-possession
+and senses; the first evidence of which perhaps
+was, that, drawing forth his notification from the drawer,
+he put it back where it belonged; while, as for the
+agreement, that he tore up; which he felt the more free
+to do from the impression that in all human probability
+he would never again see the person who had drawn it.
+Whether that impression proved well-founded or not,
+does not appear. But in after days, telling the night&rsquo;s
+adventure to his friends, the worthy barber always
+spoke of his queer customer as the man-charmer&mdash;as
+certain East Indians are called snake-charmers&mdash;and all
+his friends united in thinking him <span class="smcap">quite an Original</span>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE
+THE TEXT OF DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE
+OR LESS ATTENTION FROM THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite an original:&rdquo; A phrase, we fancy, rather
+oftener used by the young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled,
+than by the old, or the well-read, or the man
+who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense of
+originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably
+at its lowest in him who has completed the circle
+of the sciences.</p>
+
+<p>As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader
+will, on meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that
+day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who, at
+one creation, produces some two or three score such
+characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly
+be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote,
+or Milton&rsquo;s Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a
+thorough sense, original at all. They are novel, or
+singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>More likely, they are what are called odd characters;
+but for that, are no more original, than what is called
+an odd genius, in his way, is. But, if original, whence
+came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
+up?</p>
+
+<p>Where does any novelist pick up any character?
+For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great
+town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for
+his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattle-show
+for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds
+are hardly more rare, than in the other are new
+species of characters&mdash;that is, original ones. Their
+rarity may still the more appear from this, that, while
+characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms
+so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original
+instincts.</p>
+
+<p>In short, a due conception of what is to be held for
+this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost
+as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new
+law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder
+of a new religion.</p>
+
+<p>In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted
+such in works of invention, there is discernible
+something prevailingly local, or of the age; which circumstance,
+of itself, would seem to invalidate the claim,
+judged by the principles here suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held
+to entitle characters in fiction to being deemed original,
+is but something personal&mdash;confined to itself. The character
+sheds not its characteristic on its surroundings,
+whereas, the original character, essentially such, is like
+a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself
+all round it&mdash;everything is lit by it, everything starts
+up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet), so that, in certain
+minds, there follows upon the adequate conception
+of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
+which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>For much the same reason that there is but one
+planet to one orbit, so can there be but one such original
+character to one work of invention. Two would
+conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are
+more than one to a book, is good presumption there is
+none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric,
+and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters,
+a good fiction may be full of them. To produce
+such characters, an author, beside other things, must
+have seen much, and seen through much: to produce
+but one original character, he must have had much
+luck.</p>
+
+<p>There would seem but one point in common between
+this sort of phenomenon in fiction and all other sorts:
+it cannot be born in the author&rsquo;s imagination&mdash;it being
+as true in literature as in zoology, that all life is from
+the egg.</p>
+
+<p>In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety
+of the phrase, <i>Quite an Original</i>, as applied by the barber&rsquo;s
+friends, we have, at unawares, been led into a
+dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the
+smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned
+to, will be, by retiring under cover of it, in good trim
+as may be, to the story.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV.<br />
+<span class='sf50'>THE COSMOPOLITAN INCREASES IN SERIOUSNESS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In the middle of the gentleman&rsquo;s cabin burned a solar
+lamp, swung from the ceiling, and whose shade of
+ground glass was all round fancifully variegated, in
+transparency, with the image of a horned altar, from
+which flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed
+man, his head encircled by a halo. The light of this
+lamp, after dazzlingly striking on marble, snow-white
+and round&mdash;the slab of a centre-table beneath&mdash;on all
+sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness,
+till, like circles from a stone dropped in water, the
+rays died dimly away in the furthest nook of the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there, true to their place, but not to their
+function, swung other lamps, barren planets, which
+had either gone out from exhaustion, or been extinguished
+by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
+or who wanted to sleep, not see.</p>
+
+<p>By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining
+lamp would have been extinguished as well, had
+not a steward forbade, saying that the commands of the
+captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
+light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who,
+like many in his vocation, was apt to be a little free-spoken
+at times, had been provoked by the man&rsquo;s pertinacity
+to remind him, not only of the sad consequences
+which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being
+left in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that,
+in a place full of strangers, to show one&rsquo;s self anxious to
+produce darkness there, such an anxiety was, to say the
+least, not becoming. So the lamp&mdash;last survivor of
+many&mdash;burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some
+berths, and inwardly execrated by those in others.</p>
+
+<p>Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which
+lighted his book on the table, sat a clean, comely, old
+man, his head snowy as the marble, and a countenance
+like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
+when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed
+him and departed in peace. From his hale look of
+greenness in winter, and his hands ingrained with the
+tan, less, apparently, of the present summer, than of
+accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do
+farmer, happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity,
+from the fields to the fireside&mdash;one of those who,
+at three-score-and-ten, are fresh-hearted as at fifteen;
+to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed than
+knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted
+by the world, because ignorant of it; just as a countryman
+putting up at a London inn, and never stirring out
+of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last without
+once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.</p>
+
+<p>Redolent from the barber&rsquo;s shop, as any bridegroom
+tripping to the bridal chamber might come, and by his
+look of cheeriness seeming to dispense a sort of morning
+through the night, in came the cosmopolitan; but marking
+the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned
+himself down, and trod softly, and took a seat on the
+other side of the table, and said nothing. Still, there
+was a kind of waiting expression about him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the old man, after looking up puzzled at
+him a moment, &ldquo;sir,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;one would think this
+was a coffee-house, and it was war-time, and I had
+a newspaper here with great news, and the only copy
+to be had, you sit there looking at me so eager.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so you <i>have</i> good news there, sir&mdash;the very
+best of good news.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Too good to be true,&rdquo; here came from one of the
+curtained berths.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan. &ldquo;Some one talks
+in his sleep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;and you&mdash;<i>you</i> seem to be
+talking in a dream. Why speak you, sir, of news, and
+all that, when you must see this is a book I have here&mdash;the
+Bible, not a newspaper?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know that; and when you are through with it&mdash;but
+not a moment sooner&mdash;I will thank you for it. It
+belongs to the boat, I believe&mdash;a present from a society.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, take it, take it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I
+simply stated the fact in explanation of my waiting here&mdash;nothing
+more. Read on, sir, or you will distress me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his
+spectacles, and saying he had about finished his chapter,
+the old man kindly presented the volume, which was
+received with thanks equally kind. After reading for
+some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness
+into seriousness, and from that into a kind of
+pain, the cosmopolitan slowly laid down the book, and
+turning to the old man, who thus far had been watching
+him with benign curiosity, said: &ldquo;Can you, my aged
+friend, resolve me a doubt&mdash;a disturbing doubt?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are doubts, sir,&rdquo; replied the old man, with a
+changed countenance, &ldquo;there are doubts, sir, which,
+if man have them, it is not man that can solve
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one
+who thinks well of man. I love man. I have confidence
+in man. But what was told me not a half-hour
+since? I was told that I would find it written&mdash;&lsquo;Believe
+not his many words&mdash;an enemy speaketh sweetly
+with his lips&rsquo;&mdash;and also I was told that I would find a
+good deal more to the same effect, and all in this book.
+I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself,
+what do I read? Not only just what was quoted,
+but also, as was engaged, more to the same purpose,
+such as this: &lsquo;With much communication he will
+tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair,
+and say What wantest thou? If thou be for his profit
+he will use thee; he will make thee bear, and will not
+be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed. When
+thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that describing the confidence-man?&rdquo; here
+came from the berth again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; said the
+cosmopolitan, again looking off in surprise. &ldquo;Same
+voice as before, ain&rsquo;t it? Strange sort of dreamy man,
+that. Which is his berth, pray?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind <i>him</i>, sir,&rdquo; said the old man anxiously,
+&ldquo;but tell me truly, did you, indeed, read from the book
+just now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; with changed air, &ldquo;and gall and wormwood
+it is to me, a truster in man; to me, a philanthropist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; moved, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t mean to say, that what
+you repeated is really down there? Man and boy, I
+have read the good book this seventy years, and don&rsquo;t
+remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it,&rdquo;
+rising earnestly, and going round to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There it is; and there&mdash;and there&rdquo;&mdash;turning over
+the leaves, and pointing to the sentences one by one;
+&ldquo;there&mdash;all down in the &lsquo;Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of
+Sirach.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the old man, brightening up, &ldquo;now I
+know. Look,&rdquo; turning the leaves forward and back, till
+all the Old Testament lay flat on one side, and all the
+New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers he
+supported vertically the portion between, &ldquo;look, sir, all
+this to the right is certain truth, and all this to the left
+is certain truth, but all I hold in my hand here is
+apocrypha.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Apocrypha?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; and there&rsquo;s the word in black and white,&rdquo;
+pointing to it. &ldquo;And what says the word? It says as
+much as &lsquo;not warranted;&rsquo; for what do college men say
+of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal.
+The word itself, I&rsquo;ve heard from the pulpit, implies
+something of uncertain credit. So if your disturbance
+be raised from aught in this apocrypha,&rdquo; again taking
+up the pages, &ldquo;in that case, think no more of it, for it&rsquo;s
+apocrypha.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that about the Apocalypse?&rdquo; here, a third
+time, came from the berth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s seeing visions now, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan,
+once more looking in the direction of the interruption.
+&ldquo;But, sir,&rdquo; resuming, &ldquo;I cannot tell you how
+thankful I am for your reminding me about the apocrypha
+here. For the moment, its being such escaped me.
+Fact is, when all is bound up together, it&rsquo;s sometimes
+confusing. The uncanonical part should be bound distinct.
+And, now that I think of it, how well did those
+learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of
+Sirach. I never read anything so calculated to destroy
+man&rsquo;s confidence in man. This son of Sirach even says&mdash;I
+saw it but just now: &lsquo;Take heed of thy friends;&rsquo; not,
+observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends,
+thy false friends, but thy <i>friends</i>, thy real friends&mdash;that
+is to say, not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly
+trusted. Can Rochefoucault equal that? I
+should not wonder if his view of human nature, like
+Machiavelli&rsquo;s, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And
+to call it wisdom&mdash;the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach!
+Wisdom, indeed! What an ugly thing wisdom must
+be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek, say I,
+rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But
+no, no; it ain&rsquo;t wisdom; it&rsquo;s apocrypha, as you say, sir.
+For how can that be trustworthy that teaches distrust?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you what it is,&rdquo; here cried the same voice as
+before, only more in less of mockery, &ldquo;if you two don&rsquo;t
+know enough to sleep, don&rsquo;t be keeping wiser men
+awake. And if you want to know what wisdom is, go
+find it under your blankets.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wisdom?&rdquo; cried another voice with a brogue;
+&ldquo;arrah and is&rsquo;t wisdom the two geese are gabbling
+about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils, and
+don&rsquo;t be after burning your fingers with the likes of
+wisdom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must talk lower,&rdquo; said the old man; &ldquo;I fear we
+have annoyed these good people.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should be sorry if wisdom annoyed any one,&rdquo; said
+the other; &ldquo;but we will lower our voices, as you say.
+To resume: taking the thing as I did, can you be surprised
+at my uneasiness in reading passages so charged
+with the spirit of distrust?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir, I am not surprised,&rdquo; said the old man; then
+added: &ldquo;from what you say, I see you are something
+of my way of thinking&mdash;you think that to distrust the
+creature, is a kind of distrusting of the Creator. Well,
+my young friend, what is it? This is rather late for you
+to be about. What do you want of me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>These questions were put to a boy in the fragment of
+an old linen coat, bedraggled and yellow, who, coming
+in from the deck barefooted on the soft carpet, had been
+unheard. All pointed and fluttering, the rags of the
+little fellow&rsquo;s red-flannel shirt, mixed with those of his
+yellow coat, flamed about him like the painted flames in
+the robes of a victim in <i>auto-da-fe</i>. His face, too, wore
+such a polish of seasoned grime, that his sloe-eyes
+sparkled from out it like lustrous sparks in fresh coal.
+He was a juvenile peddler, or <i>marchand</i>, as the polite
+French might have called him, of travelers&rsquo; conveniences;
+and, having no allotted sleeping-place, had, in
+his wanderings about the boat, spied, through glass
+doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was,
+thought it might never be too much so for turning a
+penny.</p>
+
+<p>Among other things, he carried a curious affair&mdash;a
+miniature mahogany door, hinged to its frame, and suitably
+furnished in all respects but one, which will shortly
+appear. This little door he now meaningly held before
+the old man, who, after staring at it a while, said: &ldquo;Go
+thy ways with thy toys, child.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, may I never get so old and wise as that comes
+to,&rdquo; laughed the boy through his grime; and, by so
+doing, disclosing leopard-like teeth, like those of Murillo&rsquo;s
+wild beggar-boy&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The divils are laughing now, are they?&rdquo; here came
+the brogue from the berth. &ldquo;What do the divils find to
+laugh about in wisdom, begorrah? To bed with ye, ye
+divils, and no more of ye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, child, you have disturbed that person,&rdquo;
+said the old man; &ldquo;you mustn&rsquo;t laugh any more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, now,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t, pray, say
+that; don&rsquo;t let him think that poor Laughter is persecuted
+for a fool in this world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the old man to the boy, &ldquo;you must, at
+any rate, speak very low.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, that wouldn&rsquo;t be amiss, perhaps,&rdquo; said the
+cosmopolitan; &ldquo;but, my fine fellow, you were about
+saying something to my aged friend here; what was
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; with a lowered voice, coolly opening and shutting
+his little door, &ldquo;only this: when I kept a toy-stand
+at the fair in Cincinnati last month, I sold more
+than one old man a child&rsquo;s rattle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt of it,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I myself often
+buy such things for my little grandchildren.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But these old men I talk of were old bachelors.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The old man stared at him a moment; then, whispering
+to the cosmopolitan: &ldquo;Strange boy, this; sort of
+simple, ain&rsquo;t he? Don&rsquo;t know much, hey?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not much,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;or I wouldn&rsquo;t be so
+ragged.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, child, what sharp ears you have!&rdquo; exclaimed
+the old man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If they were duller, I would hear less ill of myself,&rdquo;
+said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seem pretty wise, my lad,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan;
+&ldquo;why don&rsquo;t you sell your wisdom, and buy a
+coat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Faith,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what I did to-day, and
+this is the coat that the price of my wisdom bought.
+But won&rsquo;t you trade? See, now, it is not the door I
+want to sell; I only carry the door round for a specimen,
+like. Look now, sir,&rdquo; standing the thing up on the
+table, &ldquo;supposing this little door is your state-room
+door; well,&rdquo; opening it, &ldquo;you go in for the night;
+you close your door behind you&mdash;thus. Now, is all
+safe?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose so, child,&rdquo; said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it is, my fine fellow,&rdquo; said the cosmopolitan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All safe. Well. Now, about two o&rsquo;clock in the
+morning, say, a soft-handed gentleman comes softly and
+tries the knob here&mdash;thus; in creeps my soft-handed
+gentleman; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft
+cash?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, I see, child,&rdquo; said the old man; &ldquo;your fine
+gentleman is a fine thief, and there&rsquo;s no lock to your
+little door to keep him out;&rdquo; with which words he
+peered at it more closely than before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, now,&rdquo; again showing his white teeth, &ldquo;well,
+now, some of you old folks are knowing &rsquo;uns, sure
+enough; but now comes the great invention,&rdquo; producing
+a small steel contrivance, very simple but ingenious,
+and which, being clapped on the inside of the little
+door, secured it as with a bolt. &ldquo;There now,&rdquo; admiringly
+holding it off at arm&rsquo;s-length, &ldquo;there now, let
+that soft-handed gentleman come now a&rsquo; softly trying
+this little knob here, and let him keep a&rsquo; trying till he
+finds his head as soft as his hand. Buy the traveler&rsquo;s
+patent lock, sir, only twenty-five cents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me,&rdquo; cried the old man, &ldquo;this beats printing.
+Yes, child, I will have one, and use it this very
+night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With the phlegm of an old banker pouching the
+change, the boy now turned to the other: &ldquo;Sell you
+one, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use such
+blacksmiths&rsquo; things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Those who give the blacksmith most work seldom
+do,&rdquo; said the boy, tipping him a wink expressive of a
+degree of indefinite knowingness, not uninteresting to
+consider in one of his years. But the wink was not
+marked by the old man, nor, to all appearances, by him
+for whom it was intended.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now then,&rdquo; said the boy, again addressing the old
+man. &ldquo;With your traveler&rsquo;s lock on your door to-night,
+you will think yourself all safe, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I will, child.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But how about the window?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me, the window, child. I never thought of
+that. I must see to that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never you mind about the window,&rdquo; said the boy,
+&ldquo;nor, to be honor bright, about the traveler&rsquo;s lock either,
+(though I ain&rsquo;t sorry for selling one), do you just buy
+one of these little jokers,&rdquo; producing a number of suspender-like
+objects, which he dangled before the old
+man; &ldquo;money-belts, sir; only fifty cents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Money-belt? never heard of such a thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A sort of pocket-book,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;only a safer
+sort. Very good for travelers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, a pocket-book. Queer looking pocket-books
+though, seems to me. Ain&rsquo;t they rather long and narrow
+for pocket-books?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They go round the waist, sir, inside,&rdquo; said the boy
+&ldquo;door open or locked, wide awake on your feet or fast
+asleep in your chair, impossible to be robbed with a
+money-belt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, I see. It <i>would</i> be hard to rob one&rsquo;s money-belt.
+And I was told to-day the Mississippi is a bad
+river for pick-pockets. How much are they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only fifty cents, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take one. There!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank-ee. And now there&rsquo;s a present for ye,&rdquo; with
+which, drawing from his breast a batch of little papers,
+he threw one before the old man, who, looking at it, read
+&ldquo;<i>Counterfeit Detector</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good thing,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;I give it to all my
+customers who trade seventy-five cents&rsquo; worth; best
+present can be made them. Sell you a money-belt,
+sir?&rdquo; turning to the cosmopolitan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that
+sort of thing; my money I carry loose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Loose bait ain&rsquo;t bad,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;look a lie and
+find the truth; don&rsquo;t care about a Counterfeit Detector,
+do ye? or is the wind East, d&rsquo;ye think?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Child,&rdquo; said the old man in some concern, &ldquo;you
+mustn&rsquo;t sit up any longer, it affects your mind; there, go
+away, go to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I had some people&rsquo;s brains to lie on. I would,&rdquo;
+said the boy, &ldquo;but planks is hard, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go, child&mdash;go, go!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, child,&mdash;yes, yes,&rdquo; said the boy, with which
+roguish parody, by way of congé, he scraped back his
+hard foot on the woven flowers of the carpet, much as a
+mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
+in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat&mdash;which,
+like the rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard
+times, a belonging beyond his years, though not beyond
+his experience, being a grown man&rsquo;s cast-off beaver&mdash;turned,
+and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a strange boy,&rdquo; said the old man, looking
+after him. &ldquo;I wonder who&rsquo;s his mother; and whether
+she knows what late hours he keeps?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The probability is,&rdquo; observed the other, &ldquo;that his
+mother does not know. But if you remember, sir, you
+were saying something, when the boy interrupted you
+with his door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I was.&mdash;Let me see,&rdquo; unmindful of his purchases
+for the moment, &ldquo;what, now, was it? What was that
+I was saying? Do <i>you</i> remember?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was
+something like this: you hoped you did not distrust the
+creature; for that would imply distrust of the Creator.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, that was something like it,&rdquo; mechanically and
+unintelligently letting his eye fall now on his purchases.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s best, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; with a slight start. &ldquo;Never
+too late to be cautious. &lsquo;Beware of pick-pockets&rsquo; is
+all over the boat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or
+some other morbid cynic, who put them there. But
+that&rsquo;s not to the purpose. Since you are minded to it,
+pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
+between us, we can make a secure thing of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, no, no!&rdquo; said the old man, not unperturbed,
+&ldquo;no, no, I wouldn&rsquo;t trouble you for the world,&rdquo; then,
+nervously folding up the belt, &ldquo;and I won&rsquo;t be so impolite
+as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
+now that I think of it,&rdquo; after a pause, carefully taking
+a little wad from a remote corner of his vest pocket,
+&ldquo;here are two bills they gave me at St. Louis, yesterday.
+No doubt they are all right; but just to pass
+time, I&rsquo;ll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed
+boy to make me such a present. Public benefactor,
+that little boy!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Laying the Detector square before him on the table,
+he then, with something of the air of an officer bringing
+by the collar a brace of culprits to the bar, placed the
+two bills opposite the Detector, upon which, the examination
+began, lasting some time, prosecuted with
+no small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the
+right hand proving of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out
+and pointing the evidence, whichever way it might go.</p>
+
+<p>After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in
+a formal voice, &ldquo;Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman;
+guilty, or not guilty?&mdash;Not guilty, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; returned the old man,
+perplexed, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s so many marks of all sorts to go by,
+it makes it a kind of uncertain. Here, now, is this bill,&rdquo;
+touching one, &ldquo;it looks to be a three dollar bill on
+the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company.
+Well, the Detector says&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and
+Insurance! What more would you have?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things,
+that, if a good bill, it must have, thickened here and
+there into the substance of the paper, little wavy spots
+of red; and it says they must have a kind of silky feel,
+being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred
+up in the paper-maker&rsquo;s vat&mdash;the paper being made to
+order for the company.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, and is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay. But then it adds, that sign is not always to
+be relied on; for some good bills get so worn, the red
+marks get rubbed out. And that&rsquo;s the case with my
+bill here&mdash;see how old it is&mdash;or else it&rsquo;s a counterfeit, or
+else&mdash;I don&rsquo;t see right&mdash;or else&mdash;dear, dear me&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+know what else to think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a peck of trouble that Detector makes for you
+now; believe me, the bill is good; don&rsquo;t be so distrustful.
+Proves what I&rsquo;ve always thought, that much of
+the want of confidence, in these days, is owing to these
+Counterfeit Detectors you see on every desk and counter.
+Puts people up to suspecting good bills. Throw it
+away, I beg, if only because of the trouble it breeds
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s troublesome, but I think I&rsquo;ll keep it.&mdash;Stay,
+now, here&rsquo;s another sign. It says that, if the bill is good, it
+must have in one corner, mixed in with the vignette, the
+figure of a goose, very small, indeed, all but microscopic;
+and, for added precaution, like the figure of Napoleon
+outlined by the tree, not observable, even if magnified,
+unless the attention is directed to it. Now, pore over it
+as I will, I can&rsquo;t see this goose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t see the goose? why, I can; and a famous
+goose it is. There&rdquo; (reaching over and pointing to
+a spot in the vignette).</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see it&mdash;dear me&mdash;I don&rsquo;t see the goose. Is
+it a real goose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A perfect goose; beautiful goose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear, dear, I don&rsquo;t see it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then throw that Detector away, I say again; it
+only makes you purblind; don&rsquo;t you see what a wild-goose
+chase it has led you? The bill is good. Throw
+the Detector away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; it ain&rsquo;t so satisfactory as I thought for, but
+I must examine this other bill.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As you please, but I can&rsquo;t in conscience assist you
+any more; pray, then, excuse me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So, while the old man with much painstakings resumed
+his work, the cosmopolitan, to allow him every
+facility, resumed his reading. At length, seeing that he
+had given up his undertaking as hopeless, and was at
+leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravely
+interesting remarks to him about the book before him,
+and, presently, becoming more and more grave, said, as
+he turned the large volume slowly over on the table,
+and with much difficulty traced the faded remains of the
+gilt inscription giving the name of the society who had
+presented it to the boat, &ldquo;Ah, sir, though every one
+must be pleased at the thought of the presence in public
+places of such a book, yet there is something that
+abates the satisfaction. Look at this volume; on the
+outside, battered as any old valise in the baggage-room;
+and inside, white and virgin as the hearts of lilies in
+bud.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it is, so it is,&rdquo; said the old man sadly, his attention
+for the first directed to the circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nor is this the only time,&rdquo; continued the other,
+&ldquo;that I have observed these public Bibles in boats and
+hotels. All much like this&mdash;old without, and new
+within. True, this aptly typifies that internal freshness,
+the best mark of truth, however ancient; but then,
+it speaks not so well as could be wished for the good
+book&rsquo;s esteem in the minds of the traveling public. I
+may err, but it seems to me that if more confidence
+was put in it by the traveling public, it would hardly
+be so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With an expression very unlike that with which he
+had bent over the Detector, the old man sat meditating
+upon his companions remarks a while; and, at last, with
+a rapt look, said: &ldquo;And yet, of all people, the traveling
+public most need to put trust in that guardianship which
+is made known in this book.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True, true,&rdquo; thoughtfully assented the other.
+&ldquo;And one would think they would want to, and
+be glad to,&rdquo; continued the old man kindling; &ldquo;for, in
+all our wanderings through this vale, how pleasant, not
+less than obligatory, to feel that we need start at no
+wild alarms, provide for no wild perils; trusting in that
+Power which is alike able and willing to protect us
+when we cannot ourselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His manner produced something answering to it in
+the cosmopolitan, who, leaning over towards him, said
+sadly: &ldquo;Though this is a theme on which travelers
+seldom talk to each other, yet, to you, sir, I will say,
+that I share something of your sense of security. I have
+moved much about the world, and still keep at it; nevertheless,
+though in this land, and especially in these
+parts of it, some stories are told about steamboats and
+railroads fitted to make one a little apprehensive, yet, I
+may say that, neither by land nor by water, am I ever
+seriously disquieted, however, at times, transiently uneasy;
+since, with you, sir, I believe in a Committee
+of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an invisible
+patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose
+beat lies as much through forests as towns, along rivers
+as streets. In short, I never forget that passage of
+Scripture which says, &lsquo;Jehovah shall be thy confidence.&rsquo;
+The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable
+misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted
+care must he take of himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Even so,&rdquo; said the old man, lowly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is a chapter,&rdquo; continued the other, again
+taking the book, &ldquo;which, as not amiss, I must read you.
+But this lamp, solar-lamp as it is, begins to burn dimly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it does, so it does,&rdquo; said the old man with
+changed air, &ldquo;dear me, it must be very late. I must to
+bed, to bed! Let me see,&rdquo; rising and looking wistfully all
+round, first on the stools and settees, and then on the
+carpet, &ldquo;let me see, let me see;&mdash;is there anything I
+have forgot,&mdash;forgot? Something I a sort of dimly remember.
+Something, my son&mdash;careful man&mdash;told me at
+starting this morning, this very morning. Something
+about seeing to&mdash;something before I got into my berth.
+What could it be? Something for safety. Oh, my poor
+old memory!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me give a little guess, sir. Life-preserver?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it was. He told me not to omit seeing I had a
+life-preserver in my state-room; said the boat supplied
+them, too. But where are they? I don&rsquo;t see any.
+What are they like?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are something like this, sir, I believe,&rdquo; lifting
+a brown stool with a curved tin compartment underneath;
+&ldquo;yes, this, I think, is a life-preserver, sir; and
+a very good one, I should say, though I don&rsquo;t pretend to
+know much about such things, never using them myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, indeed, now! Who would have thought it?
+<i>that</i> a life-preserver? That&rsquo;s the very stool I was sitting
+on, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is. And that shows that one&rsquo;s life is looked out
+for, when he ain&rsquo;t looking out for it himself. In fact,
+any of these stools here will float you, sir, should the
+boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But, since
+you want one in your room, pray take this one,&rdquo; handing
+it to him. &ldquo;I think I can recommend this one; the
+tin part,&rdquo; rapping it with his knuckles, &ldquo;seems so
+perfect&mdash;sounds so very hollow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure it&rsquo;s <i>quite</i> perfect, though?&rdquo; Then, anxiously
+putting on his spectacles, he scrutinized it pretty
+closely&mdash;&ldquo;well soldered? quite tight?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should say so, sir; though, indeed, as I said, I
+never use this sort of thing, myself. Still, I think that
+in case of a wreck, barring sharp-pointed timbers, you
+could have confidence in that stool for a special providence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have
+both of us in its good keeping.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be sure it will,&rdquo; eying the old man with sympathy,
+as for the moment he stood, money-belt in hand, and
+life-preserver under arm, &ldquo;be sure it will, sir, since
+in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.
+But, bless me, we are being left in the dark here. Pah!
+what a smell, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, my way now,&rdquo; cried the old man, peering before
+him, &ldquo;where lies my way to my state-room?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have indifferent eyes, and will show you; but, first,
+for the good of all lungs, let me extinguish this lamp.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The next moment, the waning light expired, and with
+it the waning flames of the horned altar, and the waning
+halo round the robed man&rsquo;s brow; while in the darkness
+which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old man
+away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class='bbox'>
+<h2 style='margin-top:0;'>Transcriber&rsquo;s Note and Errata</h2>
+
+<p class='noin c'>The following words are seen in both hyphenated and un-hyphenated
+forms. The number of instances are given in parentheses.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td>church-yard (2)</td><td>churchyard (1)</td></tr>
+<tr><td>cross-wise (1)</td><td>crosswise (1)</td></tr>
+<tr><td>thread-bare (1)</td><td>threadbare (1)</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class='noin c'>The following typographical errors have been corrected:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr style='font-weight:bold'><td>Page</td><td>Error</td><td>Correction</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>26</td><td>ACQUANTANCE</td><td>ACQUAINTANCE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>54</td><td>prevailent</td><td>prevalent</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>77</td><td>the the</td><td>the</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>110</td><td>tranquillity</td><td>tranquility</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>112</td><td>abox</td><td>a box</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>179</td><td>acommodates</td><td>accommodates</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>212</td><td>have have</td><td>have</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>213</td><td>worldlingg, lutton,</td><td>worldling, glutton,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>227</td><td>backswoods&rsquo;</td><td>backwoods&rsquo;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>229</td><td>it it</td><td>it is</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>265</td><td>fellew</td><td>fellow</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>266</td><td>principal</td><td>principle</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>273</td><td>it it</td><td>it</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>275</td><td>everwhere</td><td>everywhere</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>281</td><td>SUPRISING</td><td>SURPRISING</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>314</td><td>freind</td><td>friend</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #21816 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21816)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Confidence-Man
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21816]
+Last Updated: February 11, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFIDENCE-MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by LN Yaddanapudi and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFIDENCE-MAN:
+HIS MASQUERADE.
+
+BY
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+AUTHOR OF "PIAZZA TALES," "OMOO," "TYPEE," ETC., ETC.
+
+NEW YORK:
+DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY
+1857.
+
+
+Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+MILLER & HOLMAN,
+Printers and Stereotypers, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A mute goes aboard a boat on the Mississippi.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Showing that many men have many minds.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+In which a variety of characters appear.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Renewal of old acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The man with the weed makes it an even question whether he be a great
+sage or a great simpleton.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+At the outset of which certain passengers prove deaf to the call of
+charity.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A gentleman with gold sleeve-buttons.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A charitable lady.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Two business men transact a little business.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+In the cabin.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Only a page or so.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The story of the unfortunate man, from which may be gathered whether or
+no he has been justly so entitled.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The man with the traveling-cap evinces much humanity, and in a way which
+would seem to show him to be one of the most logical of optimists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+An old miser, upon suitable representations, is prevailed upon to
+venture an investment.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A sick man, after some impatience, is induced to become a patient.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Towards the end of which the Herb-Doctor proves himself a forgiver of
+injuries.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Inquest into the true character of the Herb-Doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A soldier of fortune.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Reappearance of one who may be remembered.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A hard case.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+In the polite spirit of the Tusculan disputations.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+In which the powerful effect of natural scenery is evinced in the case
+of the Missourian, who, in view of the region round about Cairo, has a
+return of his chilly fit.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A philanthropist undertakes to convert a misanthrope, but does not get
+beyond confuting him.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan makes an acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the views of
+one evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Some account of a man of questionable morality, but who, nevertheless,
+would seem entitled to the esteem of that eminent English moralist who
+said he liked a good hater.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Moot points touching the late Colonel John Moredock.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+The boon companions.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Opening with a poetical eulogy of the Press, and continuing with talk
+inspired by the same.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A metamorphosis more surprising than any in Ovid.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Showing that the age of music and magicians is not yet over.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan tells the story of the gentleman-madman.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan strikingly evinces the artlessness of his
+nature.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan is accosted by a mystic, whereupon ensues
+pretty much such talk as might be expected.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+The mystical master introduces the practical disciple.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+The disciple unbends, and consents to act a social part.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+The hypothetical friends.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+In which the story of China Aster is, at second-hand, told by one who,
+while not disapproving the moral, disclaims the spirit of the style.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+Ending with a rupture of the hypothesis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+Upon the heel of the last scene, the Cosmopolitan enters the barber's
+shop, a benediction on his lips.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+Very charming.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of
+the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention
+from those readers who do not skip it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan increases in seriousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
+
+
+At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac
+at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the
+city of St. Louis.
+
+His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur
+one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag,
+nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends.
+From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd,
+it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a
+stranger.
+
+In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite
+steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but
+unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but
+evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities,
+he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a
+placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of
+a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East;
+quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though
+wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what
+purported to be a careful description of his person followed.
+
+As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the
+announcement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was
+plain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of
+them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were
+enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these
+chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another
+chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular
+safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile
+chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the
+bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers
+Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky--creatures,
+with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for
+the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same
+regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause
+for unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think
+that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes
+increase.
+
+Pausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded in threading his
+way, as at last to plant himself just beside the placard, when,
+producing a small slate and tracing some words upon if, he held it up
+before him on a level with the placard, so that they who read the one
+might read the other. The words were these:--
+
+"Charity thinketh no evil."
+
+As, in gaining his place, some little perseverance, not to say
+persistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been unavoidable, it was
+not with the best relish that the crowd regarded his apparent intrusion;
+and upon a more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about
+him, but rather something quite the contrary--he being of an aspect so
+singularly innocent; an aspect too, which they took to be somehow
+inappropriate to the time and place, and inclining to the notion that
+his writing was of much the same sort: in short, taking him for some
+strange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself,
+but not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder--they made no scruple to
+jostle him aside; while one, less kind than the rest, or more of a wag,
+by an unobserved stroke, dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon
+his head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly turned, and
+writing anew upon the slate, again held it up:--
+
+"Charity suffereth long, and is kind."
+
+Illy pleased with his pertinacity, as they thought it, the crowd a
+second time thrust him aside, and not without epithets and some buffets,
+all of which were unresented. But, as if at last despairing of so
+difficult an adventure, wherein one, apparently a non-resistant, sought
+to impose his presence upon fighting characters, the stranger now moved
+slowly away, yet not before altering his writing to this:--
+
+"Charity endureth all things."
+
+Shield-like bearing his slate before him, amid stares and jeers he moved
+slowly up and down, at his turning points again changing his inscription
+to--
+
+"Charity believeth all things."
+
+and then--
+
+"Charity never faileth."
+
+The word charity, as originally traced, remained throughout uneffaced,
+not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date, otherwise left for
+convenience in blank.
+
+To some observers, the singularity, if not lunacy, of the stranger was
+heightened by his muteness, and, perhaps also, by the contrast to his
+proceedings afforded in the actions--quite in the wonted and sensible
+order of things--of the barber of the boat, whose quarters, under a
+smoking-saloon, and over against a bar-room, was next door but two to
+the captain's office. As if the long, wide, covered deck, hereabouts
+built up on both sides with shop-like windowed spaces, were some
+Constantinople arcade or bazaar, where more than one trade is plied,
+this river barber, aproned and slippered, but rather crusty-looking for
+the moment, it may be from being newly out of bed, was throwing open
+his premises for the day, and suitably arranging the exterior. With
+business-like dispatch, having rattled down his shutters, and at a
+palm-tree angle set out in the iron fixture his little ornamental pole,
+and this without overmuch tenderness for the elbows and toes of the
+crowd, he concluded his operations by bidding people stand still more
+aside, when, jumping on a stool, he hung over his door, on the customary
+nail, a gaudy sort of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed
+by himself, gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in readiness to
+shave, and also, for the public benefit, with two words not unfrequently
+seen ashore gracing other shops besides barbers':--
+
+"NO TRUST."
+
+An inscription which, though in a sense not less intrusive than the
+contrasted ones of the stranger, did not, as it seemed, provoke any
+corresponding derision or surprise, much less indignation; and still
+less, to all appearances, did it gain for the inscriber the repute of
+being a simpleton.
+
+Meanwhile, he with the slate continued moving slowly up and down, not
+without causing some stares to change into jeers, and some jeers into
+pushes, and some pushes into punches; when suddenly, in one of his
+turns, he was hailed from behind by two porters carrying a large trunk;
+but as the summons, though loud, was without effect, they accidentally
+or otherwise swung their burden against him, nearly overthrowing him;
+when, by a quick start, a peculiar inarticulate moan, and a pathetic
+telegraphing of his fingers, he involuntarily betrayed that he was not
+alone dumb, but also deaf.
+
+Presently, as if not wholly unaffected by his reception thus far, he
+went forward, seating himself in a retired spot on the forecastle, nigh
+the foot of a ladder there leading to a deck above, up and down which
+ladder some of the boatmen, in discharge of their duties, were
+occasionally going.
+
+From his betaking himself to this humble quarter, it was evident that,
+as a deck-passenger, the stranger, simple though he seemed, was not
+entirely ignorant of his place, though his taking a deck-passage might
+have been partly for convenience; as, from his having no luggage, it was
+probable that his destination was one of the small wayside landings
+within a few hours' sail. But, though he might not have a long way to
+go, yet he seemed already to have come from a very long distance.
+
+Though neither soiled nor slovenly, his cream-colored suit had a tossed
+look, almost linty, as if, traveling night and day from some far country
+beyond the prairies, he had long been without the solace of a bed. His
+aspect was at once gentle and jaded, and, from the moment of seating
+himself, increasing in tired abstraction and dreaminess. Gradually
+overtaken by slumber, his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like
+figure relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder's foot, lay
+motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly stealing down
+over night, with its white placidity startles the brown farmer peering
+out from his threshold at daybreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SHOWING THAT MANY MEN HAVE MANY MINDS.
+
+
+"Odd fish!"
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+"Who can he be?"
+
+"Casper Hauser."
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+"Uncommon countenance."
+
+"Green prophet from Utah."
+
+"Humbug!"
+
+"Singular innocence."
+
+"Means something."
+
+"Spirit-rapper."
+
+"Moon-calf."
+
+"Piteous."
+
+"Trying to enlist interest."
+
+"Beware of him."
+
+"Fast asleep here, and, doubtless, pick-pockets on board."
+
+"Kind of daylight Endymion."
+
+"Escaped convict, worn out with dodging."
+
+"Jacob dreaming at Luz."
+
+Such the epitaphic comments, conflictingly spoken or thought, of a
+miscellaneous company, who, assembled on the overlooking, cross-wise
+balcony at the forward end of the upper deck near by, had not witnessed
+preceding occurrences.
+
+Meantime, like some enchanted man in his grave, happily oblivious of all
+gossip, whether chiseled or chatted, the deaf and dumb stranger still
+tranquilly slept, while now the boat started on her voyage.
+
+The great ship-canal of Ving-King-Ching, in the Flowery Kingdom, seems
+the Mississippi in parts, where, amply flowing between low, vine-tangled
+banks, flat as tow-paths, it bears the huge toppling steamers, bedizened
+and lacquered within like imperial junks.
+
+Pierced along its great white bulk with two tiers of small
+embrasure-like windows, well above the waterline, the Fiddle, though,
+might at distance have been taken by strangers for some whitewashed fort
+on a floating isle.
+
+Merchants on 'change seem the passengers that buzz on her decks, while,
+from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Fine
+promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential
+passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes, and
+out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers in an escritoire, present
+like facilities for publicity or privacy. Auctioneer or coiner, with
+equal ease, might somewhere here drive his trade.
+
+Though her voyage of twelve hundred miles extends from apple to orange,
+from clime to clime, yet, like any small ferry-boat, to right and left,
+at every landing, the huge Fidèle still receives additional passengers
+in exchange for those that disembark; so that, though always full of
+strangers, she continually, in some degree, adds to, or replaces them
+with strangers still more strange; like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed from
+the Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters,
+but never with the same strange particles in every part.
+
+Though hitherto, as has been seen, the man in cream-colors had by no
+means passed unobserved, yet by stealing into retirement, and there
+going asleep and continuing so, he seemed to have courted oblivion, a
+boon not often withheld from so humble an applicant as he. Those staring
+crowds on the shore were now left far behind, seen dimly clustering like
+swallows on eaves; while the passengers' attention was soon drawn away
+to the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers on the Missouri
+shore, or the bluff-looking Missourians and towering Kentuckians among
+the throngs on the decks.
+
+By-and-by--two or three random stoppages having been made, and the last
+transient memory of the slumberer vanished, and he himself, not
+unlikely, waked up and landed ere now--the crowd, as is usual, began in
+all parts to break up from a concourse into various clusters or squads,
+which in some cases disintegrated again into quartettes, trios, and
+couples, or even solitaires; involuntarily submitting to that natural
+law which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in time to the
+member.
+
+As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing
+the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of
+variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men
+of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters;
+heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters,
+happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all
+these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern
+speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch,
+Danes; Santa Fé traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in
+cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and
+Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters; Quakers in full drab, and
+United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto,
+quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews;
+Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotalers
+and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists and
+clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests.
+In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all
+kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.
+
+As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood,
+maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals
+blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like
+picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned
+the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the
+Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and
+opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan
+and confident tide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN WHICH A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS APPEAR.
+
+
+In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive object, for a
+time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in tow-cloth attire and an old
+coal-sifter of a tamborine in his hand, who, owing to something wrong
+about his legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a
+Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest
+black face rubbing against the upper part of people's thighs as he made
+shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was, and raising a
+smile even from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his very
+deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily endured, raising
+mirth in some of that crowd, whose own purses, hearths, hearts, all
+their possessions, sound limbs included, could not make gay.
+
+"What is your name, old boy?" said a purple-faced drover, putting his
+large purple hand on the cripple's bushy wool, as if it were the curled
+forehead of a black steer.
+
+"Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar."
+
+"And who is your master, Guinea?"
+
+"Oh sar, I am der dog widout massa."
+
+"A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I'm sorry for that, Guinea. Dogs
+without masters fare hard."
+
+"So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What
+ge'mman want to own dese here legs?"
+
+"But where do you live?"
+
+"All 'long shore, sar; dough now. I'se going to see brodder at der
+landing; but chiefly I libs in dey city."
+
+"St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of nights?"
+
+"On der floor of der good baker's oven, sar."
+
+"In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should like to know, bakes such
+black bread in his oven, alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is
+that too charitable baker, pray?"
+
+"Dar he be," with a broad grin lifting his tambourine high over his
+head.
+
+"The sun is the baker, eh?"
+
+"Yes sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones for dis ole darkie
+when he sleeps out on der pabements o' nights."
+
+"But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when
+the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old
+boy?"
+
+"Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh sar, oh!
+don't speak ob der winter," he added, with a reminiscent shiver,
+shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black
+sheep nudging itself a cozy berth in the heart of the white flock.
+
+Thus far not very many pennies had been given him, and, used at last to
+his strange looks, the less polite passengers of those in that part of
+the boat began to get their fill of him as a curious object; when
+suddenly the negro more than revived their first interest by an
+expedient which, whether by chance or design, was a singular temptation
+at once to _diversion_ and charity, though, even more than his crippled
+limbs, it put him on a canine footing. In short, as in appearance he
+seemed a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to be treated.
+Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing
+back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples
+at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a
+bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple's mouth being at
+once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a
+cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject of alms-giving is
+trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under
+the trial, must be still more so; but whatever his secret emotions, he
+swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this side the
+oesophagus. And nearly always he grinned, and only once or twice did
+he wince, which was when certain coins, tossed by more playful almoners,
+came inconveniently nigh to his teeth, an accident whose unwelcomeness
+was not unedged by the circumstance that the pennies thus thrown proved
+buttons.
+
+While this game of charity was yet at its height, a limping,
+gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person--it may be some discharged custom-house
+officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had
+concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself
+miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting everything and
+everybody--this shallow unfortunate, after sundry sorry observations of
+the negro, began to croak out something about his deformity being a
+sham, got up for financial purposes, which immediately threw a damp upon
+the frolic benignities of the pitch-penny players.
+
+But that these suspicions came from one who himself on a wooden leg went
+halt, this did not appear to strike anybody present. That cripples,
+above all men should be companionable, or, at least, refrain from
+picking a fellow-limper to pieces, in short, should have a little
+sympathy in common misfortune, seemed not to occur to the company.
+
+Meantime, the negro's countenance, before marked with even more than
+patient good-nature, drooped into a heavy-hearted expression, full of
+the most painful distress. So far abased beneath its proper physical
+level, that Newfoundland-dog face turned in passively hopeless appeal,
+as if instinct told it that the right or the wrong might not have
+overmuch to do with whatever wayward mood superior intelligences might
+yield to.
+
+But instinct, though knowing, is yet a teacher set below reason, which
+itself says, in the grave words of Lysander in the comedy, after Puck
+has made a sage of him with his spell:--
+
+"The will of man is by his reason swayed."
+
+So that, suddenly change as people may, in their dispositions, it is not
+always waywardness, but improved judgment, which, as in Lysander's case,
+or the present, operates with them.
+
+Yes, they began to scrutinize the negro curiously enough; when,
+emboldened by this evidence of the efficacy of his words, the
+wooden-legged man hobbled up to the negro, and, with the air of a
+beadle, would, to prove his alleged imposture on the spot, have stripped
+him and then driven him away, but was prevented by the crowd's clamor,
+now taking part with the poor fellow, against one who had just before
+turned nearly all minds the other way. So he with the wooden leg was
+forced to retire; when the rest, finding themselves left sole judges in
+the case, could not resist the opportunity of acting the part: not
+because it is a human weakness to take pleasure in sitting in judgment
+upon one in a box, as surely this unfortunate negro now was, but that it
+strangely sharpens human perceptions, when, instead of standing by and
+having their fellow-feelings touched by the sight of an alleged culprit
+severely handled by some one justiciary, a crowd suddenly come to be all
+justiciaries in the same case themselves; as in Arkansas once, a man
+proved guilty, by law, of murder, but whose condemnation was deemed
+unjust by the people, so that they rescued him to try him themselves;
+whereupon, they, as it turned out, found him even guiltier than the
+court had done, and forthwith proceeded to execution; so that the
+gallows presented the truly warning spectacle of a man hanged by his
+friends.
+
+But not to such extremities, or anything like them, did the present
+crowd come; they, for the time, being content with putting the negro
+fairly and discreetly to the question; among other things, asking him,
+had he any documentary proof, any plain paper about him, attesting that
+his case was not a spurious one.
+
+"No, no, dis poor ole darkie haint none o' dem waloable papers," he
+wailed.
+
+"But is there not some one who can speak a good word for you?" here said
+a person newly arrived from another part of the boat, a young Episcopal
+clergyman, in a long, straight-bodied black coat; small in stature, but
+manly; with a clear face and blue eye; innocence, tenderness, and good
+sense triumvirate in his air.
+
+"Oh yes, oh yes, ge'mmen," he eagerly answered, as if his memory, before
+suddenly frozen up by cold charity, as suddenly thawed back into
+fluidity at the first kindly word. "Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here a
+werry nice, good ge'mman wid a weed, and a ge'mman in a gray coat and
+white tie, what knows all about me; and a ge'mman wid a big book, too;
+and a yarb-doctor; and a ge'mman in a yaller west; and a ge'mman wid a
+brass plate; and a ge'mman in a wiolet robe; and a ge'mman as is a
+sodjer; and ever so many good, kind, honest ge'mmen more aboard what
+knows me and will speak for me, God bress 'em; yes, and what knows me as
+well as dis poor old darkie knows hisself, God bress him! Oh, find 'em,
+find 'em," he earnestly added, "and let 'em come quick, and show you
+all, ge'mmen, dat dis poor ole darkie is werry well wordy of all you
+kind ge'mmen's kind confidence."
+
+"But how are we to find all these people in this great crowd?" was the
+question of a bystander, umbrella in hand; a middle-aged person, a
+country merchant apparently, whose natural good-feeling had been made at
+least cautious by the unnatural ill-feeling of the discharged
+custom-house officer.
+
+"Where are we to find them?" half-rebukefully echoed the young Episcopal
+clergymen. "I will go find one to begin with," he quickly added, and,
+with kind haste suiting the action to the word, away he went.
+
+"Wild goose chase!" croaked he with the wooden leg, now again drawing
+nigh. "Don't believe there's a soul of them aboard. Did ever beggar have
+such heaps of fine friends? He can walk fast enough when he tries, a
+good deal faster than I; but he can lie yet faster. He's some white
+operator, betwisted and painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are
+all humbugs."
+
+"Have you no charity, friend?" here in self-subdued tones, singularly
+contrasted with his unsubdued person, said a Methodist minister,
+advancing; a tall, muscular, martial-looking man, a Tennessean by birth,
+who in the Mexican war had been volunteer chaplain to a volunteer
+rifle-regiment.
+
+"Charity is one thing, and truth is another," rejoined he with the
+wooden leg: "he's a rascal, I say."
+
+"But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction as one can upon
+the poor fellow?" said the soldierlike Methodist, with increased
+difficulty maintaining a pacific demeanor towards one whose own asperity
+seemed so little to entitle him to it: "he looks honest, don't he?"
+
+"Looks are one thing, and facts are another," snapped out the other
+perversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction can you put
+upon a rascal, but that a rascal he is?"
+
+"Be not such a Canada thistle," urged the Methodist, with something less
+of patience than before. "Charity, man, charity."
+
+"To where it belongs with your charity! to heaven with it!" again
+snapped out the other, diabolically; "here on earth, true charity dotes,
+and false charity plots. Who betrays a fool with a kiss, the charitable
+fool has the charity to believe is in love with him, and the charitable
+knave on the stand gives charitable testimony for his comrade in the
+box."
+
+"Surely, friend," returned the noble Methodist, with much ado
+restraining his still waxing indignation--"surely, to say the least, you
+forget yourself. Apply it home," he continued, with exterior calmness
+tremulous with inkept emotion. "Suppose, now, I should exercise no
+charity in judging your own character by the words which have fallen
+from you; what sort of vile, pitiless man do you think I would take you
+for?"
+
+"No doubt"--with a grin--"some such pitiless man as has lost his piety
+in much the same way that the jockey loses his honesty."
+
+"And how is that, friend?" still conscientiously holding back the old
+Adam in him, as if it were a mastiff he had by the neck.
+
+"Never you mind how it is"--with a sneer; "but all horses aint virtuous,
+no more than all men kind; and come close to, and much dealt with, some
+things are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I will find you
+a benevolent wise man."
+
+"Some insinuation there."
+
+"More fool you that are puzzled by it."
+
+"Reprobate!" cried the other, his indignation now at last almost boiling
+over; "godless reprobate! if charity did not restrain me, I could call
+you by names you deserve."
+
+"Could you, indeed?" with an insolent sneer.
+
+"Yea, and teach you charity on the spot," cried the goaded Methodist,
+suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar,
+and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a
+nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?--thought, seedy
+coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You
+find your mistake"--with another hearty shake.
+
+"Well said and better done, church militant!" cried a voice.
+
+"The white cravat against the world!" cried another.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" chorused many voices, with like enthusiasm taking sides
+with the resolute champion.
+
+"You fools!" cried he with the wooden leg, writhing himself loose and
+inflamedly turning upon the throng; "you flock of fools, under this
+captain of fools, in this ship of fools!"
+
+With which exclamations, followed by idle threats against his
+admonisher, this condign victim to justice hobbled away, as disdaining
+to hold further argument with such a rabble. But his scorn was more than
+repaid by the hisses that chased him, in which the brave Methodist,
+satisfied with the rebuke already administered, was, to omit still
+better reasons, too magnanimous to join. All he said was, pointing
+towards the departing recusant, "There he shambles off on his one lone
+leg, emblematic of his one-sided view of humanity."
+
+"But trust your painted decoy," retorted the other from a distance,
+pointing back to the black cripple, "and I have my revenge."
+
+"But we aint agoing to trust him!" shouted back a voice.
+
+"So much the better," he jeered back. "Look you," he added, coming to a
+dead halt where he was; "look you, I have been called a Canada thistle.
+Very good. And a seedy one: still better. And the seedy Canada thistle
+has been pretty well shaken among ye: best of all. Dare say some seed
+has been shaken out; and won't it spring though? And when it does
+spring, do you cut down the young thistles, and won't they spring the
+more? It's encouraging and coaxing 'em. Now, when with my thistles your
+farms shall be well stocked, why then--you may abandon 'em!"
+
+"What does all that mean, now?" asked the country merchant, staring.
+
+"Nothing; the foiled wolf's parting howl," said the Methodist. "Spleen,
+much spleen, which is the rickety child of his evil heart of unbelief:
+it has made him mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh,
+friends," raising his arms as in the pulpit, "oh beloved, how are we
+admonished by the melancholy spectacle of this raver. Let us profit by
+the lesson; and is it not this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence,
+there be aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting
+his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses full of tragic mopers, and
+seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness
+muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped
+over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and
+starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot at him."
+
+"What an example," whispered one.
+
+"Might deter Timon," was the response.
+
+"Oh, oh, good ge'mmen, have you no confidence in dis poor ole darkie?"
+now wailed the returning negro, who, during the late scene, had stumped
+apart in alarm.
+
+"Confidence in you?" echoed he who had whispered, with abruptly changed
+air turning short round; "that remains to be seen."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Ebony," in similarly changed tones said he who
+had responded to the whisperer, "yonder churl," pointing toward the
+wooden leg in the distance, "is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough, and
+I would not wish to be like him; but that is no reason why you may not
+be some sort of black Jeremy Diddler."
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie, den?"
+
+"Before giving you our confidence," said a third, "we will wait the
+report of the kind gentleman who went in search of one of your friends
+who was to speak for you."
+
+"Very likely, in that case," said a fourth, "we shall wait here till
+Christmas. Shouldn't wonder, did we not see that kind gentleman again.
+After seeking awhile in vain, he will conclude he has been made a fool
+of, and so not return to us for pure shame. Fact is, I begin to feel a
+little qualmish about the darkie myself. Something queer about this
+darkie, depend upon it."
+
+Once more the negro wailed, and turning in despair from the last
+speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist by the skirt of his coat. But
+a change had come over that before impassioned intercessor. With an
+irresolute and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant; against whom,
+somehow, by what seemed instinctive influences, the distrusts first set
+on foot were now generally reviving, and, if anything, with added
+severity.
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie," yet again wailed the negro,
+letting go the coat-skirts and turning appealingly all round him.
+
+"Yes, my poor fellow _I_ have confidence in you," now exclaimed the
+country merchant before named, whom the negro's appeal, coming so
+piteously on the heel of pitilessness, seemed at last humanely to have
+decided in his favor. "And here, here is some proof of my trust," with
+which, tucking his umbrella under his arm, and diving down his hand into
+his pocket, he fished forth a purse, and, accidentally, along with it,
+his business card, which, unobserved, dropped to the deck. "Here, here,
+my poor fellow," he continued, extending a half dollar.
+
+Not more grateful for the coin than the kindness, the cripple's face
+glowed like a polished copper saucepan, and shuffling a pace nigher,
+with one upstretched hand he received the alms, while, as unconsciously,
+his one advanced leather stump covered the card.
+
+Done in despite of the general sentiment, the good deed of the merchant
+was not, perhaps, without its unwelcome return from the crowd, since
+that good deed seemed somehow to convey to them a sort of reproach.
+Still again, and more pertinaciously than ever, the cry arose against
+the negro, and still again he wailed forth his lament and appeal among
+other things, repeating that the friends, of whom already he had
+partially run off the list, would freely speak for him, would anybody go
+find them.
+
+"Why don't you go find 'em yourself?" demanded a gruff boatman.
+
+"How can I go find 'em myself? Dis poor ole game-legged darkie's friends
+must come to him. Oh, whar, whar is dat good friend of dis darkie's, dat
+good man wid de weed?"
+
+At this point, a steward ringing a bell came along, summoning all
+persons who had not got their tickets to step to the captain's office;
+an announcement which speedily thinned the throng about the black
+cripple, who himself soon forlornly stumped out of sight, probably on
+much the same errand as the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RENEWAL OF OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Don't you know me?"
+
+"No, certainly."
+
+The crowd about the captain's office, having in good time melted away,
+the above encounter took place in one of the side balconies astern,
+between a man in mourning clean and respectable, but none of the
+glossiest, a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant
+before-mentioned, whom, with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, the
+former had accosted.
+
+"Is it possible, my dear sir," resumed he with the weed, "that you do
+not recall my countenance? why yours I recall distinctly as if but half
+an hour, instead of half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don't you
+recall me, now? Look harder."
+
+"In my conscience--truly--I protest," honestly bewildered, "bless my
+soul, sir, I don't know you--really, really. But stay, stay," he
+hurriedly added, not without gratification, glancing up at the crape on
+the stranger's hat, "stay--yes--seems to me, though I have not the
+pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am pretty sure I have at least
+_heard_ of you, and recently too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard
+here referred to you, among others, for a character, I think."
+
+"Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well. They found me. I have
+said all I could for him. I think I abated their distrust. Would I could
+have been of more substantial service. And apropos, sir," he added, "now
+that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the circumstance of one
+man, however humble, referring for a character to another man, however
+afflicted, does not argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?"
+
+The good merchant looked puzzled.
+
+"Still you don't recall my countenance?"
+
+"Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot, despite my best
+efforts," was the reluctantly-candid reply.
+
+"Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who am mistaken?--Are you
+not, sir, Henry Roberts, forwarding merchant, of Wheeling, Pennsylvania?
+Pray, now, if you use the advertisement of business cards, and happen to
+have one with you, just look at it, and see whether you are not the man
+I take you for."
+
+"Why," a bit chafed, perhaps, "I hope I know myself."
+
+"And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my
+dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else?
+Stranger things have happened."
+
+The good merchant stared.
+
+"To come to particulars, my dear sir, I met you, now some six years
+back, at Brade Brothers & Co's office, I think. I was traveling for a
+Philadelphia house. The senior Brade introduced us, you remember; some
+business-chat followed, then you forced me home with you to a family
+tea, and a family time we had. Have you forgotten about the urn, and
+what I said about Werter's Charlotte, and the bread and butter, and that
+capital story you told of the large loaf. A hundred times since, I have
+laughed over it. At least you must recall my name--Ringman, John
+Ringman."
+
+"Large loaf? Invited you to tea? Ringman? Ringman? Ring? Ring?"
+
+"Ah sir," sadly smiling, "don't ring the changes that way. I see you
+have a faithless memory, Mr. Roberts. But trust in the faithfulness of
+mine."
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, in some things my memory aint of the very
+best," was the honest rejoinder. "But still," he perplexedly added,
+"still I----"
+
+"Oh sir, suffice it that it is as I say. Doubt not that we are all well
+acquainted."
+
+"But--but I don't like this going dead against my own memory; I----"
+
+"But didn't you admit, my dear sir, that in some things this memory of
+yours is a little faithless? Now, those who have faithless memories,
+should they not have some little confidence in the less faithless
+memories of others?"
+
+"But, of this friendly chat and tea, I have not the slightest----"
+
+"I see, I see; quite erased from the tablet. Pray, sir," with a sudden
+illumination, "about six years back, did it happen to you to receive any
+injury on the head? Surprising effects have arisen from such a cause.
+Not alone unconsciousness as to events for a greater or less time
+immediately subsequent to the injury, but likewise--strange to
+add--oblivion, entire and incurable, as to events embracing a longer or
+shorter period immediately preceding it; that is, when the mind at the
+time was perfectly sensible of them, and fully competent also to
+register them in the memory, and did in fact so do; but all in vain, for
+all was afterwards bruised out by the injury."
+
+After the first start, the merchant listened with what appeared more
+than ordinary interest. The other proceeded:
+
+"In my boyhood I was kicked by a horse, and lay insensible for a long
+time. Upon recovering, what a blank! No faintest trace in regard to how
+I had come near the horse, or what horse it was, or where it was, or
+that it was a horse at all that had brought me to that pass. For the
+knowledge of those particulars I am indebted solely to my friends, in
+whose statements, I need not say, I place implicit reliance, since
+particulars of some sort there must have been, and why should they
+deceive me? You see sir, the mind is ductile, very much so: but images,
+ductilely received into it, need a certain time to harden and bake in
+their impressions, otherwise such a casualty as I speak of will in an
+instant obliterate them, as though they had never been. We are but clay,
+sir, potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and
+too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize. Tell me, was it your
+misfortune to receive any concussion upon the brain about the period I
+speak of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your memory by
+more minutely rehearsing the circumstances of our acquaintance."
+
+The growing interest betrayed by the merchant had not relaxed as the
+other proceeded. After some hesitation, indeed, something more than
+hesitation, he confessed that, though he had never received any injury
+of the sort named, yet, about the time in question, he had in fact been
+taken with a brain fever, losing his mind completely for a considerable
+interval. He was continuing, when the stranger with much animation
+exclaimed:
+
+"There now, you see, I was not wholly mistaken. That brain fever
+accounts for it all."
+
+"Nay; but----"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Roberts," respectfully interrupting him, "but time is
+short, and I have something private and particular to say to you. Allow
+me."
+
+Mr. Roberts, good man, could but acquiesce, and the two having silently
+walked to a less public spot, the manner of the man with the weed
+suddenly assumed a seriousness almost painful. What might be called a
+writhing expression stole over him. He seemed struggling with some
+disastrous necessity inkept. He made one or two attempts to speak, but
+words seemed to choke him. His companion stood in humane surprise,
+wondering what was to come. At length, with an effort mastering his
+feelings, in a tolerably composed tone he spoke:
+
+"If I remember, you are a mason, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Averting himself a moment, as to recover from a return of agitation, the
+stranger grasped the other's hand; "and would you not loan a brother a
+shilling if he needed it?"
+
+The merchant started, apparently, almost as if to retreat.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Roberts, I trust you are not one of those business men, who
+make a business of never having to do with unfortunates. For God's sake
+don't leave me. I have something on my heart--on my heart. Under
+deplorable circumstances thrown among strangers, utter strangers. I want
+a friend in whom I may confide. Yours, Mr. Roberts, is almost the first
+known face I've seen for many weeks."
+
+It was so sudden an outburst; the interview offered such a contrast to
+the scene around, that the merchant, though not used to be very
+indiscreet, yet, being not entirely inhumane, remained not entirely
+unmoved.
+
+The other, still tremulous, resumed:
+
+"I need not say, sir, how it cuts me to the soul, to follow up a social
+salutation with such words as have just been mine. I know that I
+jeopardize your good opinion. But I can't help it: necessity knows no
+law, and heeds no risk. Sir, we are masons, one more step aside; I will
+tell you my story."
+
+In a low, half-suppressed tone, he began it. Judging from his auditor's
+expression, it seemed to be a tale of singular interest, involving
+calamities against which no integrity, no forethought, no energy, no
+genius, no piety, could guard.
+
+At every disclosure, the hearer's commiseration increased. No
+sentimental pity. As the story went on, he drew from his wallet a bank
+note, but after a while, at some still more unhappy revelation, changed
+it for another, probably of a somewhat larger amount; which, when the
+story was concluded, with an air studiously disclamatory of alms-giving,
+he put into the stranger's hands; who, on his side, with an air
+studiously disclamatory of alms-taking, put it into his pocket.
+
+Assistance being received, the stranger's manner assumed a kind and
+degree of decorum which, under the circumstances, seemed almost
+coldness. After some words, not over ardent, and yet not exactly
+inappropriate, he took leave, making a bow which had one knows not what
+of a certain chastened independence about it; as if misery, however
+burdensome, could not break down self-respect, nor gratitude, however
+deep, humiliate a gentleman.
+
+He was hardly yet out of sight, when he paused as if thinking; then with
+hastened steps returning to the merchant, "I am just reminded that the
+president, who is also transfer-agent, of the Black Rapids Coal Company,
+happens to be on board here, and, having been subpoenaed as witness in a
+stock case on the docket in Kentucky, has his transfer-book with him. A
+month since, in a panic contrived by artful alarmists, some credulous
+stock-holders sold out; but, to frustrate the aim of the alarmists, the
+Company, previously advised of their scheme, so managed it as to get
+into its own hands those sacrificed shares, resolved that, since a
+spurious panic must be, the panic-makers should be no gainers by it. The
+Company, I hear, is now ready, but not anxious, to redispose of those
+shares; and having obtained them at their depressed value, will now sell
+them at par, though, prior to the panic, they were held at a handsome
+figure above. That the readiness of the Company to do this is not
+generally known, is shown by the fact that the stock still stands on the
+transfer-book in the Company's name, offering to one in funds a rare
+chance for investment. For, the panic subsiding more and more every day,
+it will daily be seen how it originated; confidence will be more than
+restored; there will be a reaction; from the stock's descent its rise
+will be higher than from no fall, the holders trusting themselves to
+fear no second fate."
+
+Having listened at first with curiosity, at last with interest, the
+merchant replied to the effect, that some time since, through friends
+concerned with it, he had heard of the company, and heard well of it,
+but was ignorant that there had latterly been fluctuations. He added
+that he was no speculator; that hitherto he had avoided having to do
+with stocks of any sort, but in the present case he really felt
+something like being tempted. "Pray," in conclusion, "do you think that
+upon a pinch anything could be transacted on board here with the
+transfer-agent? Are you acquainted with him?"
+
+"Not personally. I but happened to hear that he was a passenger. For the
+rest, though it might be somewhat informal, the gentleman might not
+object to doing a little business on board. Along the Mississippi, you
+know, business is not so ceremonious as at the East."
+
+"True," returned the merchant, and looked down a moment in thought,
+then, raising his head quickly, said, in a tone not so benign as his
+wonted one, "This would seem a rare chance, indeed; why, upon first
+hearing it, did you not snatch at it? I mean for yourself!"
+
+"I?--would it had been possible!"
+
+Not without some emotion was this said, and not without some
+embarrassment was the reply. "Ah, yes, I had forgotten."
+
+Upon this, the stranger regarded him with mild gravity, not a little
+disconcerting; the more so, as there was in it what seemed the aspect
+not alone of the superior, but, as it were, the rebuker; which sort of
+bearing, in a beneficiary towards his benefactor, looked strangely
+enough; none the less, that, somehow, it sat not altogether unbecomingly
+upon the beneficiary, being free from anything like the appearance of
+assumption, and mixed with a kind of painful conscientiousness, as
+though nothing but a proper sense of what he owed to himself swayed him.
+At length he spoke:
+
+"To reproach a penniless man with remissness in not availing himself of
+an opportunity for pecuniary investment--but, no, no; it was
+forgetfulness; and this, charity will impute to some lingering effect of
+that unfortunate brain-fever, which, as to occurrences dating yet
+further back, disturbed Mr. Roberts's memory still more seriously."
+
+"As to that," said the merchant, rallying, "I am not----"
+
+"Pardon me, but you must admit, that just now, an unpleasant distrust,
+however vague, was yours. Ah, shallow as it is, yet, how subtle a thing
+is suspicion, which at times can invade the humanest of hearts and
+wisest of heads. But, enough. My object, sir, in calling your attention
+to this stock, is by way of acknowledgment of your goodness. I but seek
+to be grateful; if my information leads to nothing, you must remember
+the motive."
+
+He bowed, and finally retired, leaving Mr. Roberts not wholly without
+self-reproach, for having momentarily indulged injurious thoughts
+against one who, it was evident, was possessed of a self-respect which
+forbade his indulging them himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN WITH THE WEED MAKES IT AN EVEN QUESTION WHETHER HE BE A GREAT
+SAGE OR A GREAT SIMPLETON.
+
+
+"Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that
+is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. Dear good man. Poor
+beating heart!"
+
+It was the man with the weed, not very long after quitting the merchant,
+murmuring to himself with his hand to his side like one with the
+heart-disease.
+
+Meditation over kindness received seemed to have softened him something,
+too, it may be, beyond what might, perhaps, have been looked for from
+one whose unwonted self-respect in the hour of need, and in the act of
+being aided, might have appeared to some not wholly unlike pride out of
+place; and pride, in any place, is seldom very feeling. But the truth,
+perhaps, is, that those who are least touched with that vice, besides
+being not unsusceptible to goodness, are sometimes the ones whom a
+ruling sense of propriety makes appear cold, if not thankless, under a
+favor. For, at such a time, to be full of warm, earnest words, and
+heart-felt protestations, is to create a scene; and well-bred people
+dislike few things more than that; which would seem to look as if the
+world did not relish earnestness; but, not so; because the world, being
+earnest itself, likes an earnest scene, and an earnest man, very well,
+but only in their place--the stage. See what sad work they make of it,
+who, ignorant of this, flame out in Irish enthusiasm and with Irish
+sincerity, to a benefactor, who, if a man of sense and respectability,
+as well as kindliness, can but be more or less annoyed by it; and, if of
+a nervously fastidious nature, as some are, may be led to think almost
+as much less favorably of the beneficiary paining him by his gratitude,
+as if he had been guilty of its contrary, instead only of an
+indiscretion. But, beneficiaries who know better, though they may feel
+as much, if not more, neither inflict such pain, nor are inclined to run
+any risk of so doing. And these, being wise, are the majority. By which
+one sees how inconsiderate those persons are, who, from the absence of
+its officious manifestations in the world, complain that there is not
+much gratitude extant; when the truth is, that there is as much of it as
+there is of modesty; but, both being for the most part votarists of the
+shade, for the most part keep out of sight.
+
+What started this was, to account, if necessary, for the changed air of
+the man with the weed, who, throwing off in private the cold garb of
+decorum, and so giving warmly loose to his genuine heart, seemed almost
+transformed into another being. This subdued air of softness, too, was
+toned with melancholy, melancholy unreserved; a thing which, however at
+variance with propriety, still the more attested his earnestness; for
+one knows not how it is, but it sometimes happens that, where
+earnestness is, there, also, is melancholy.
+
+At the time, he was leaning over the rail at the boat's side, in his
+pensiveness, unmindful of another pensive figure near--a young gentleman
+with a swan-neck, wearing a lady-like open shirt collar, thrown back,
+and tied with a black ribbon. From a square, tableted-broach, curiously
+engraved with Greek characters, he seemed a collegian--not improbably, a
+sophomore--on his travels; possibly, his first. A small book bound in
+Roman vellum was in his hand.
+
+Overhearing his murmuring neighbor, the youth regarded him with some
+surprise, not to say interest. But, singularly for a collegian, being
+apparently of a retiring nature, he did not speak; when the other still
+more increased his diffidence by changing from soliloquy to colloquy, in
+a manner strangely mixed of familiarity and pathos.
+
+"Ah, who is this? You did not hear me, my young friend, did you? Why,
+you, too, look sad. My melancholy is not catching!"
+
+"Sir, sir," stammered the other.
+
+"Pray, now," with a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along
+the rail, "Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give
+me leave," gently drawing it from him. "Tacitus!" Then opening it at
+random, read: "In general a black and shameful period lies before me."
+"Dear young sir," touching his arm alarmedly, "don't read this book. It
+is poison, moral poison. Even were there truth in Tacitus, such truth
+would have the operation of falsity, and so still be poison, moral
+poison. Too well I know this Tacitus. In my college-days he came near
+souring me into cynicism. Yes, I began to turn down my collar, and go
+about with a disdainfully joyless expression."
+
+"Sir, sir, I--I--"
+
+"Trust me. Now, young friend, perhaps you think that Tacitus, like me,
+is only melancholy; but he's more--he's ugly. A vast difference, young
+sir, between the melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the
+world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be compatible with
+benevolence, the other not. The one may deepen insight, the other
+shallows it. Drop Tacitus. Phrenologically, my young friend, you would
+seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but cribbed within the
+ugly view, the Tacitus view, your large brain, like your large ox in the
+contracted field, will but starve the more. And don't dream, as some of
+you students may, that, by taking this same ugly view, the deeper
+meanings of the deeper books will so alone become revealed to you. Drop
+Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy
+of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying--'There is a
+subtle man, and the same is deceived.' Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me
+throw the book overboard."
+
+"Sir, I--I--"
+
+"Not a word; I know just what is in your mind, and that is just what I
+am speaking to. Yes, learn from me that, though the sorrows of the world
+are great, its wickedness--that is, its ugliness--is small. Much cause
+to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known adversity, and
+know it still. But for that, do I turn cynic? No, no: it is small beer
+that sours. To my fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I
+may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in my kind. Now, then"
+(winningly), "this book--will you let me drown it for you?"
+
+"Really, sir--I--"
+
+"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in
+understanding human nature--as if truth was ever got at by libel. My
+young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and
+go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."
+
+"Upon my word, I--I--"
+
+"Nay, I foresee all that. But you carry Tacitus, that shallow Tacitus.
+What do _I_ carry? See"--producing a pocket-volume--"Akenside--his
+'Pleasures of Imagination.' One of these days you will know it. Whatever
+our lot, we should read serene and cheery books, fitted to inspire love
+and trust. But Tacitus! I have long been of opinion that these classics
+are the bane of colleges; for--not to hint of the immorality of Ovid,
+Horace, Anacreon, and the rest, and the dangerous theology of Eschylus
+and others--where will one find views so injurious to human nature as in
+Thucydides, Juvenal, Lucian, but more particularly Tacitus? When I
+consider that, ever since the revival of learning, these classics have
+been the favorites of successive generations of students and studious
+men, I tremble to think of that mass of unsuspected heresy on every
+vital topic which for centuries must have simmered unsurmised in the
+heart of Christendom. But Tacitus--he is the most extraordinary example
+of a heretic; not one iota of confidence in his kind. What a mockery
+that such an one should be reputed wise, and Thucydides be esteemed the
+statesman's manual! But Tacitus--I hate Tacitus; not, though, I trust,
+with the hate that sins, but a righteous hate. Without confidence
+himself, Tacitus destroys it in all his readers. Destroys confidence,
+paternal confidence, of which God knows that there is in this world none
+to spare. For, comparatively inexperienced as you are, my dear young
+friend, did you never observe how little, very little, confidence, there
+is? I mean between man and man--more particularly between stranger and
+stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence! I have
+sometimes almost thought that confidence is fled; that confidence is the
+New Astrea--emigrated--vanished--gone." Then softly sliding nearer, with
+the softest air, quivering down and looking up, "could you now, my dear
+young sir, under such circumstances, by way of experiment, simply have
+confidence in _me_?"
+
+From the outset, the sophomore, as has been seen, had struggled with an
+ever-increasing embarrassment, arising, perhaps, from such strange
+remarks coming from a stranger--such persistent and prolonged remarks,
+too. In vain had he more than once sought to break the spell by
+venturing a deprecatory or leave-taking word. In vain. Somehow, the
+stranger fascinated him. Little wonder, then, that, when the appeal
+came, he could hardly speak, but, as before intimated, being apparently
+of a retiring nature, abruptly retired from the spot, leaving the
+chagrined stranger to wander away in the opposite direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+AT THE OUTSET OF WHICH CERTAIN PASSENGERS PROVE DEAF TO THE CALL OF
+CHARITY.
+
+
+----"You--pish! Why will the captain suffer these begging fellows on
+board?";
+
+These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do gentleman in a
+ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored cheek, a ruby-headed
+cane in his hand, to a man in a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly
+after the interview last described, had accosted him for contributions
+to a Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles. Upon
+a cursory view, this last person might have seemed, like the man with
+the weed, one of the less unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a
+closer observation, his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though
+much of sanctity.
+
+With added words of touchy disgust, the well-to-do gentleman hurried
+away. But, though repulsed, and rudely, the man in gray did not
+reproach, for a time patiently remaining in the chilly loneliness to
+which he had been left, his countenance, however, not without token of
+latent though chastened reliance.
+
+At length an old gentleman, somewhat bulky, drew nigh, and from him also
+a contribution was sought.
+
+"Look, you," coming to a dead halt, and scowling upon him. "Look, you,"
+swelling his bulk out before him like a swaying balloon, "look, you, you
+on others' behalf ask for money; you, a fellow with a face as long as my
+arm. Hark ye, now: there is such a thing as gravity, and in condemned
+felons it may be genuine; but of long faces there are three sorts; that
+of grief's drudge, that of the lantern-jawed man, and that of the
+impostor. You know best which yours is."
+
+"Heaven give you more charity, sir."
+
+"And you less hypocrisy, sir."
+
+With which words, the hard-hearted old gentleman marched off.
+
+While the other still stood forlorn, the young clergyman, before
+introduced, passing that way, catching a chance sight of him, seemed
+suddenly struck by some recollection; and, after a moment's pause,
+hurried up with: "Your pardon, but shortly since I was all over looking
+for you."
+
+"For me?" as marveling that one of so little account should be sought
+for.
+
+"Yes, for you; do you know anything about the negro, apparently a
+cripple, aboard here? Is he, or is he not, what he seems to be?"
+
+"Ah, poor Guinea! have you, too, been distrusted? you, upon whom nature
+has placarded the evidence of your claims?"
+
+"Then you do really know him, and he is quite worthy? It relieves me to
+hear it--much relieves me. Come, let us go find him, and see what can be
+done."
+
+"Another instance that confidence may come too late. I am sorry to say
+that at the last landing I myself--just happening to catch sight of him
+on the gangway-plank--assisted the cripple ashore. No time to talk, only
+to help. He may not have told you, but he has a brother in that
+vicinity.
+
+"Really, I regret his going without my seeing him again; regret it,
+more, perhaps, than you can readily think. You see, shortly after
+leaving St. Louis, he was on the forecastle, and there, with many
+others, I saw him, and put trust in him; so much so, that, to convince
+those who did not, I, at his entreaty, went in search of you, you being
+one of several individuals he mentioned, and whose personal appearance
+he more or less described, individuals who he said would willingly speak
+for him. But, after diligent search, not finding you, and catching no
+glimpse of any of the others he had enumerated, doubts were at last
+suggested; but doubts indirectly originating, as I can but think, from
+prior distrust unfeelingly proclaimed by another. Still, certain it is,
+I began to suspect."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+A sort of laugh more like a groan than a laugh; and yet, somehow, it
+seemed intended for a laugh.
+
+Both turned, and the young clergyman started at seeing the wooden-legged
+man close behind him, morosely grave as a criminal judge with a
+mustard-plaster on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster
+might have been the memory of certain recent biting rebuffs and
+mortifications.
+
+"Wouldn't think it was I who laughed would you?"
+
+"But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to laugh at?" demanded
+the young clergyman, flushing, "me?"
+
+"Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles of you. But perhaps you
+don't believe it."
+
+"If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in
+gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to
+fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
+smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly
+making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street,
+as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic
+jeer at him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with his own
+foot."
+
+"Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other folks' sole-leather,"
+said the wooden-legged man with a crusty attempt at humor. But with
+augmented grin and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
+"you still think it was _you_ I was laughing at, just now. To prove your
+mistake, I will tell you what I _was_ laughing at; a story I happened to
+call to mind just then."
+
+Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic details, unpleasant
+to repeat, he related a story, which might, perhaps, in a good-natured
+version, be rendered as follows:
+
+A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man, less slender in purse
+than limb, happening to attend the theatre one evening, was so charmed
+with the character of a faithful wife, as there represented to the life,
+that nothing would do but he must marry upon it. So, marry he did, a
+beautiful girl from Tennessee, who had first attracted his attention by
+her liberal mould, and was subsequently recommended to him through her
+kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition. Though large,
+the praise proved not too much. For, ere long, rumor more than
+corroborated it, by whispering that the lady was liberal to a fault. But
+though various circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have been
+deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the old Frenchman by his
+friends, yet such was his confidence that not a syllable would he
+credit, till, chancing one night to return unexpectedly from a journey,
+upon entering his apartment, a stranger burst from the alcove: "Begar!"
+cried he, "now I _begin_ to suspec."
+
+His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent
+to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of
+a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent
+satisfaction hobbled away.
+
+"Who is that scoffer," said the man in gray, not without warmth. "Who is
+he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make
+truth almost offensive as falsehood. Who is he?"
+
+"He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his suspicion of the
+negro," replied the young clergyman, recovering from disturbance, "in
+short, the person to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
+maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted and painted
+up for a decoy. Yes, these were his very words, I think."
+
+"Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed. Pray, will you call him
+back, and let me ask him if he were really in earnest?"
+
+The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly objections,
+prevailed upon the one-legged individual to return for a moment. Upon
+which, the man in gray thus addressed him: "This reverend gentleman
+tells me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
+considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware that there are
+some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being
+wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have
+sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. I hope
+you are not one of these. In short, would you tell me now, whether you
+were not merely joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
+Would you be so kind?"
+
+"No, I won't be so kind, I'll be so cruel."
+
+"As you please about that."
+
+"Well, he's just what I said he was."
+
+"A white masquerading as a black?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a moment, then quietly
+whispered to him, "I thought you represented your friend here as a very
+distrustful sort of person, but he appears endued with a singular
+credulity.--Tell me, sir, do you really think that a white could look
+the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good acting."
+
+"Not much better than any other man acts."
+
+"How? Does all the world act? Am _I_, for instance, an actor? Is my
+reverend friend here, too, a performer?"
+
+"Yes, don't you both perform acts? To do, is to act; so all doers are
+actors."
+
+"You trifle.--I ask again, if a white, how could he look the negro so?"
+
+"Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying the old saying,
+not more just than charitable, that 'the devil is never so black as he
+is painted.' But his limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his
+limbs so?"
+
+"How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs? Easy enough to see how
+they are hoisted up."
+
+"The sham is evident, then?"
+
+"To the discerning eye," with a horrible screw of his gimlet one.
+
+"Well, where is Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at
+once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis."
+
+"Do so," cried the one-eyed man, "I'm just in the humor now for having
+him found, and leaving the streaks of these fingers on his paint, as the
+lion leaves the streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn't let me
+touch him before. Yes, find him, I'll make wool fly, and him after."
+
+"You forget," here said the young clergyman to the man in gray, "that
+yourself helped poor Guinea ashore."
+
+"So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look now," to the other, "I
+think that without personal proof I can convince you of your mistake.
+For I put it to you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
+sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all that trouble,
+and run all that hazard, for the mere sake of those few paltry coppers,
+which, I hear, was all he got for his pains, if pains they were?"
+
+"That puts the case irrefutably," said the young clergyman, with a
+challenging glance towards the one-legged man.
+
+"You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and
+hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the
+devil make by gulling Eve?"
+
+Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of his intolerable
+jeer.
+
+The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a while, and then,
+turning to his companion, said: "A bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be
+put down in any Christian community.--And this was he who was the means
+of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should shut our ears to distrust, and
+keep them open only for its opposite."
+
+"You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon it this morning, I
+should have spared myself what I now feel.--That but one man, and he
+with one leg, should have such ill power given him; his one sour word
+leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge, it did) the
+dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous company. But, as I
+hinted, with me at the time his ill words went for nothing; the same as
+now; only afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles me."
+
+"It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of distrust works
+something as certain potions do; it is a spirit which may enter such
+minds, and yet, for a time, longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent;
+but only the more deplorable its ultimate activity."
+
+"An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful man did but just now
+anew drop on me his bane, how shall I be sure that my present exemption
+from its effects will be lasting?"
+
+"You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any sort, which
+hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may arise in you."
+
+"I will do so." Then added as in soliloquy, "Indeed, indeed, I was to
+blame in standing passive under such influences as that one-legged
+man's. My conscience upbraids me.--The poor negro: You see him
+occasionally, perhaps?"
+
+"No, not often; though in a few days, as it happens, my engagements will
+call me to the neighborhood of his present retreat; and, no doubt,
+honest Guinea, who is a grateful soul, will come to see me there."
+
+"Then you have been his benefactor?"
+
+"His benefactor? I did not say that. I have known him."
+
+"Take this mite. Hand it to Guinea when you see him; say it comes from
+one who has full belief in his honesty, and is sincerely sorry for
+having indulged, however transiently, in a contrary thought."
+
+"I accept the trust. And, by-the-way, since you are of this truly
+charitable nature, you will not turn away an appeal in behalf of the
+Seminole Widow and Orphan Asylum?"
+
+"I have not heard of that charity."
+
+"But recently founded."
+
+After a pause, the clergyman was irresolutely putting his hand in his
+pocket, when, caught by something in his companion's expression, he eyed
+him inquisitively, almost uneasily.
+
+"Ah, well," smiled the other wanly, "if that subtle bane, we were
+speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning to work, in vain my
+appeal to you. Good-by."
+
+"Nay," not untouched, "you do me injustice; instead of indulging present
+suspicions, I had rather make amends for previous ones. Here is
+something for your asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course you
+have papers?"
+
+"Of course," producing a memorandum book and pencil. "Let me take down
+name and amount. We publish these names. And now let me give you a
+little history of our asylum, and the providential way in which it was
+started."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.
+
+
+At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with
+much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly
+questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted
+both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman
+who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it
+seemed, without being observed by him.
+
+"Pardon me," said he, rising, "but yonder is one who I know will
+contribute, and largely. Don't take it amiss if I quit you."
+
+"Go: duty before all things," was the conscientious reply.
+
+The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect. There he stood apart
+and in repose, and yet, by his mere look, lured the man in gray from his
+story, much as, by its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm,
+alone in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down his sheaves,
+and come and apply for the alms of its shade.
+
+But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing among men--the
+world familiarly know the noun; a common one in every language--it was
+curious that what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like a
+kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it make him appear more
+or less unreal in this portraiture), was but the expression of so
+prevalent a quality. Such goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune,
+that, so far as his own personal experience could have gone, scarcely
+could he have known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or
+suspecting the latter in any serious degree (supposing such degree of it
+to be), by observation or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
+its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly exempted. For
+the rest, he might have been five and fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall,
+rosy, between plump and portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the
+time and place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
+festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts was of
+white satin, which might have looked especially inappropriate, had it
+not seemed less a bit of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as
+it were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what seemed so good
+about him was not all outside; no, the fine covering had a still finer
+lining. Upon one hand he wore a white kid glove, but the other hand,
+which was ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidèle, like
+most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked here and there,
+especially about the railings, it was marvel how, under such
+circumstances, these hands retained their spotlessness. But, if you
+watched them a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
+you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant, whose hands
+nature had dyed black, perhaps with the same purpose that millers wear
+white, this negro servant's hands did most of his master's handling for
+him; having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his prejudices.
+But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences to himself, a
+gentleman could also sin by deputy, how shocking would that be! But it
+is not permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist would
+make proclamation of it.
+
+This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm, was one who, like
+the Hebrew governor, knew how to keep his hands clean, and who never in
+his life happened to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
+or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was to be a very good
+man.
+
+Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce at all; that
+superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing in his manner bespoke him
+righteous, but only good, and though to be good is much below being
+righteous, and though there is a difference between the two, yet not, it
+is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a righteous man can not be a
+good man; though, conversely, in the pulpit it has been with much
+cogency urged, that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
+nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that nothing short of a
+total change and conversion can make him so; which is something which no
+honest mind, well read in the history of righteousness, will care to
+deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a sense with the
+pulpit distinction, though not altogether in the pulpit deduction, and
+also pretty plainly intimating which of the two qualities in question
+enjoys his apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
+said, that, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure
+for a good man some would even dare to die;" therefore, when we repeat
+of this gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever else by severe
+censors may be objected to him, it is still to be hoped that his
+goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him. At all events,
+no man, not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to commit
+this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary as he might deem
+it; more especially, as, until everything could be known, there would be
+some chance that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent of
+it as he himself.
+
+It was pleasant to mark the good man's reception of the salute of the
+righteous man, that is, the man in gray; his inferior, apparently, not
+more in the social scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
+good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness over that suitor, not
+in conceited condescension, but with that even amenity of true majesty,
+which can be kind to any one without stooping to it.
+
+To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and orphans, the gentleman,
+after a question or two duly answered, responded by producing an ample
+pocket-book in the good old capacious style, of fine green French
+morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of the same color, not to omit
+bills crisp with newness, fresh from the bank, no muckworms' grime upon
+them. Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept unspotted
+from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing now three of those
+virgin bills in the applicant's hands, he hoped that the smallness of
+the contribution would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
+accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run down the river,
+to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon wedding of his niece: so
+did not carry much money with him.
+
+The other was about expressing his thanks when the gentleman in his
+pleasant way checked him: the gratitude was on the other side. To him,
+he said, charity was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against
+too great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had sometimes
+admonished him.
+
+In some general talk which followed, relative to organized modes of
+doing good, the gentleman expressed his regrets that so many benevolent
+societies as there were, here and there isolated in the land, should not
+act in concert by coming together, in the way that already in each
+society the individuals composing it had done, which would result, he
+thought, in like advantages upon a larger scale. Indeed, such a
+confederation might, perhaps, be attended with as happy results as
+politically attended that of the states.
+
+Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this suggestion had an
+effect illustrative in a sort of that notion of Socrates, that the soul
+is a harmony; for as the sound of a flute, in any particular key, will,
+it is said, audibly affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
+tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him respond, and
+with animation.
+
+Which animation, by the way, might seem more or less out of character in
+the man in gray, considering his unsprightly manner when first
+introduced, had he not already, in certain after colloquies, given
+proof, in some degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a
+soberly continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of stuff,
+is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because unwasted, and may
+be used the more effectively, too, when opportunity offers. What now
+follows on the part of the man in gray will still further exemplify,
+perhaps somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears to be such, of
+this remark.
+
+"Sir," said he eagerly, "I am before you. A project, not dissimilar to
+yours, was by me thrown out at the World's Fair in London."
+
+"World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?"
+
+"First, let me----"
+
+"Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?"
+
+"I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented."
+
+"Then you have not always been in the charity business?"
+
+"Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am, and always have been,
+as I always will be, I trust, in the charity business, as you call it;
+but charity is not like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
+point; charity is a work to which a good workman may be competent in all
+its branches. I invented my Protean easy-chair in odd intervals stolen
+from meals and sleep."
+
+"You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe it."
+
+"My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and
+bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch,
+that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
+seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,
+nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and
+somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to
+make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little
+means and off to the World's Fair with it."
+
+"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"
+
+"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and
+placed, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt
+upon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and
+reflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass
+house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed
+me. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot
+supply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
+world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired
+by the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my
+prospectus of the World's Charity."
+
+"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it."
+
+"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise
+deputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the
+society to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which
+end, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be
+done away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to
+levy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in
+Augustus Cæsar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax
+which, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in
+England, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all
+possible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the
+county-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors
+rolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,
+would result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
+hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and
+in such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general
+congress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I
+estimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven
+thousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of
+the society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen
+could remain the round world over."
+
+"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,
+as it were."
+
+"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a
+philanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a
+finance which are practicable."
+
+"Practicable?"
+
+"Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a
+retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of
+fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions--what is that, to average it,
+but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? And who
+will refuse, what Turk or Dyak even, his own little dollar for sweet
+charity's sake? Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
+expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries. Consider that
+bloody spendthrift, War. And are mankind so stupid, so wicked, that,
+upon the demonstration of these things they will not, amending their
+ways, devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead of
+cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have not to make it, it is
+theirs already; they have but to direct it from ill to good. And to
+this, scarce a self-denial is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
+mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would they be all
+the better and happier. Don't you see? But admit, as you must, that
+mankind is not mad, and my project is practicable. For, what creature
+but a madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is plain that,
+good or ill, it must return upon himself?"
+
+"Your sort of reasoning," said the good gentleman, adjusting his gold
+sleeve-buttons, "seems all reasonable enough, but with mankind it wont
+do."
+
+"Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason wont do with them."
+
+"That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the manner in which you
+alluded to the world's census, it would appear that, according to your
+world-wide scheme, the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute
+to the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than the Christian
+to the conversion of heathenism. How is that?"
+
+"Why, that--pardon me--is quibbling. Now, no philanthropist likes to be
+opposed with quibbling."
+
+"Well, I won't quibble any more. But, after all, if I understand your
+project, there is little specially new in it, further than the
+magnifying of means now in operation."
+
+"Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions I would thoroughly
+reform. Missions I would quicken with the Wall street spirit."
+
+"The Wall street spirit?"
+
+"Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but
+through the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer
+gaining of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly
+projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
+conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human
+effort, would, by the world's charity, be let out on contract. So much
+by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa.
+Competition allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
+lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house or tract-house of
+which slanderers could, with any plausibility, say that it had
+degenerated in its clerkships into a sort of custom-house. But the main
+point is the Archimedean money-power that would be brought to bear."
+
+"You mean the eight hundred million power?"
+
+"Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by driblets amounts to just
+nothing. I am for doing good to the world with a will. I am for doing
+good to the world once for all and having done with it. Do but think, my
+dear sir, of the eddies and maëlstroms of pagans in China. People here
+have no conception of it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper
+pagans are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin
+of peas. To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to
+be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of
+missionaries to such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am for
+sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and converting the Chinese
+_en masse_ within six months of the debarkation. The thing is then done,
+and turn to something else."
+
+"I fear you are too enthusiastic."
+
+"A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for without enthusiasm
+what was ever achieved but commonplace? But again: consider the poor in
+London. To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf there? I
+am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks and one hundred thousand
+barrels of flour to begin with. They are then comforted, and no more
+hunger for one while among the poor of London. And so all round."
+
+"Sharing the character of your general project, these things, I take it,
+are rather examples of wonders that were to be wished, than wonders that
+will happen."
+
+"And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world too old? Is it barren?
+Think of Sarah."
+
+"Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a smile). But still, as to
+your design at large, there seems a certain audacity."
+
+"But if to the audacity of the design there be brought a commensurate
+circumspectness of execution, how then?"
+
+"Why, do you really believe that your world's charity will ever go into
+operation?"
+
+"I have confidence that it will."
+
+"But may you not be over-confident?"
+
+"For a Christian to talk so!"
+
+"But think of the obstacles!"
+
+"Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles, though mountains.
+Yes, confidence in the world's charity to that degree, that, as no
+better person offers to supply the place, I have nominated myself
+provisional treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
+the present to be devoted to striking off a million more of my
+prospectuses."
+
+The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit of benevolence
+which, mindful of the millennial promise, had gone abroad over all the
+countries of the globe, much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman,
+stirred by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in March
+reveries at his fireside, over every field of his farm. The master chord
+of the man in gray had been touched, and it seemed as if it would never
+cease vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with gestures
+that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness before which
+granite hearts might crumble into gravel.
+
+Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly good-hearted as he
+seemed, remained proof to such eloquence; though not, as it turned out,
+to such pleadings. For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
+incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of destination,
+the gentleman, with a look half humor, half pity, put another bank-note
+into his hands; charitable to the last, if only to the dreams of
+enthusiasm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A CHARITABLE LADY.
+
+
+If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in
+a reason-fit is not the most lively. And this, without prejudice to his
+greatly improved understanding; for, if his elation was the height of
+his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity. Something
+thus now, to all appearance, with the man in gray. Society his stimulus,
+loneliness was his lethargy. Loneliness, like the sea breeze, blowing
+off from a thousand leagues of blankness, he did not find, as veteran
+solitaires do, if anything, too bracing. In short, left to himself, with
+none to charm forth his latent lymphatic, he insensibly resumes his
+original air, a quiescent one, blended of sad humility and demureness.
+
+Ere long he goes laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless
+quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats
+himself upon a sofa with an air of melancholy exhaustion and depression.
+
+At the sofa's further end sits a plump and pleasant person, whose aspect
+seems to hint that, if she have any weak point, it must be anything
+rather than her excellent heart. From her twilight dress, neither dawn
+nor dark, apparently she is a widow just breaking the chrysalis of her
+mourning. A small gilt testament is in her hand, which she has just been
+reading. Half-relinquished, she holds the book in reverie, her finger
+inserted at the xiii. of 1st Corinthians, to which chapter possibly her
+attention might have recently been turned, by witnessing the scene of
+the monitory mute and his slate.
+
+The sacred page no longer meets her eye; but, as at evening, when for a
+time the western hills shine on though the sun be set, her thoughtful
+face retains its tenderness though the teacher is forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the expression of the stranger is such as ere long to attract
+her glance. But no responsive one. Presently, in her somewhat
+inquisitive survey, her volume drops. It is restored. No encroaching
+politeness in the act, but kindness, unadorned. The eyes of the lady
+sparkle. Evidently, she is not now unprepossessed. Soon, bending over,
+in a low, sad tone, full of deference, the stranger breathes, "Madam,
+pardon my freedom, but there is something in that face which strangely
+draws me. May I ask, are you a sister of the Church?"
+
+"Why--really--you--"
+
+In concern for her embarrassment, he hastens to relieve it, but, without
+seeming so to do. "It is very solitary for a brother here," eying the
+showy ladies brocaded in the background, "I find none to mingle souls
+with. It may be wrong--I _know_ it is--but I cannot force myself to be
+easy with the people of the world. I prefer the company, however
+silent, of a brother or sister in good standing. By the way, madam, may
+I ask if you have confidence?"
+
+"Really, sir--why, sir--really--I--"
+
+"Could you put confidence in _me_ for instance?"
+
+"Really, sir--as much--I mean, as one may wisely put in a--a--stranger,
+an entire stranger, I had almost said," rejoined the lady, hardly yet at
+ease in her affability, drawing aside a little in body, while at the
+same time her heart might have been drawn as far the other way. A
+natural struggle between charity and prudence.
+
+"Entire stranger!" with a sigh. "Ah, who would be a stranger? In vain, I
+wander; no one will have confidence in me."
+
+"You interest me," said the good lady, in mild surprise. "Can I any way
+befriend you?"
+
+"No one can befriend me, who has not confidence."
+
+"But I--I have--at least to that degree--I mean that----"
+
+"Nay, nay, you have none--none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence.
+Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"
+
+"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest;
+"but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly
+biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I--yes,
+yes--I may say--that--that----"
+
+"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
+
+"Twenty dollars!"
+
+"There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence."
+
+The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of
+restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty
+different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At
+last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want
+the twenty dollars?"
+
+"And did I not----" then glancing at her half-mourning, "for the widow
+and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum,
+recently founded among the Seminoles."
+
+"And why did you not tell me your object before?" As not a little
+relieved. "Poor souls--Indians, too--those cruelly-used Indians. Here,
+here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more."
+
+"Grieve not for that, madam," rising and folding up the bank-notes.
+"This is an inconsiderable sum, I admit, but," taking out his pencil and
+book, "though I here but register the amount, there is another register,
+where is set down the motive. Good-bye; you have confidence. Yea, you
+can say to me as the apostle said to the Corinthians, 'I rejoice that I
+have confidence in you in all things.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.
+
+
+----"Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed hereabouts, rather
+a saddish gentleman? Strange where he can have gone to. I was talking
+with him not twenty minutes since."
+
+By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap, carrying
+under his arm a ledger-like volume, the above words were addressed to
+the collegian before introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which
+not long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted, he had
+returned, and there remained.
+
+"Have you seen him, sir?"
+
+Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial jauntiness of the
+stranger, the youth answered with unwonted promptitude: "Yes, a person
+with a weed was here not very long ago."
+
+"Saddish?"
+
+"Yes, and a little cracked, too, I should say."
+
+"It was he. Misfortune, I fear, has disturbed his brain. Now quick,
+which way did he go?"
+
+"Why just in the direction from which you came, the gangway yonder."
+
+"Did he? Then the man in the gray coat, whom I just met, said right: he
+must have gone ashore. How unlucky!"
+
+He stood vexedly twitching at his cap-tassel, which fell over by his
+whisker, and continued: "Well, I am very sorry. In fact, I had something
+for him here."--Then drawing nearer, "you see, he applied to me for
+relief, no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate, you
+understand. Well, being very busy just then, I declined; quite rudely,
+too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling way, I fear. At all events, not three
+minutes afterwards I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very
+peremptory, to deliver over into that unfortunate man's hands a
+ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be superstition, but I can't
+help it; I have my weak side, thank God. Then again," he rapidly went
+on, "we have been so very prosperous lately in our affairs--by we, I
+mean the Black Rapids Coal Company--that, really, out of my abundance,
+associative and individual, it is but fair that a charitable investment
+or two should be made, don't you think so?"
+
+"Sir," said the collegian without the least embarrassment, "do I
+understand that you are officially connected with the Black Rapids Coal
+Company?"
+
+"Yes, I happen to be president and transfer-agent."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Yes, but what is it to you? You don't want to invest?"
+
+"Why, do you sell the stock?"
+
+"Some might be bought, perhaps; but why do you ask? you don't want to
+invest?"
+
+"But supposing I did," with cool self-collectedness, "could you do up
+the thing for me, and here?"
+
+"Bless my soul," gazing at him in amaze, "really, you are quite a
+business man. Positively, I feel afraid of you."
+
+"Oh, no need of that.--You could sell me some of that stock, then?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know. To be sure, there are a few shares under
+peculiar circumstances bought in by the Company; but it would hardly be
+the thing to convert this boat into the Company's office. I think you
+had better defer investing. So," with an indifferent air, "you have seen
+the unfortunate man I spoke of?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man go his ways.--What is that large book you have
+with you?"
+
+"My transfer-book. I am subpoenaed with it to court."
+
+"Black Rapids Coal Company," obliquely reading the gilt inscription on
+the back; "I have heard much of it. Pray do you happen to have with you
+any statement of the condition of your company."
+
+"A statement has lately been printed."
+
+"Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have you a copy with you?"
+
+"I tell you again, I do not think that it would be suitable to convert
+this boat into the Company's office.--That unfortunate man, did you
+relieve him at all?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.--Hand me the statement."
+
+"Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly deny you. Here,"
+handing a small, printed pamphlet.
+
+The youth turned it over sagely.
+
+"I hate a suspicious man," said the other, observing him; "but I must
+say I like to see a cautious one."
+
+"I can gratify you there," languidly returning the pamphlet; "for, as I
+said before, I am naturally inquisitive; I am also circumspect. No
+appearances can deceive me. Your statement," he added "tells a very fine
+story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy awhile ago? downward
+tendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that
+stock?"
+
+"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The
+'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the
+growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears."
+
+"How, hypocritical?"
+
+"Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites
+by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of
+bright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of
+depression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;
+spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done,
+return, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the
+gains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!"
+
+"You are warm against these bears?"
+
+"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our
+stock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of
+confidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in
+themselves, are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence and
+gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks,
+politics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it
+may--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness,
+solely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of
+calamity which the gloomy philosopher parades, is but his
+Good-Enough-Morgan."
+
+"I rather like that," knowingly drawled the youth. "I fancy these gloomy
+souls as little as the next one. Sitting on my sofa after a champagne
+dinner, smoking my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me--what
+a bore!"
+
+"You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?"
+
+"I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are happy enough, and
+you know it; and everybody else is as happy as you, and you know that,
+too; and we shall all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
+too; but no, still you must have your sulk."
+
+"And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets his sulk? not from
+life; for he's often too much of a recluse, or else too young to have
+seen anything of it. No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees
+on the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to
+one, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about
+stuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it
+looks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way
+above his kind."
+
+"Just so," assented the youth. "I've lived some, and seen a good many
+such ravens at second hand. By the way, strange how that man with the
+weed, you were inquiring for, seemed to take me for some soft
+sentimentalist, only because I kept quiet, and thought, because I had a
+copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him for his gloom, instead
+of his gossip. But I let him talk. And, indeed, by my manner humored
+him."
+
+"You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate man, you must have made
+quite a fool of him."
+
+"His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable
+fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such
+fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
+superfluity in my pocket, and I'll just----"
+
+"----Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate man?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man be his own brother. What are you dragging him
+in for all the time? One would think you didn't care to register any
+transfers, or dispose of any stock--mind running on something else. I
+say I will invest."
+
+"Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows--this way, this way."
+
+And with off-handed politeness the man with the book escorted his
+companion into a private little haven removed from the brawling swells
+without.
+
+Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked the deck.
+
+"Now tell me, sir," said he with the book, "how comes it that a young
+gentleman like you, a sedate student at the first appearance, should
+dabble in stocks and that sort of thing?"
+
+"There are certain sophomorean errors in the world," drawled the
+sophomore, deliberately adjusting his shirt-collar, "not the least of
+which is the popular notion touching the nature of the modern scholar,
+and the nature of the modern scholastic sedateness."
+
+"So it seems, so it seems. Really, this is quite a new leaf in my
+experience."
+
+"Experience, sir," originally observed the sophomore, "is the only
+teacher."
+
+"Hence am I your pupil; for it's only when experience speaks, that I can
+endure to listen to speculation."
+
+"My speculations, sir," dryly drawing himself up, "have been chiefly
+governed by the maxim of Lord Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies
+which come home to my business and bosom--pray, do you know of any other
+good stocks?"
+
+"You wouldn't like to be concerned in the New Jerusalem, would you?"
+
+"New Jerusalem?"
+
+"Yes, the new and thriving city, so called, in northern Minnesota. It
+was originally founded by certain fugitive Mormons. Hence the name. It
+stands on the Mississippi. Here, here is the map," producing a roll.
+"There--there, you see are the public buildings--here the landing--there
+the park--yonder the botanic gardens--and this, this little dot here, is
+a perpetual fountain, you understand. You observe there are twenty
+asterisks. Those are for the lyceums. They have lignum-vitae rostrums."
+
+"And are all these buildings now standing?"
+
+"All standing--bona fide."
+
+"These marginal squares here, are they the water-lots?"
+
+"Water-lots in the city of New Jerusalem? All terra firma--you don't
+seem to care about investing, though?"
+
+"Hardly think I should read my title clear, as the law students say,"
+yawned the collegian.
+
+"Prudent--you are prudent. Don't know that you are wholly out, either.
+At any rate, I would rather have one of your shares of coal stock than
+two of this other. Still, considering that the first settlement was by
+two fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite shore--it's a
+surprising place. It is, _bona fide_.--But dear me, I must go. Oh, if by
+possibility you should come across that unfortunate man----"
+
+"--In that case," with drawling impatience, "I will send for the
+steward, and have him and his misfortunes consigned overboard."
+
+"Ha ha!--now were some gloomy philosopher here, some theological bear,
+forever taking occasion to growl down the stock of human nature (with
+ulterior views, d'ye see, to a fat benefice in the gift of the
+worshipers of Ariamius), he would pronounce that the sign of a hardening
+heart and a softening brain. Yes, that would be his sinister
+construction. But it's nothing more than the oddity of a genial
+humor--genial but dry. Confess it. Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+IN THE CABIN.
+
+
+Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying them are clusters of
+men, old and young, wise and simple; in their hands are cards spotted
+with diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist,
+cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering among the
+marble-topped tables, amused with the scene, are the comparatively few,
+who, instead of having hands in the games, for the most part keep their
+hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes. But here and
+there, with a curious expression, one is reading a small sort of
+handbill of anonymous poetry, rather wordily entitled:--
+
+  "ODE
+  ON THE INTIMATIONS
+  OF
+  DISTRUST IN MAN,
+  UNWILLINGLY INFERRED FROM REPEATED REPULSES,
+  IN DISINTERESTED ENDEAVORS
+  TO PROCURE HIS
+  CONFIDENCE."
+
+On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered down from a
+balloon. The way they came there was this: A somewhat elderly person, in
+the quaker dress, had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in
+the manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede their proffers of
+sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or indirect, of the volumes to
+follow, had, without speaking, handed about the odes, which, for the
+most part, after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed
+aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some wandering
+rhapsodist.
+
+In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man with the
+traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro, looks animatedly about
+him, with a yearning sort of gratulatory affinity and longing,
+expressive of the very soul of sociality; as much as to say, "Oh, boys,
+would that I were personally acquainted with each mother's son of you,
+since what a sweet world, to make sweet acquaintance in, is ours, my
+brothers; yea, and what dear, happy dogs are we all!"
+
+And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes fraternally up
+to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging with him some pleasant
+remark.
+
+"Pray, what have you there?" he asked of one newly accosted, a little,
+dried-up man, who looked as if he never dined.
+
+"A little ode, rather queer, too," was the reply, "of the same sort you
+see strewn on the floor here."
+
+"I did not observe them. Let me see;" picking one up and looking it
+over. "Well now, this is pretty; plaintive, especially the opening:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+--If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir.
+Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?"
+
+"As to that," said the little dried-up man, "I think it a kind of queer
+thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set
+me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were
+trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I
+am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works
+on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying
+dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in
+well-doing."
+
+"Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who
+snowed the odes about here?"
+
+"I cannot say; I have not been here long."
+
+"Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as
+the rest, and have cards."
+
+"Thank you, I never play cards."
+
+"A bottle of wine?"
+
+"Thank you, I never drink wine."
+
+"Cigars?"
+
+"Thank you, I never smoke cigars."
+
+"Tell stories?"
+
+"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling."
+
+"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as
+water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial
+hand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you
+please; just enough to make it interesting."
+
+"Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards."
+
+"What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad
+Philomel here:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+Good-bye!"
+
+Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at
+length seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a
+partly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon,
+like his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming
+not a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a
+party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a
+red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome,
+self-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of
+professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil
+law.
+
+By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the
+good merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of
+the Ode which he holds: "Sir, I don't like the looks of those two, do
+you?"
+
+"Hardly," was the whispered reply; "those colored cravats are not in the
+best taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all."
+
+"You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't refer to dress, but
+countenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further
+than reading about them in the papers--but those two are--are sharpers,
+aint they?"
+
+"Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit, my dear sir."
+
+"Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given that way: but
+certainly, to say the least, these two youths can hardly be adepts,
+while the opposed couple may be even more."
+
+"You would not hint that the colored cravats would be so bungling as to
+lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous as to cheat?--Sour imaginations,
+my dear sir. Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the Ode you
+have there. Years and experience, I trust, have not sophisticated you. A
+fresh and liberal construction would teach us to regard those four
+players--indeed, this whole cabin-full of players--as playing at games
+in which every player plays fair, and not a player but shall win."
+
+"Now, you hardly mean that; because games in which all may win, such
+games remain as yet in this world uninvented, I think."
+
+"Come, come," luxuriously laying himself back, and casting a free glance
+upon the players, "fares all paid; digestion sound; care, toil, penury,
+grief, unknown; lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
+be cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick holes in the
+blessed fate of the world?"
+
+Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and hard, and then
+rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation, at first uneasy, but at last
+composed, and in the end, once more addressed his companion: "Well, I
+see it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and then. Somehow,
+I don't know why, a certain misty suspiciousness seems inseparable from
+most of one's private notions about some men and some things; but once
+out with these misty notions, and their mere contact with other men's
+soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies them."
+
+"You think I have done you good, then? may be, I have. But don't
+thank me, don't thank me. If by words, casually delivered in the
+social hour, I do any good to right or left, it is but involuntary
+influence--locust-tree sweetening the herbage under it; no merit at
+all; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.--Don't you see?"
+
+Another stare from the good merchant, and both were silent again.
+
+Finding his book, hitherto resting on his lap, rather irksome there, the
+owner now places it edgewise on the settee, between himself and
+neighbor; in so doing, chancing to expose the lettering on the
+back--"_Black Rapids Coal Company_"--which the good merchant,
+scrupulously honorable, had much ado to avoid reading, so directly would
+it have fallen under his eye, had he not conscientiously averted it. On
+a sudden, as if just reminded of something, the stranger starts up, and
+moves away, in his haste leaving his book; which the merchant observing,
+without delay takes it up, and, hurrying after, civilly returns it; in
+which act he could not avoid catching sight by an involuntary glance of
+part of the lettering.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, my good sir," said the other, receiving the
+volume, and was resuming his retreat, when the merchant spoke: "Excuse
+me, but are you not in some way connected with the--the Coal Company I
+have heard of?"
+
+"There is more than one Coal Company that may be heard of, my good sir,"
+smiled the other, pausing with an expression of painful impatience,
+disinterestedly mastered.
+
+"But you are connected with one in particular.--The 'Black Rapids,' are
+you not?"
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+"Well, sir, I have heard rather tempting information of your Company."
+
+"Who is your informant, pray," somewhat coldly.
+
+"A--a person by the name of Ringman."
+
+"Don't know him. But, doubtless, there are plenty who know our Company,
+whom our Company does not know; in the same way that one may know an
+individual, yet be unknown to him.--Known this Ringman long? Old friend,
+I suppose.--But pardon, I must leave you."
+
+"Stay, sir, that--that stock."
+
+"Stock?"
+
+"Yes, it's a little irregular, perhaps, but----"
+
+"Dear me, you don't think of doing any business with me, do you? In my
+official capacity I have not been authenticated to you. This
+transfer-book, now," holding it up so as to bring the lettering in
+sight, "how do you know that it may not be a bogus one? And I, being
+personally a stranger to you, how can you have confidence in me?"
+
+"Because," knowingly smiled the good merchant, "if you were other than I
+have confidence that you are, hardly would you challenge distrust that
+way."
+
+"But you have not examined my book."
+
+"What need to, if already I believe that it is what it is lettered to
+be?"
+
+"But you had better. It might suggest doubts."
+
+"Doubts, may be, it might suggest, but not knowledge; for how, by
+examining the book, should I think I knew any more than I now think I
+do; since, if it be the true book, I think it so already; and since if
+it be otherwise, then I have never seen the true one, and don't know
+what that ought to look like."
+
+"Your logic I will not criticize, but your confidence I admire, and
+earnestly, too, jocose as was the method I took to draw it out. Enough,
+we will go to yonder table, and if there be any business which, either
+in my private or official capacity, I can help you do, pray command
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ONLY A PAGE OR SO.
+
+
+The transaction concluded, the two still remained seated, falling into
+familiar conversation, by degrees verging into that confidential sort of
+sympathetic silence, the last refinement and luxury of unaffected good
+feeling. A kind of social superstition, to suppose that to be truly
+friendly one must be saying friendly words all the time, any more than
+be doing friendly deeds continually. True friendliness, like true
+religion, being in a sort independent of works.
+
+At length, the good merchant, whose eyes were pensively resting upon the
+gay tables in the distance, broke the spell by saying that, from the
+spectacle before them, one would little divine what other quarters of
+the boat might reveal. He cited the case, accidentally encountered but
+an hour or two previous, of a shrunken old miser, clad in shrunken old
+moleskin, stretched out, an invalid, on a bare plank in the emigrants'
+quarters, eagerly clinging to life and lucre, though the one was gasping
+for outlet, and about the other he was in torment lest death, or some
+other unprincipled cut-purse, should be the means of his losing it; by
+like feeble tenure holding lungs and pouch, and yet knowing and
+desiring nothing beyond them; for his mind, never raised above mould,
+was now all but mouldered away. To such a degree, indeed, that he had no
+trust in anything, not even in his parchment bonds, which, the better to
+preserve from the tooth of time, he had packed down and sealed up, like
+brandy peaches, in a tin case of spirits.
+
+The worthy man proceeded at some length with these dispiriting
+particulars. Nor would his cheery companion wholly deny that there might
+be a point of view from which such a case of extreme want of confidence
+might, to the humane mind, present features not altogether welcome as
+wine and olives after dinner. Still, he was not without compensatory
+considerations, and, upon the whole, took his companion to task for
+evincing what, in a good-natured, round-about way, he hinted to be a
+somewhat jaundiced sentimentality. Nature, he added, in Shakespeare's
+words, had meal and bran; and, rightly regarded, the bran in its way was
+not to be condemned.
+
+The other was not disposed to question the justice of Shakespeare's
+thought, but would hardly admit the propriety of the application in this
+instance, much less of the comment. So, after some further temperate
+discussion of the pitiable miser, finding that they could not entirely
+harmonize, the merchant cited another case, that of the negro cripple.
+But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that
+alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer
+than the experience of the observed. He knew nothing about the cripple,
+nor had seen him, but ventured to surmise that, could one but get at the
+real state of his heart, he would be found about as happy as most men,
+if not, in fact, full as happy as the speaker himself. He added that
+negroes were by nature a singularly cheerful race; no one ever heard of
+a native-born African Zimmermann or Torquemada; that even from religion
+they dismissed all gloom; in their hilarious rituals they danced, so to
+speak, and, as it were, cut pigeon-wings. It was improbable, therefore,
+that a negro, however reduced to his stumps by fortune, could be ever
+thrown off the legs of a laughing philosophy.
+
+Foiled again, the good merchant would not desist, but ventured still a
+third case, that of the man with the weed, whose story, as narrated by
+himself, and confirmed and filled out by the testimony of a certain man
+in a gray coat, whom the merchant had afterwards met, he now proceeded
+to give; and that, without holding back those particulars disclosed by
+the second informant, but which delicacy had prevented the unfortunate
+man himself from touching upon.
+
+But as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better justice to the man
+than the story, we shall venture to tell it in other words than his,
+though not to any other effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+STORY OF THE UNFORTUNATE MAN, FROM WHICH MAY BE GATHERED WHETHER OR NO
+HE HAS BEEN JUSTLY SO ENTITLED.
+
+
+It appeared that the unfortunate man had had for a wife one of those
+natures, anomalously vicious, which would almost tempt a metaphysical
+lover of our species to doubt whether the human form be, in all cases,
+conclusive evidence of humanity, whether, sometimes, it may not be a
+kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle, and whether, once for all
+to crush the saying of Thrasea, (an unaccountable one, considering that
+he himself was so good a man) that "he who hates vice, hates humanity,"
+it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable maxim, that
+none but the good are human.
+
+Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too straight, indeed,
+for a woman, a complexion naturally rosy, and which would have been
+charmingly so, but for a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of
+the glazed colors on stone-ware. Her hair was of a deep, rich chestnut,
+but worn in close, short curls all round her head. Her Indian figure was
+not without its impairing effect on her bust, while her mouth would have
+been pretty but for a trace of moustache. Upon the whole, aided by the
+resources of the toilet, her appearance at distance was such, that some
+might have thought her, if anything, rather beautiful, though of a style
+of beauty rather peculiar and cactus-like.
+
+It was happy for Goneril that her more striking peculiarities were less
+of the person than of temper and taste. One hardly knows how to reveal,
+that, while having a natural antipathy to such things as the breast of
+chicken, or custard, or peach, or grape, Goneril could yet in private
+make a satisfactory lunch on hard crackers and brawn of ham. She liked
+lemons, and the only kind of candy she loved were little dried sticks of
+blue clay, secretly carried in her pocket. Withal she had hard, steady
+health like a squaw's, with as firm a spirit and resolution. Some other
+points about her were likewise such as pertain to the women of savage
+life. Lithe though she was, she loved supineness, but upon occasion
+could endure like a stoic. She was taciturn, too. From early morning
+till about three o'clock in the afternoon she would seldom speak--it
+taking that time to thaw her, by all accounts, into but talking terms
+with humanity. During the interval she did little but look, and keep
+looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her enemies called cold
+as a cuttle-fish's, but which by her were esteemed gazelle-like; for
+Goneril was not without vanity. Those who thought they best knew her,
+often wondered what happiness such a being could take in life, not
+considering the happiness which is to be had by some natures in the very
+easy way of simply causing pain to those around them. Those who suffered
+from Goneril's strange nature, might, with one of those hyberboles to
+which the resentful incline, have pronounced her some kind of toad; but
+her worst slanderers could never, with any show of justice, have accused
+her of being a toady. In a large sense she possessed the virtue of
+independence of mind. Goneril held it flattery to hint praise even of
+the absent, and even if merited; but honesty, to fling people's imputed
+faults into their faces. This was thought malice, but it certainly was
+not passion. Passion is human. Like an icicle-dagger, Goneril at once
+stabbed and froze; so at least they said; and when she saw frankness and
+innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to
+the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark
+that she chuckled. These peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but
+another was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company she had a
+strange way of touching, as by accident, the arm or hand of comely young
+men, and seemed to reap a secret delight from it, but whether from the
+humane satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called, or
+whether it was something else in her, not equally wonderful, but quite
+as deplorable, remained an enigma.
+
+Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's, when, engaged
+in conversation with company, he would suddenly perceive his Goneril
+bestowing her mysterious touches, especially in such cases where the
+strangeness of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
+notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing the mystery, on the
+spot, as a subject of discussion for the company. In these cases, too,
+the unfortunate man could never endure so much as to look upon the
+touched young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification of
+meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less quizzingly-knowing
+expression. He would shudderingly shun the young gentleman. So that
+here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the
+heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times,
+he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private
+interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable
+propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was
+witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the
+unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such
+chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad--a
+touching case--but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
+unfortunate man--conscientiously mindful of his vow--for better or for
+worse--to love and cherish his dear Goneril so long as kind heaven might
+spare her to him--but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
+jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for none other could
+possess her, and the object of that deranged jealousy, her own child, a
+little girl of seven, her father's consolation and pet; when he saw
+Goneril artfully torment the little innocent, and then play the maternal
+hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient long-suffering gave
+way. Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might,
+possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
+father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he
+could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself.
+Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female
+neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
+out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause,
+could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting
+to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring.
+To all this, self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
+kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been had he continued so;
+for when, driven to desperation, he hinted something of the truth of the
+case, not a soul would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
+he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the suggestion of some
+woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
+counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
+only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
+awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
+he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
+a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
+lamentable was, that the unfortunate man, thinking that, before the
+court, his wisest plan, as well as the most Christian besides, being, as
+he deemed, not at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to put
+forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril, which done, he
+could, with less of mortification to himself, and odium to her, reveal
+in self-defense those eccentricities which had led to his retirement
+from the joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this charge
+of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself--especially, when,
+among other things, he alleged her mysterious teachings. In vain did his
+counsel, striving to make out the derangement to be where, in fact, if
+anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise, to hold that such a
+being as Goneril was sane, this was constructively a libel upon
+womankind. Libel be it. And all ended by the unfortunate man's
+subsequently getting wind of Goneril's intention to procure him to be
+permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which he fled, and was now an
+innocent outcast, wandering forlorn in the great valley of the
+Mississippi, with a weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he
+had lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought it but
+proper to comply with the prescribed form of mourning in such cases. For
+some days past he had been trying to get money enough to return to his
+child, and was but now started with inadequate funds.
+
+Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant could not but
+consider rather hard for the unfortunate man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE TRAVELING-CAP EVINCES MUCH HUMANITY, AND IN A WAY WHICH
+WOULD SEEM TO SHOW HIM TO BE ONE OF THE MOST LOGICAL OF OPTIMISTS.
+
+
+Years ago, a grave American savant, being in London, observed at an
+evening party there, a certain coxcombical fellow, as he thought, an
+absurd ribbon in his lapel, and full of smart persiflage, whisking about
+to the admiration of as many as were disposed to admire. Great was the
+savan's disdain; but, chancing ere long to find himself in a corner with
+the jackanapes, got into conversation with him, when he was somewhat
+ill-prepared for the good sense of the jackanapes, but was altogether
+thrown aback, upon subsequently being whispered by a friend that the
+jackanapes was almost as great a savan as himself, being no less a
+personage than Sir Humphrey Davy.
+
+The above anecdote is given just here by way of an anticipative reminder
+to such readers as, from the kind of jaunty levity, or what may have
+passed for such, hitherto for the most part appearing in the man with
+the traveling-cap, may have been tempted into a more or less hasty
+estimate of him; that such readers, when they find the same person, as
+they presently will, capable of philosophic and humanitarian
+discourse--no mere casual sentence or two as heretofore at times, but
+solidly sustained throughout an almost entire sitting; that they may
+not, like the American savan, be thereupon betrayed into any surprise
+incompatible with their own good opinion of their previous penetration.
+
+The merchant's narration being ended, the other would not deny but that
+it did in some degree affect him. He hoped he was not without proper
+feeling for the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what spirit he
+bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond or have confidence?
+
+The merchant did not, perhaps, take the exact import of the last member
+of the question; but answered, that, if whether the unfortunate man was
+becomingly resigned under his affliction or no, was the point, he could
+say for him that resigned he was, and to an exemplary degree: for not
+only, so far as known, did he refrain from any one-sided reflections
+upon human goodness and human justice, but there was observable in him
+an air of chastened reliance, and at times tempered cheerfulness.
+
+Upon which the other observed, that since the unfortunate man's alleged
+experience could not be deemed very conciliatory towards a view of human
+nature better than human nature was, it largely redounded to his
+fair-mindedness, as well as piety, that under the alleged dissuasives,
+apparently so, from philanthropy, he had not, in a moment of excitement,
+been warped over to the ranks of the misanthropes. He doubted not,
+also, that with such a man his experience would, in the end, act by a
+complete and beneficent inversion, and so far from shaking his
+confidence in his kind, confirm it, and rivet it. Which would the more
+surely be the case, did he (the unfortunate man) at last become
+satisfied (as sooner or later he probably would be) that in the
+distraction of his mind his Goneril had not in all respects had fair
+play. At all events, the description of the lady, charity could not but
+regard as more or less exaggerated, and so far unjust. The truth
+probably was that she was a wife with some blemishes mixed with some
+beauties. But when the blemishes were displayed, her husband, no adept
+in the female nature, had tried to use reason with her, instead of
+something far more persuasive. Hence his failure to convince and
+convert. The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the
+circumstances, abrupt. In brief, there were probably small faults on
+both sides, more than balanced by large virtues; and one should not be
+hasty in judging.
+
+When the merchant, strange to say, opposed views so calm and impartial,
+and again, with some warmth, deplored the case of the unfortunate man,
+his companion, not without seriousness, checked him, saying, that this
+would never do; that, though but in the most exceptional case, to admit
+the existence of unmerited misery, more particularly if alleged to have
+been brought about by unhindered arts of the wicked, such an admission
+was, to say the least, not prudent; since, with some, it might
+unfavorably bias their most important persuasions. Not that those
+persuasions were legitimately servile to such influences. Because,
+since the common occurrences of life could never, in the nature of
+things, steadily look one way and tell one story, as flags in the
+trade-wind; hence, if the conviction of a Providence, for instance, were
+in any way made dependent upon such variabilities as everyday events,
+the degree of that conviction would, in thinking minds, be subject to
+fluctuations akin to those of the stock-exchange during a long and
+uncertain war. Here he glanced aside at his transfer-book, and after a
+moment's pause continued. It was of the essence of a right conviction of
+the divine nature, as with a right conviction of the human, that, based
+less on experience than intuition, it rose above the zones of weather.
+
+When now the merchant, with all his heart, coincided with this (as being
+a sensible, as well as religious person, he could not but do), his
+companion expressed satisfaction, that, in an age of some distrust on
+such subjects, he could yet meet with one who shared with him, almost to
+the full, so sound and sublime a confidence.
+
+Still, he was far from the illiberality of denying that philosophy duly
+bounded was not permissible. Only he deemed it at least desirable that,
+when such a case as that alleged of the unfortunate man was made the
+subject of philosophic discussion, it should be so philosophized upon,
+as not to afford handles to those unblessed with the true light. For,
+but to grant that there was so much as a mystery about such a case,
+might by those persons be held for a tacit surrender of the question.
+And as for the apparent license temporarily permitted sometimes, to the
+bad over the good (as was by implication alleged with regard to Goneril
+and the unfortunate man), it might be injudicious there to lay too much
+polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the
+vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded
+that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse
+the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though
+mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one
+which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In
+short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and
+everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the
+secure Malakoff of confidence, nor be tempted forth to hazardous
+skirmishes on the open ground of reason. Therefore, he deemed it
+unadvisable in the good man, even in the privacy of his own mind, or in
+communion with a congenial one, to indulge in too much latitude of
+philosophizing, or, indeed, of compassionating, since this might, beget
+an indiscreet habit of thinking and feeling which might unexpectedly
+betray him upon unsuitable occasions. Indeed, whether in private or
+public, there was nothing which a good man was more bound to guard
+himself against than, on some topics, the emotional unreserve of his
+natural heart; for, that the natural heart, in certain points, was not
+what it might be, men had been authoritatively admonished.
+
+But he thought he might be getting dry.
+
+The merchant, in his good-nature, thought otherwise, and said that he
+would be glad to refresh himself with such fruit all day. It was sitting
+under a ripe pulpit, and better such a seat than under a ripe
+peach-tree.
+
+The other was pleased to find that he had not, as he feared, been
+prosing; but would rather not be considered in the formal light of a
+preacher; he preferred being still received in that of the equal and
+genial companion. To which end, throwing still more of sociability into
+his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate man. Take the very
+worst view of that case; admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril;
+how fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by nature and by
+law? If he were acquainted with the unfortunate man, instead of
+condoling with him, he would congratulate him. Great good fortune had
+this unfortunate man. Lucky dog, he dared say, after all.
+
+To which the merchant replied, that he earnestly hoped it might be so,
+and at any rate he tried his best to comfort himself with the persuasion
+that, if the unfortunate man was not happy in this world, he would, at
+least, be so in another.
+
+His companion made no question of the unfortunate man's happiness in
+both worlds; and, presently calling for some champagne, invited the
+merchant to partake, upon the playful plea that, whatever notions other
+than felicitous ones he might associate with the unfortunate man, a
+little champagne would readily bubble away.
+
+At intervals they slowly quaffed several glasses in silence and
+thoughtfulness. At last the merchant's expressive face flushed, his eye
+moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative and feminine
+sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed
+to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. "Ah," he cried,
+pushing his glass from him, "Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good;
+but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata
+of hard considerations, and drop warmly and ruddily into the cold cave
+of truth? Truth will _not_ be comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by
+sweet hope, fond fancy essays this feat; but in vain; mere dreams and
+ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving naught but the scorching
+behind!"
+
+"Why, why, why!" in amaze, at the burst: "bless me, if _In vino veritas_
+be a true saying, then, for all the fine confidence you professed with
+me, just now, distrust, deep distrust, underlies it; and ten thousand
+strong, like the Irish Rebellion, breaks out in you now. That wine, good
+wine, should do it! Upon my soul," half seriously, half humorously,
+securing the bottle, "you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to
+gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence, not depress
+it."
+
+Sobered, shamed, all but confounded, by this raillery, the most telling
+rebuke under such circumstances, the merchant stared about him, and
+then, with altered mien, stammeringly confessed, that he was almost as
+much surprised as his companion, at what had escaped him. He did not
+understand it; was quite at a loss to account for such a rhapsody
+popping out of him unbidden. It could hardly be the champagne; he felt
+his brain unaffected; in fact, if anything, the wine had acted upon it
+something like white of egg in coffee, clarifying and brightening.
+
+"Brightening? brightening it may be, but less like the white of egg in
+coffee, than like stove-lustre on a stove--black, brightening seriously,
+I repent calling for the champagne. To a temperament like yours,
+champagne is not to be recommended. Pray, my dear sir, do you feel quite
+yourself again? Confidence restored?"
+
+"I hope so; I think I may say it is so. But we have had a long talk, and
+I think I must retire now."
+
+So saying, the merchant rose, and making his adieus, left the table with
+the air of one, mortified at having been tempted by his own honest
+goodness, accidentally stimulated into making mad disclosures--to
+himself as to another--of the queer, unaccountable caprices of his
+natural heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE WORTH CONSIDERING.
+
+
+As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the
+present must consist of one glancing backwards.
+
+To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of
+confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the
+moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have
+betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and
+even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be
+urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully
+see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look
+for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
+should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable
+enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it
+couple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that,
+while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction
+based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact,
+that, in real life, a consistent character is a _rara avis_? Which
+being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can
+hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from
+perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at
+his wits' ends to understand living character, shall those who are not
+sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit
+along a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every
+character can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a
+glance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear
+for wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand,
+that author who draws a character, even though to common view
+incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different
+periods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the
+caterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false
+but faithful to facts.
+
+If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters
+as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader
+unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of
+conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide
+here; but as no one man can be coextensive with _what is_, it may be
+unwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of
+Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists,
+appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
+reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in
+some way, artificially stuck on.
+
+But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her
+duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no
+business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always,
+they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency,
+which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in
+certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to
+their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted,
+considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen
+through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon
+the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its
+inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its
+contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out,
+thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always
+representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he
+clearly knows all about it.
+
+But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in
+books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first
+their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out
+to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as
+in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web
+of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their
+satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to
+the understanding even of school misses, the last complications of that
+spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
+made.
+
+At least, something like this is claimed for certain psychological
+novelists; nor will the claim be here disputed. Yet, as touching this
+point, it may prove suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity,
+having for their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
+have, by the best judges, been excluded with contempt from the ranks of
+the sciences--palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise,
+the fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the most
+eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as with other topics, seem
+some presumption of a pretty general and pretty thorough ignorance of
+it. Which may appear the less improbable if it be considered that, after
+poring over the best novels professing to portray human nature, the
+studious youth will still run risk of being too often at fault upon
+actually entering the world; whereas, had he been furnished with a true
+delineation, it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
+entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be very crooked, he
+may often pause; but, thanks to his true map, he does not hopelessly
+lose his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection,
+that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human
+nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the
+same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them
+is in expression, not in feature.
+
+But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some mathematicians are yet
+in hopes of hitting upon an exact method of determining the longitude,
+the more earnest psychologists may, in the face of previous failures,
+still cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
+discovering the heart of man.
+
+But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed
+amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains
+but to turn to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
+thought to that of action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+AN OLD MISER, UPON SUITABLE REPRESENTATIONS, IS PREVAILED UPON TO
+VENTURE AN INVESTMENT.
+
+
+The merchant having withdrawn, the other remained seated alone for a
+time, with the air of one who, after having conversed with some
+excellent man, carefully ponders what fell from him, however
+intellectually inferior it may be, that none of the profit may be lost;
+happy if from any honest word he has heard he can derive some hint,
+which, besides confirming him in the theory of virtue, may, likewise,
+serve for a finger-post to virtuous action.
+
+Ere long his eye brightened, as if some such hint was now caught. He
+rises, book in hand, quits the cabin, and enters upon a sort of
+corridor, narrow and dim, a by-way to a retreat less ornate and cheery
+than the former; in short, the emigrants' quarters; but which, owing to
+the present trip being a down-river one, will doubtless be found
+comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side
+windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most
+part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious
+sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for
+light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day;
+in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without
+bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical towns of the associate
+penguin and pelican, these bunks were disposed with Philadelphian
+regularity, but, like the cradle of the oriole, they were pendulous,
+and, moreover, were, so to speak, three-story cradles; the description
+of one of which will suffice for all.
+
+Four ropes, secured to the ceiling, passed downwards through auger-holes
+bored in the corners of three rough planks, which at equal distances
+rested on knots vertically tied in the ropes, the lowermost plank but an
+inch or two from the floor, the whole affair resembling, on a large
+scale, rope book-shelves; only, instead of hanging firmly against a
+wall, they swayed to and fro at the least suggestion of motion, but were
+more especially lively upon the provocation of a green emigrant
+sprawling into one, and trying to lay himself out there, when the
+cradling would be such as almost to toss him back whence he came. In
+consequence, one less inexperienced, essaying repose on the uppermost
+shelf, was liable to serious disturbance, should a raw beginner select a
+shelf beneath. Sometimes a throng of poor emigrants, coming at night in
+a sudden rain to occupy these oriole nests, would--through ignorance of
+their peculiarity--bring about such a rocking uproar of carpentry,
+joining to it such an uproar of exclamations, that it seemed as if some
+luckless ship, with all its crew, was being dashed to pieces among the
+rocks. They were beds devised by some sardonic foe of poor travelers,
+to deprive them of that tranquility which should precede, as well as
+accompany, slumber.--Procrustean beds, on whose hard grain humble worth
+and honesty writhed, still invoking repose, while but torment responded.
+Ah, did any one make such a bunk for himself, instead of having it made
+for him, it might be just, but how cruel, to say, You must lie on it!
+
+But, purgatory as the place would appear, the stranger advances into it:
+and, like Orpheus in his gay descent to Tartarus, lightly hums to
+himself an opera snatch.
+
+Suddenly there is a rustling, then a creaking, one of the cradles swings
+out from a murky nook, a sort of wasted penguin-flipper is
+supplicatingly put forth, while a wail like that of Dives is
+heard:--"Water, water!"
+
+It was the miser of whom the merchant had spoken.
+
+Swift as a sister-of-charity, the stranger hovers over him:--
+
+"My poor, poor sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh--water!"
+
+Darting out, he procures a glass, returns, and, holding it to the
+sufferer's lips, supports his head while he drinks: "And did they let
+you lie here, my poor sir, racked with this parching thirst?"
+
+The miser, a lean old man, whose flesh seemed salted cod-fish, dry as
+combustibles; head, like one whittled by an idiot out of a knot; flat,
+bony mouth, nipped between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting
+between hunks and imbecile--now one, now the other--he made no response.
+His eyes were closed, his cheek lay upon an old white moleskin coat,
+rolled under his head like a wizened apple upon a grimy snow-bank.
+
+Revived at last, he inclined towards his ministrant, and, in a voice
+disastrous with a cough, said:--"I am old and miserable, a poor beggar,
+not worth a shoestring--how can I repay you?"
+
+"By giving me your confidence."
+
+"Confidence!" he squeaked, with changed manner, while the pallet swung,
+"little left at my age, but take the stale remains, and welcome."
+
+"Such as it is, though, you give it. Very good. Now give me a hundred
+dollars."
+
+Upon this the miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his
+waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and
+there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he
+incoherently mumbled:--"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum,
+bubble!--Confidence? fetch, gouge!--Hundred dollars?--hundred devils!"
+
+Half spent, he lay mute awhile, then feebly raising himself, in a voice
+for the moment made strong by the sarcasm, said, "A hundred dollars?
+rather high price to put upon confidence. But don't you see I am a poor,
+old rat here, dying in the wainscot? You have served me; but, wretch
+that I am, I can but cough you my thanks,--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+This time his cough was so violent that its convulsions were imparted to
+the plank, which swung him about like a stone in a sling preparatory to
+its being hurled.
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"What a shocking cough. I wish, my friend, the herb-doctor was here now;
+a box of his Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would do you good."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I've a good mind to go find him. He's aboard somewhere. I saw his long,
+snuff-colored surtout. Trust me, his medicines are the best in the
+world."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, how sorry I am."
+
+"No doubt of it," squeaked the other again, "but go, get your charity
+out on deck. There parade the pursy peacocks; they don't cough down here
+in desertion and darkness, like poor old me. Look how scaly a pauper I
+am, clove with this churchyard cough. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Again, how sorry I feel, not only for your cough, but your poverty.
+Such a rare chance made unavailable. Did you have but the sum named, how
+I could invest it for you. Treble profits. But confidence--I fear that,
+even had you the precious cash, you would not have the more precious
+confidence I speak of."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!" flightily raising himself. "What's that? How, how? Then
+you don't want the money for yourself?"
+
+"My dear, _dear_ sir, how could you impute to me such preposterous
+self-seeking? To solicit out of hand, for my private behoof, an hundred
+dollars from a perfect stranger? I am not mad, my dear sir."
+
+"How, how?" still more bewildered, "do you, then, go about the world,
+gratis, seeking to invest people's money for them?"
+
+"My humble profession, sir. I live not for myself; but the world will
+not have confidence in me, and yet confidence in me were great gain."
+
+"But, but," in a kind of vertigo, "what do--do you do--do with people's
+money? Ugh, ugh! How is the gain made?"
+
+"To tell that would ruin me. That known, every one would be going into
+the business, and it would be overdone. A secret, a mystery--all I have
+to do with you is to receive your confidence, and all you have to do
+with me is, in due time, to receive it back, thrice paid in trebling
+profits."
+
+"What, what?" imbecility in the ascendant once more; "but the vouchers,
+the vouchers," suddenly hunkish again.
+
+"Honesty's best voucher is honesty's face."
+
+"Can't see yours, though," peering through the obscurity.
+
+From this last alternating flicker of rationality, the miser fell back,
+sputtering, into his previous gibberish, but it took now an arithmetical
+turn. Eyes closed, he lay muttering to himself--
+
+"One hundred, one hundred--two hundred, two hundred--three hundred,
+three hundred."
+
+He opened his eyes, feebly stared, and still more feebly said--
+
+"It's a little dim here, ain't it? Ugh, ugh! But, as well as my poor old
+eyes can see, you look honest."
+
+"I am glad to hear that."
+
+"If--if, now, I should put"--trying to raise himself, but vainly,
+excitement having all but exhausted him--"if, if now, I should put,
+put----"
+
+"No ifs. Downright confidence, or none. So help me heaven, I will have
+no half-confidences."
+
+He said it with an indifferent and superior air, and seemed moving to
+go.
+
+"Don't, don't leave me, friend; bear with me; age can't help some
+distrust; it can't, friend, it can't. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and
+miserable. I ought to have a guardian. Tell me, if----"
+
+"If? No more!"
+
+"Stay! how soon--ugh, ugh!--would my money be trebled? How soon,
+friend?"
+
+"You won't confide. Good-bye!"
+
+"Stay, stay," falling back now like an infant, "I confide, I confide;
+help, friend, my distrust!"
+
+From an old buckskin pouch, tremulously dragged forth, ten hoarded
+eagles, tarnished into the appearance of ten old horn-buttons, were
+taken, and half-eagerly, half-reluctantly, offered.
+
+"I know not whether I should accept this slack confidence," said the
+other coldly, receiving the gold, "but an eleventh-hour confidence, a
+sick-bed confidence, a distempered, death-bed confidence, after all.
+Give me the healthy confidence of healthy men, with their healthy wits
+about them. But let that pass. All right. Good-bye!"
+
+"Nay, back, back--receipt, my receipt! Ugh, ugh, ugh! Who are you? What
+have I done? Where go you? My gold, my gold! Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+But, unluckily for this final flicker of reason, the stranger was now
+beyond ear-shot, nor was any one else within hearing of so feeble a
+call.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A SICK MAN, AFTER SOME IMPATIENCE, IS INDUCED TO BECOME A PATIENT
+
+
+The sky slides into blue, the bluffs into bloom; the rapid Mississippi
+expands; runs sparkling and gurgling, all over in eddies; one magnified
+wake of a seventy-four. The sun comes out, a golden huzzar, from his
+tent, flashing his helm on the world. All things, warmed in the
+landscape, leap. Speeds the dædal boat as a dream.
+
+But, withdrawn in a corner, wrapped about in a shawl, sits an
+unparticipating man, visited, but not warmed, by the sun--a plant whose
+hour seems over, while buds are blowing and seeds are astir. On a stool
+at his left sits a stranger in a snuff-colored surtout, the collar
+thrown back; his hand waving in persuasive gesture, his eye beaming with
+hope. But not easily may hope be awakened in one long tranced into
+hopelessness by a chronic complaint.
+
+To some remark the sick man, by word or look, seemed to have just made
+an impatiently querulous answer, when, with a deprecatory air, the other
+resumed:
+
+"Nay, think not I seek to cry up my treatment by crying down that of
+others. And yet, when one is confident he has truth on his side, and
+that is not on the other, it is no very easy thing to be charitable; not
+that temper is the bar, but conscience; for charity would beget
+toleration, you know, which is a kind of implied permitting, and in
+effect a kind of countenancing; and that which is countenanced is so far
+furthered. But should untruth be furthered? Still, while for the world's
+good I refuse to further the cause of these mineral doctors, I would
+fain regard them, not as willful wrong-doers, but good Samaritans
+erring. And is this--I put it to you, sir--is this the view of an
+arrogant rival and pretender?"
+
+His physical power all dribbled and gone, the sick man replied not by
+voice or by gesture; but, with feeble dumb-show of his face, seemed to
+be saying "Pray leave me; who was ever cured by talk?"
+
+But the other, as if not unused to make allowances for such despondency,
+proceeded; and kindly, yet firmly:
+
+"You tell me, that by advice of an eminent physiologist in Louisville,
+you took tincture of iron. For what? To restore your lost energy. And
+how? Why, in healthy subjects iron is naturally found in the blood, and
+iron in the bar is strong; ergo, iron is the source of animal
+invigoration. But you being deficient in vigor, it follows that the
+cause is deficiency of iron. Iron, then, must be put into you; and so
+your tincture. Now as to the theory here, I am mute. But in modesty
+assuming its truth, and then, as a plain man viewing that theory in
+practice, I would respectfully question your eminent physiologist:
+'Sir,' I would say, 'though by natural processes, lifeless natures taken
+as nutriment become vitalized, yet is a lifeless nature, under any
+circumstances, capable of a living transmission, with all its qualities
+as a lifeless nature unchanged? If, sir, nothing can be incorporated
+with the living body but by assimilation, and if that implies the
+conversion of one thing to a different thing (as, in a lamp, oil is
+assimilated into flame), is it, in this view, likely, that by banqueting
+on fat, Calvin Edson will fatten? That is, will what is fat on the board
+prove fat on the bones? If it will, then, sir, what is iron in the vial
+will prove iron in the vein.' Seems that conclusion too confident?"
+
+But the sick man again turned his dumb-show look, as much as to say,
+"Pray leave me. Why, with painful words, hint the vanity of that which
+the pains of this body have too painfully proved?"
+
+But the other, as if unobservant of that querulous look, went on:
+
+"But this notion, that science can play farmer to the flesh, making
+there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other
+conceit--that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive
+cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain
+vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but
+lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir,
+that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you
+were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of
+every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring vapors
+generated by the burning of drugs? as if this concocted atmosphere of
+man were an antidote to the poison of God's natural air. Oh, who can
+wonder at that old reproach against science, that it is atheistical? And
+here is my prime reason for opposing these chemical practitioners, who
+have sought out so many inventions. For what do their inventions
+indicate, unless it be that kind and degree of pride in human skill,
+which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power
+above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical
+practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult
+incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat
+down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for
+them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked to anger
+with their inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A
+thousand pities that you should ever have been in the hands of these
+Egyptians."
+
+But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as much as to say, "Pray
+leave me; quacks, and indignation against quacks, both are vain."
+
+But, once more, the other went on: "How different we herb-doctors! who
+claim nothing, invent nothing; but staff in hand, in glades, and upon
+hillsides, go about in nature, humbly seeking her cures. True Indian
+doctors, though not learned in names, we are not unfamiliar with
+essences--successors of Solomon the Wise, who knew all vegetables, from
+the cedar of Lebanon, to the hyssop on the wall. Yes, Solomon was the
+first of herb-doctors. Nor were the virtues of herbs unhonored by yet
+older ages. Is it not writ, that on a moonlight night,
+
+    "Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
+    That did renew old Æson?"
+
+Ah, would you but have confidence, you should be the new Æson, and
+I your Medea. A few vials of my Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would, I am
+certain, give you some strength."
+
+Upon this, indignation and abhorrence seemed to work by their excess the
+effect promised of the balsam. Roused from that long apathy of
+impotence, the cadaverous man started, and, in a voice that was as the
+sound of obstructed air gurgling through a maze of broken honey-combs,
+cried: "Begone! You are all alike. The name of doctor, the dream of
+helper, condemns you. For years I have been but a gallipot for you
+experimentizers to rinse your experiments into, and now, in this livid
+skin, partake of the nature of my contents. Begone! I hate ye."
+
+"I were inhuman, could I take affront at a want of confidence, born of
+too bitter an experience of betrayers. Yet, permit one who is not
+without feeling----"
+
+"Begone! Just in that voice talked to me, not six months ago, the German
+doctor at the water cure, from which I now return, six months and sixty
+pangs nigher my grave."
+
+"The water-cure? Oh, fatal delusion of the well-meaning Preisnitz!--Sir,
+trust me----"
+
+"Begone!"
+
+"Nay, an invalid should not always have his own way. Ah, sir, reflect
+how untimely this distrust in one like you. How weak you are; and
+weakness, is it not the time for confidence? Yes, when through weakness
+everything bids despair, then is the time to get strength by
+confidence."
+
+Relenting in his air, the sick man cast upon him a long glance of
+beseeching, as if saying, "With confidence must come hope; and how can
+hope be?"
+
+The herb-doctor took a sealed paper box from his surtout pocket, and
+holding it towards him, said solemnly, "Turn not away. This may be the
+last time of health's asking. Work upon yourself; invoke confidence,
+though from ashes; rouse it; for your life, rouse it, and invoke it, I
+say."
+
+The other trembled, was silent; and then, a little commanding himself,
+asked the ingredients of the medicine.
+
+"Herbs."
+
+"What herbs? And the nature of them? And the reason for giving them?"
+
+"It cannot be made known."
+
+"Then I will none of you."
+
+Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before him, the
+herb-doctor was mute a moment, then said:--"I give up."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You are sick, and a philosopher."
+
+"No, no;--not the last."
+
+"But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for giving, is the mark
+of a philosopher; just as the consequence is the penalty of a fool. A
+sick philosopher is incurable?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he has no confidence."
+
+"How does that make him incurable?"
+
+"Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a
+blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity,
+would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon
+the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other."
+
+Again, the sick man appeared not unmoved. He seemed to be thinking what
+in candid truth could be said to all this. At length, "You talk of
+confidence. How comes it that when brought low himself, the herb-doctor,
+who was most confident to prescribe in other cases, proves least
+confident to prescribe in his own; having small confidence in himself
+for himself?"
+
+"But he has confidence in the brother he calls in. And that he does so,
+is no reproach to him, since he knows that when the body is prostrated,
+the mind is not erect. Yes, in this hour the herb-doctor does distrust
+himself, but not his art."
+
+The sick man's knowledge did not warrant him to gainsay this. But he
+seemed not grieved at it; glad to be confuted in a way tending towards
+his wish.
+
+"Then you give me hope?" his sunken eye turned up.
+
+"Hope is proportioned to confidence. How much confidence you give me, so
+much hope do I give you. For this," lifting the box, "if all depended
+upon this, I should rest. It is nature's own."
+
+"Nature!"
+
+"Why do you start?"
+
+"I know not," with a sort of shudder, "but I have heard of a book
+entitled 'Nature in Disease.'"
+
+"A title I cannot approve; it is suspiciously scientific. 'Nature in
+Disease?' As if nature, divine nature, were aught but health; as if
+through nature disease is decreed! But did I not before hint of the
+tendency of science, that forbidden tree? Sir, if despondency is yours
+from recalling that title, dismiss it. Trust me, nature is health; for
+health is good, and nature cannot work ill. As little can she work
+error. Get nature, and you get well. Now, I repeat, this medicine is
+nature's own."
+
+Again the sick man could not, according to his light, conscientiously
+disprove what was said. Neither, as before, did he seem over-anxious to
+do so; the less, as in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly
+could he offer so to do without something like the appearance of a kind
+of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he ungrateful, that since a
+spirit opposite to that pervaded all the herb-doctor's hopeful words,
+therefore, for hopefulness, he (the sick man) had not alone medical
+warrant, but also doctrinal.
+
+"Then you do really think," hectically, "that if I take this medicine,"
+mechanically reaching out for it, "I shall regain my health?"
+
+"I will not encourage false hopes," relinquishing to him the box, "I
+will be frank with you. Though frankness is not always the weakness of
+the mineral practitioner, yet the herb doctor must be frank, or nothing.
+Now then, sir, in your case, a radical cure--such a cure, understand, as
+should make you robust--such a cure, sir, I do not and cannot promise."
+
+"Oh, you need not! only restore me the power of being something else to
+others than a burdensome care, and to myself a droning grief. Only cure
+me of this misery of weakness; only make me so that I can walk about in
+the sun and not draw the flies to me, as lured by the coming of decay.
+Only do that--but that."
+
+"You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have you suffered. That
+little you ask, I think, can be granted. But remember, not in a day, nor
+a week, nor perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly
+when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if, according to
+the directions in your box there, you take my medicine steadily, without
+assigning an especial day, near or remote, to discontinue it, then may
+you calmly look for some eventual result of good. But again I say, you
+must have confidence."
+
+Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and hourly should pray
+for its increase. When suddenly relapsing into one of those strange
+caprices peculiar to some invalids, he added: "But to one like me, it is
+so hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have failed me, and
+as often have I vowed never, no, never, to trust them again. Oh," feebly
+wringing his hands, "you do not know, you do not know."
+
+"I know this, that never did a right confidence, come to naught. But
+time is short; you hold your cure, to retain or reject."
+
+"I retain," with a clinch, "and now how much?"
+
+"As much as you can evoke from your heart and heaven."
+
+"How?--the price of this medicine?"
+
+"I thought it was confidence you meant; how much confidence you should
+have. The medicine,--that is half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six."
+
+The money was paid.
+
+"Now, sir," said the herb-doctor, "my business calls me away, and it may
+so be that I shall never see you again; if then----"
+
+He paused, for the sick man's countenance fell blank.
+
+"Forgive me," cried the other, "forgive that imprudent phrase 'never see
+you again.' Though I solely intended it with reference to myself, yet I
+had forgotten what your sensitiveness might be. I repeat, then, that it
+may be that we shall not soon have a second interview, so that
+hereafter, should another of my boxes be needed, you may not be able to
+replace it except by purchase at the shops; and, in so doing, you may
+run more or less risk of taking some not salutary mixture. For such is
+the popularity of the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator--thriving not by the
+credulity of the simple, but the trust of the wise--that certain
+contrivers have not been idle, though I would not, indeed, hastily
+affirm of them that they are aware of the sad consequences to the
+public. Homicides and murderers, some call those contrivers; but I do
+not; for murder (if such a crime be possible) comes from the heart, and
+these men's motives come from the purse. Were they not in poverty, I
+think they would hardly do what they do. Still, the public interests
+forbid that I should let their needy device for a living succeed. In
+short, I have adopted precautions. Take the wrapper from any of my vials
+and hold it to the light, you will see water-marked in capitals the word
+'_confidence_,' which is the countersign of the medicine, as I wish it
+was of the world. The wrapper bears that mark or else the medicine is
+counterfeit. But if still any lurking doubt should remain, pray enclose
+the wrapper to this address," handing a card, "and by return mail I will
+answer."
+
+At first the sick man listened, with the air of vivid interest, but
+gradually, while the other was still talking, another strange caprice
+came over him, and he presented the aspect of the most calamitous
+dejection.
+
+"How now?" said the herb-doctor.
+
+"You told me to have confidence, said that confidence was indispensable,
+and here you preach to me distrust. Ah, truth will out!"
+
+"I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant
+confidence in the genuine medicine, and the genuine _me_."
+
+"But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be yours, it seems I
+cannot have unquestioning confidence."
+
+"Prove all the vials; trust those which are true."
+
+"But to doubt, to suspect, to prove--to have all this wearing work to
+be doing continually--how opposed to confidence. It is evil!"
+
+"From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to confidence. How has it
+proved in our interview? But your voice is husky; I have let you talk
+too much. You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay--when I hear
+that health is yours, I will not, like some I know, vainly make boasts;
+but, giving glory where all glory is due, say, with the devout
+herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil, when, in the unseen but efficacious
+presence of Venus, he with simples healed the wound of Æneas:--
+
+    'This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,
+    Nor art's effect, but done by power divine.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+TOWARDS THE END OF WHICH THE HERB-DOCTOR PROVES HIMSELF A FORGIVER OF
+INJURIES.
+
+
+In a kind of ante-cabin, a number of respectable looking people, male
+and female, way-passengers, recently come on board, are listlessly
+sitting in a mutually shy sort of silence.
+
+Holding up a small, square bottle, ovally labeled with the engraving of
+a countenance full of soft pity as that of the Romish-painted Madonna,
+the herb-doctor passes slowly among them, benignly urbane, turning this
+way and that, saying:--
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I hold in my hand here the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader, thrice-blessed discovery of that disinterested friend of
+humanity whose portrait you see. Pure vegetable extract. Warranted to
+remove the acutest pain within less than ten minutes. Five hundred
+dollars to be forfeited on failure. Especially efficacious in heart
+disease and tic-douloureux. Observe the expression of this pledged
+friend of humanity.--Price only fifty cents."
+
+In vain. After the first idle stare, his auditors--in pretty good
+health, it seemed--instead of encouraging his politeness, appeared, if
+anything, impatient of it; and, perhaps, only diffidence, or some small
+regard for his feelings, prevented them from telling him so. But,
+insensible to their coldness, or charitably overlooking it, he more
+wooingly than ever resumed: "May I venture upon a small supposition?
+Have I your kind leave, ladies and gentlemen?"
+
+To which modest appeal, no one had the kindness to answer a syllable.
+
+"Well," said he, resignedly, "silence is at least not denial, and may be
+consent. My supposition is this: possibly some lady, here present, has a
+dear friend at home, a bed-ridden sufferer from spinal complaint. If so,
+what gift more appropriate to that sufferer than this tasteful little
+bottle of Pain Dissuader?"
+
+Again he glanced about him, but met much the same reception as before.
+Those faces, alien alike to sympathy or surprise, seemed patiently to
+say, "We are travelers; and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly
+put up with, many antic fools, and more antic quacks."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," (deferentially fixing his eyes upon their now
+self-complacent faces) "ladies and gentlemen, might I, by your kind
+leave, venture upon one other small supposition? It is this: that there
+is scarce a sufferer, this noonday, writhing on his bed, but in his hour
+he sat satisfactorily healthy and happy; that the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader is the one only balm for that to which each living
+creature--who knows?--may be a draughted victim, present or prospective.
+In short:--Oh, Happiness on my right hand, and oh, Security on my left,
+can ye wisely adore a Providence, and not think it wisdom to
+provide?--Provide!" (Uplifting the bottle.)
+
+What immediate effect, if any, this appeal might have had, is uncertain.
+For just then the boat touched at a houseless landing, scooped, as by a
+land-slide, out of sombre forests; back through which led a road, the
+sole one, which, from its narrowness, and its being walled up with story
+on story of dusk, matted foliage, presented the vista of some cavernous
+old gorge in a city, like haunted Cock Lane in London. Issuing from that
+road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the
+door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that
+shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his
+beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress
+dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a
+clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak;
+with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably
+his child, but evidently of alien maternity, perhaps Creole, or even
+Camanche. Her eye would have been large for a woman, and was inky as the
+pools of falls among mountain-pines. An Indian blanket, orange-hued, and
+fringed with lead tassel-work, appeared that morning to have shielded
+the child from heavy showers. Her limbs were tremulous; she seemed a
+little Cassandra, in nervousness.
+
+No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful
+air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the
+child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my
+little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance
+in." Then with a half caper sang--
+
+    "'Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
+      The cow jumped over the moon.'
+
+Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
+
+Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor
+appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything,
+to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile
+hypochondriacally scornful.
+
+Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the stranger in a manly,
+business-like way--a transition which, though it might seem a little
+abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his
+recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic
+condescension of a kindly heart.
+
+"Excuse me," said he, "but, if I err not, I was speaking to you the
+other day;--on a Kentucky boat, wasn't it?"
+
+"Never to me," was the reply; the voice deep and lonesome enough to have
+come from the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft.
+
+"Ah!--But am I again mistaken, (his eye falling on the swamp-oak stick,)
+or don't you go a little lame, sir?"
+
+"Never was lame in my life."
+
+"Indeed? I fancied I had perceived not a limp, but a hitch, a slight
+hitch;--some experience in these things--divined some hidden cause of
+the hitch--buried bullet, may be--some dragoons in the Mexican war
+discharged with such, you know.--Hard fate!" he sighed, "little pity for
+it, for who sees it?--have you dropped anything?"
+
+Why, there is no telling, but the stranger was bowed over, and might
+have seemed bowing for the purpose of picking up something, were it not
+that, as arrested in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so
+remained; slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding to the
+gale, or Adam to the thunder.
+
+The little child pulled him. With a kind of a surge he righted himself,
+for an instant looked toward the herb-doctor; but, either from emotion
+or aversion, or both together, withdrew his eyes, saying nothing.
+Presently, still stooping, he seated himself, drawing his child between
+his knees, his massy hands tremulous, and still averting his face, while
+up into the compassionate one of the herb-doctor the child turned a
+fixed, melancholy glance of repugnance.
+
+The herb-doctor stood observant a moment, then said:
+
+"Surely you have pain, strong pain, somewhere; in strong frames pain is
+strongest. Try, now, my specific," (holding it up). "Do but look at the
+expression of this friend of humanity. Trust me, certain cure for any
+pain in the world. Won't you look?"
+
+"No," choked the other.
+
+"Very good. Merry time to you, little May Queen."
+
+And so, as if he would intrude his cure upon no one, moved pleasantly
+off, again crying his wares, nor now at last without result. A
+new-comer, not from the shore, but another part of the boat, a sickly
+young man, after some questions, purchased a bottle. Upon this, others
+of the company began a little to wake up as it were; the scales of
+indifference or prejudice fell from their eyes; now, at last, they
+seemed to have an inkling that here was something not undesirable which
+might be had for the buying.
+
+But while, ten times more briskly bland than ever, the herb-doctor was
+driving his benevolent trade, accompanying each sale with added praises
+of the thing traded, all at once the dusk giant, seated at some
+distance, unexpectedly raised his voice with--
+
+"What was that you last said?"
+
+The question was put distinctly, yet resonantly, as when a great
+clock-bell--stunning admonisher--strikes one; and the stroke, though
+single, comes bedded in the belfry clamor.
+
+All proceedings were suspended. Hands held forth for the specific were
+withdrawn, while every eye turned towards the direction whence the
+question came. But, no way abashed, the herb-doctor, elevating his voice
+with even more than wonted self-possession, replied--
+
+"I was saying what, since you wish it, I cheerfully repeat, that the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader, which I here hold in my hand, will either cure
+or ease any pain you please, within ten minutes after its application."
+
+"Does it produce insensibility?"
+
+"By no means. Not the least of its merits is, that it is not an opiate.
+It kills pain without killing feeling."
+
+"You lie! Some pains cannot be eased but by producing insensibility, and
+cannot be cured but by producing death."
+
+Beyond this the dusk giant said nothing; neither, for impairing the
+other's market, did there appear much need to. After eying the rude
+speaker a moment with an expression of mingled admiration and
+consternation, the company silently exchanged glances of mutual sympathy
+under unwelcome conviction. Those who had purchased looked sheepish or
+ashamed; and a cynical-looking little man, with a thin flaggy beard, and
+a countenance ever wearing the rudiments of a grin, seated alone in a
+corner commanding a good view of the scene, held a rusty hat before his
+face.
+
+But, again, the herb-doctor, without noticing the retort, overbearing
+though it was, began his panegyrics anew, and in a tone more assured
+than before, going so far now as to say that his specific was sometimes
+almost as effective in cases of mental suffering as in cases of
+physical; or rather, to be more precise, in cases when, through
+sympathy, the two sorts of pain coöperated into a climax of both--in
+such cases, he said, the specific had done very well. He cited an
+example: Only three bottles, faithfully taken, cured a Louisiana widow
+(for three weeks sleepless in a darkened chamber) of neuralgic sorrow
+for the loss of husband and child, swept off in one night by the last
+epidemic. For the truth of this, a printed voucher was produced, duly
+signed.
+
+While he was reading it aloud, a sudden side-blow all but felled him.
+
+It was the giant, who, with a countenance lividly epileptic with
+hypochondriac mania, exclaimed--
+
+"Profane fiddler on heart-strings! Snake!"
+
+More he would have added, but, convulsed, could not; so, without another
+word, taking up the child, who had followed him, went with a rocking
+pace out of the cabin.
+
+"Regardless of decency, and lost to humanity!" exclaimed the
+herb-doctor, with much ado recovering himself. Then, after a pause,
+during which he examined his bruise, not omitting to apply externally a
+little of his specific, and with some success, as it would seem, plained
+to himself:
+
+"No, no, I won't seek redress; innocence is my redress. But," turning
+upon them all, "if that man's wrathful blow provokes me to no wrath,
+should his evil distrust arouse you to distrust? I do devoutly hope,"
+proudly raising voice and arm, "for the honor of humanity--hope that,
+despite this coward assault, the Samaritan Pain Dissuader stands
+unshaken in the confidence of all who hear me!"
+
+But, injured as he was, and patient under it, too, somehow his case
+excited as little compassion as his oratory now did enthusiasm. Still,
+pathetic to the last, he continued his appeals, notwithstanding the
+frigid regard of the company, till, suddenly interrupting himself, as
+if in reply to a quick summons from without, he said hurriedly, "I come,
+I come," and so, with every token of precipitate dispatch, out of the
+cabin the herb-doctor went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+INQUEST INTO THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE HERB-DOCTOR.
+
+
+"Sha'n't see that fellow again in a hurry," remarked an auburn-haired
+gentleman, to his neighbor with a hook-nose. "Never knew an operator so
+completely unmasked."
+
+"But do you think it the fair thing to unmask an operator that way?"
+
+"Fair? It is right."
+
+"Supposing that at high 'change on the Paris Bourse, Asmodeus should
+lounge in, distributing hand-bills, revealing the true thoughts and
+designs of all the operators present--would that be the fair thing in
+Asmodeus? Or, as Hamlet says, were it 'to consider the thing too
+curiously?'"
+
+"We won't go into that. But since you admit the fellow to be a
+knave----"
+
+"I don't admit it. Or, if I did, I take it back. Shouldn't wonder if,
+after all, he is no knave at all, or, but little of one. What can you
+prove against him?"
+
+"I can prove that he makes dupes."
+
+"Many held in honor do the same; and many, not wholly knaves, do it
+too."
+
+"How about that last?"
+
+"He is not wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among whose dupes is
+himself. Did you not see our quack friend apply to himself his own
+quackery? A fanatic quack; essentially a fool, though effectively a
+knave."
+
+Bending over, and looking down between his knees on the floor, the
+auburn-haired gentleman meditatively scribbled there awhile with his
+cane, then, glancing up, said:
+
+"I can't conceive how you, in anyway, can hold him a fool. How he
+talked--so glib, so pat, so well."
+
+"A smart fool always talks well; takes a smart fool to be tonguey."
+
+In much the same strain the discussion continued--the hook-nosed
+gentleman talking at large and excellently, with a view of demonstrating
+that a smart fool always talks just so. Ere long he talked to such
+purpose as almost to convince.
+
+Presently, back came the person of whom the auburn-haired gentleman had
+predicted that he would not return. Conspicuous in the door-way he
+stood, saying, in a clear voice, "Is the agent of the Seminole Widow and
+Orphan Asylum within here?"
+
+No one replied.
+
+"Is there within here any agent or any member of any charitable
+institution whatever?"
+
+No one seemed competent to answer, or, no one thought it worth while
+to.
+
+"If there be within here any such person, I have in my hand two dollars
+for him."
+
+Some interest was manifested.
+
+"I was called away so hurriedly, I forgot this part of my duty. With the
+proprietor of the Samaritan Pain Dissuader it is a rule, to devote, on
+the spot, to some benevolent purpose, the half of the proceeds of sales.
+Eight bottles were disposed of among this company. Hence, four
+half-dollars remain to charity. Who, as steward, takes the money?"
+
+One or two pair of feet moved upon the floor, as with a sort of itching;
+but nobody rose.
+
+"Does diffidence prevail over duty? If, I say, there be any gentleman,
+or any lady, either, here present, who is in any connection with any
+charitable institution whatever, let him or her come forward. He or she
+happening to have at hand no certificate of such connection, makes no
+difference. Not of a suspicious temper, thank God, I shall have
+confidence in whoever offers to take the money."
+
+A demure-looking woman, in a dress rather tawdry and rumpled, here drew
+her veil well down and rose; but, marking every eye upon her, thought it
+advisable, upon the whole, to sit down again.
+
+"Is it to be believed that, in this Christian company, there is no one
+charitable person? I mean, no one connected with any charity? Well,
+then, is there no object of charity here?"
+
+Upon this, an unhappy-looking woman, in a sort of mourning, neat, but
+sadly worn, hid her face behind a meagre bundle, and was heard to sob.
+Meantime, as not seeing or hearing her, the herb-doctor again spoke, and
+this time not unpathetically:
+
+"Are there none here who feel in need of help, and who, in accepting
+such help, would feel that they, in their time, have given or done more
+than may ever be given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none such
+here?"
+
+The sobs of the woman were more audible, though she strove to repress
+them. While nearly every one's attention was bent upon her, a man of the
+appearance of a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face,
+concealing the side of the nose, and who, for coolness' sake, had been
+sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat thrown across one
+shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping behind--this man shufflingly rose,
+and, with a pace that seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of
+convicts, went up for a duly-qualified claimant.
+
+"Poor wounded huzzar!" sighed the herb-doctor, and dropping the money
+into the man's clam-shell of a hand turned and departed.
+
+The recipient of the alms was about moving after, when the auburn-haired
+gentleman staid him: "Don't be frightened, you; but I want to see those
+coins. Yes, yes; good silver, good silver. There, take them again, and
+while you are about it, go bandage the rest of yourself behind
+something. D'ye hear? Consider yourself, wholly, the scar of a nose, and
+be off with yourself."
+
+Being of a forgiving nature, or else from emotion not daring to trust
+his voice, the man silently, but not without some precipitancy,
+withdrew.
+
+"Strange," said the auburn-haired gentleman, returning to his friend,
+"the money was good money."
+
+"Aye, and where your fine knavery now? Knavery to devote the half of
+one's receipts to charity? He's a fool I say again."
+
+"Others might call him an original genius."
+
+"Yes, being original in his folly. Genius? His genius is a cracked pate,
+and, as this age goes, not much originality about that."
+
+"May he not be knave, fool, and genius altogether?"
+
+"I beg pardon," here said a third person with a gossiping expression who
+had been listening, "but you are somewhat puzzled by this man, and well
+you may be."
+
+"Do you know anything about him?" asked the hooked-nosed gentleman.
+
+"No, but I suspect him for something."
+
+"Suspicion. We want knowledge."
+
+"Well, suspect first and know next. True knowledge comes but by
+suspicion or revelation. That's my maxim."
+
+"And yet," said the auburn-haired gentleman, "since a wise man will keep
+even some certainties to himself, much more some suspicions, at least he
+will at all events so do till they ripen into knowledge."
+
+"Do you hear that about the wise man?" said the hook-nosed gentleman,
+turning upon the new comer. "Now what is it you suspect of this fellow?"
+
+"I shrewdly suspect him," was the eager response, "for one of those
+Jesuit emissaries prowling all over our country. The better to
+accomplish their secret designs, they assume, at times, I am told, the
+most singular masques; sometimes, in appearance, the absurdest."
+
+This, though indeed for some reason causing a droll smile upon the face
+of the hook-nosed gentleman, added a third angle to the discussion,
+which now became a sort of triangular duel, and ended, at last, with but
+a triangular result.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
+
+
+"Mexico? Molino del Rey? Resaca de la Palma?"
+
+"Resaca de la _Tomba_!"
+
+Leaving his reputation to take care of itself, since, as is not seldom
+the case, he knew nothing of its being in debate, the herb-doctor,
+wandering towards the forward part of the boat, had there espied a
+singular character in a grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once
+grim and wizened, interwoven paralyzed legs, stiff as icicles, suspended
+between rude crutches, while the whole rigid body, like a ship's long
+barometer on gimbals, swung to and fro, mechanically faithful to the
+motion of the boat. Looking downward while he swung, the cripple seemed
+in a brown study.
+
+As moved by the sight, and conjecturing that here was some battered hero
+from the Mexican battle-fields, the herb-doctor had sympathetically
+accosted him as above, and received the above rather dubious reply. As,
+with a half moody, half surly sort of air that reply was given, the
+cripple, by a voluntary jerk, nervously increased his swing (his custom
+when seized by emotion), so that one would have thought some squall had
+suddenly rolled the boat and with it the barometer.
+
+"Tombs? my friend," exclaimed the herb-doctor in mild surprise. "You
+have not descended to the dead, have you? I had imagined you a scarred
+campaigner, one of the noble children of war, for your dear country a
+glorious sufferer. But you are Lazarus, it seems."
+
+"Yes, he who had sores."
+
+"Ah, the _other_ Lazarus. But I never knew that either of them was in
+the army," glancing at the dilapidated regimentals.
+
+"That will do now. Jokes enough."
+
+"Friend," said the other reproachfully, "you think amiss. On principle,
+I greet unfortunates with some pleasant remark, the better to call off
+their thoughts from their troubles. The physician who is at once wise
+and humane seldom unreservedly sympathizes with his patient. But come, I
+am a herb-doctor, and also a natural bone-setter. I may be sanguine, but
+I think I can do something for you. You look up now. Give me your story.
+Ere I undertake a cure, I require a full account of the case."
+
+"You can't help me," returned the cripple gruffly. "Go away."
+
+"You seem sadly destitute of----"
+
+"No I ain't destitute; to-day, at least, I can pay my way."
+
+"The Natural Bone-setter is happy, indeed, to hear that. But you were
+premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of
+confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well,
+suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You,
+my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then,
+for my private good, how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus,
+you have arrived at his heroic sang-froid in misfortune."
+
+At these words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the hard ironic eye of
+one toughened and defiant in misery, and, in the end, grinned upon him
+with his unshaven face like an ogre.
+
+"Come, come, be sociable--be human, my friend. Don't make that face; it
+distresses me."
+
+"I suppose," with a sneer, "you are the man I've long heard of--The
+Happy Man."
+
+"Happy? my friend. Yes, at least I ought to be. My conscience is
+peaceful. I have confidence in everybody. I have confidence that, in my
+humble profession, I do some little good to the world. Yes, I think
+that, without presumption, I may venture to assent to the proposition
+that I am the Happy Man--the Happy Bone-setter."
+
+"Then, you shall hear my story. Many a month I have longed to get hold
+of the Happy Man, drill him, drop the powder, and leave him to explode
+at his leisure.".
+
+"What a demoniac unfortunate" exclaimed the herb-doctor retreating.
+"Regular infernal machine!"
+
+"Look ye," cried the other, stumping after him, and with his horny hand
+catching him by a horn button, "my name is Thomas Fry. Until my----"
+
+--"Any relation of Mrs. Fry?" interrupted the other. "I still correspond
+with that excellent lady on the subject of prisons. Tell me, are you
+anyway connected with _my_ Mrs. Fry?"
+
+"Blister Mrs. Fry! What do them sentimental souls know of prisons or any
+other black fact? I'll tell ye a story of prisons. Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor shrank, and with reason, the laugh being strangely
+startling.
+
+"Positively, my friend," said he, "you must stop that; I can't stand
+that; no more of that. I hope I have the milk of kindness, but your
+thunder will soon turn it."
+
+"Hold, I haven't come to the milk-turning part yet. My name is Thomas
+Fry. Until my twenty-third year I went by the nickname of Happy
+Tom--happy--ha, ha! They called me Happy Tom, d'ye see? because I was so
+good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am now--ha, ha!"
+
+Upon this the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run, but once more the
+hyæna clawed him. Presently, sobering down, he continued:
+
+"Well, I was born in New York, and there I lived a steady, hard-working
+man, a cooper by trade. One evening I went to a political meeting in the
+Park--for you must know, I was in those days a great patriot. As bad
+luck would have it, there was trouble near, between a gentleman who had
+been drinking wine, and a pavior who was sober. The pavior chewed
+tobacco, and the gentleman said it was beastly in him, and pushed him,
+wanting to have his place. The pavior chewed on and pushed back. Well,
+the gentleman carried a sword-cane, and presently the pavior was
+down--skewered."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Why you see the pavior undertook something above his strength."
+
+"The other must have been a Samson then. 'Strong as a pavior,' is a
+proverb."
+
+"So it is, and the gentleman was in body a rather weakly man, but, for
+all that, I say again, the pavior undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"What are you talking about? He tried to maintain his rights, didn't
+he?"
+
+"Yes; but, for all that, I say again, he undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"I don't understand you. But go on."
+
+"Along with the gentleman, I, with other witnesses, was taken to the
+Tombs. There was an examination, and, to appear at the trial, the
+gentleman and witnesses all gave bail--I mean all but me."
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+"Couldn't get it."
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper like you; what was the reason you couldn't
+get bail?"
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper hadn't no friends. Well, souse I went into
+a wet cell, like a canal-boat splashing into the lock; locked up in
+pickle, d'ye see? against the time of the trial."
+
+"But what had you done?"
+
+"Why, I hadn't got any friends, I tell ye. A worse crime than murder, as
+ye'll see afore long."
+
+"Murder? Did the wounded man die?"
+
+"Died the third night."
+
+"Then the gentleman's bail didn't help him. Imprisoned now, wasn't he?"
+
+"Had too many friends. No, it was _I_ that was imprisoned.--But I was
+going on: They let me walk about the corridor by day; but at night I
+must into lock. There the wet and the damp struck into my bones. They
+doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was boosted up and said
+my say."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it sticking in."
+
+"And that hung the gentleman."
+
+"Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park,
+and presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal."
+
+"Acquittal?"
+
+"Didn't I say he had friends?"
+
+There was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor's saying: "Well,
+there is a bright side to everything. If this speak prosaically for
+justice, it speaks romantically for friendship! But go on, my fine
+fellow."
+
+"My say being said, they told me I might go. I said I could not without
+help. So the constables helped me, asking _where_ would I go? I told
+them back to the 'Tombs.' I knew no other place. 'But where are your
+friends?' said they. 'I have none.' So they put me into a hand-barrow
+with an awning to it, and wheeled me down to the dock and on board a
+boat, and away to Blackwell's Island to the Corporation Hospital. There
+I got worse--got pretty much as you see me now. Couldn't cure me. After
+three years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of
+groaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver
+dollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother
+who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go
+to him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It
+was on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump fence, the old
+gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the
+grave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green
+twigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the
+mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soils for
+grave-yards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and
+rest myself on the bier and think about my brother in heaven, but the
+bier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs
+out of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make
+too long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other
+bit of wreck."
+
+The herb-doctor was silent for a time, buried in thought. At last,
+raising his head, he said: "I have considered your whole story, my
+friend, and strove to consider it in the light of a commentary on what I
+believe to be the system of things; but it so jars with all, is so
+incompatible with all, that you must pardon me, if I honestly tell you,
+I cannot believe it."
+
+"That don't surprise me."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Hardly anybody believes my story, and so to most I tell a different
+one."
+
+"How, again?"
+
+"Wait here a bit and I'll show ye."
+
+With that, taking off his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered
+regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers
+in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air:
+"Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady,
+something for General Scott's soldier, crippled in both pins at glorious
+Contreras."
+
+Now, it so chanced that, unbeknown to the cripple, a prim-looking
+stranger had overheard part of his story. Beholding him, then, on his
+present begging adventure, this person, turning to the herb-doctor,
+indignantly said: "Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder rascal should lie
+so?"
+
+"Charity never faileth, my good sir," was the reply. "The vice of this
+unfortunate is pardonable. Consider, he lies not out of wantonness."
+
+"Not out of wantonness. I never heard more wanton lies. In one breath to
+tell you what would appear to be his true story, and, in the next, away
+and falsify it."
+
+"For all that, I repeat he lies not out of wantonness. A ripe
+philosopher, turned out of the great Sorbonne of hard times, he thinks
+that woes, when told to strangers for money, are best sugared. Though
+the inglorious lock-jaw of his knee-pans in a wet dungeon is a far more
+pitiable ill than to have been crippled at glorious Contreras, yet he is
+of opinion that this lighter and false ill shall attract, while the
+heavier and real one might repel."
+
+"Nonsense; he belongs to the Devil's regiment; and I have a great mind
+to expose him."
+
+"Shame upon you. Dare to expose that poor unfortunate, and by
+heaven--don't you do it, sir."
+
+Noting something in his manner, the other thought it more prudent to
+retire than retort. By-and-by, the cripple came back, and with glee,
+having reaped a pretty good harvest.
+
+"There," he laughed, "you know now what sort of soldier I am."
+
+"Aye, one that fights not the stupid Mexican, but a foe worthy your
+tactics--Fortune!"
+
+"Hi, hi!" clamored the cripple, like a fellow in the pit of a sixpenny
+theatre, then said, "don't know much what you meant, but it went off
+well."
+
+This over, his countenance capriciously put on a morose ogreness. To
+kindly questions he gave no kindly answers. Unhandsome notions were
+thrown out about "free Ameriky," as he sarcastically called his country.
+These seemed to disturb and pain the herb-doctor, who, after an interval
+of thoughtfulness, gravely addressed him in these words:
+
+"You, my Worthy friend, to my concern, have reflected upon the
+government under which you live and suffer. Where is your patriotism?
+Where your gratitude? True, the charitable may find something in your
+case, as you put it, partly to account for such reflections as coming
+from you. Still, be the facts how they may, your reflections are none
+the less unwarrantable. Grant, for the moment, that your experiences are
+as you give them; in which case I would admit that government might be
+thought to have more or less to do with what seems undesirable in them.
+But it is never to be forgotten that human government, being subordinate
+to the divine, must needs, therefore, in its degree, partake of the
+characteristics of the divine. That is, while in general efficacious to
+happiness, the world's law may yet, in some cases, have, to the eye of
+reason, an unequal operation, just as, in the same imperfect view, some
+inequalities may appear in the operations of heaven's law; nevertheless,
+to one who has a right confidence, final benignity is, in every
+instance, as sure with the one law as the other. I expound the point at
+some length, because these are the considerations, my poor fellow,
+which, weighed as they merit, will enable you to sustain with unimpaired
+trust the apparent calamities which are yours."
+
+"What do you talk your hog-latin to me for?" cried the cripple, who,
+throughout the address, betrayed the most illiterate obduracy; and, with
+an incensed look, anew he swung himself.
+
+Glancing another way till the spasm passed, the other continued:
+
+"Charity marvels not that you should be somewhat hard of conviction, my
+friend, since you, doubtless, believe yourself hardly dealt by; but
+forget not that those who are loved are chastened."
+
+"Mustn't chasten them too much, though, and too long, because their skin
+and heart get hard, and feel neither pain nor tickle."
+
+"To mere reason, your case looks something piteous, I grant. But never
+despond; many things--the choicest--yet remain. You breathe this
+bounteous air, are warmed by this gracious sun, and, though poor and
+friendless, indeed, nor so agile as in your youth, yet, how sweet to
+roam, day by day, through the groves, plucking the bright mosses and
+flowers, till forlornness itself becomes a hilarity, and, in your
+innocent independence, you skip for joy."
+
+"Fine skipping with these 'ere horse-posts--ha ha!"
+
+"Pardon; I forgot the crutches. My mind, figuring you after receiving
+the benefit of my art, overlooked you as you stand before me."
+
+"Your art? You call yourself a bone-setter--a natural bone-setter, do
+ye? Go, bone-set the crooked world, and then come bone-set crooked me."
+
+"Truly, my honest friend, I thank you for again recalling me to my
+original object. Let me examine you," bending down; "ah, I see, I see;
+much such a case as the negro's. Did you see him? Oh no, you came aboard
+since. Well, his case was a little something like yours. I prescribed
+for him, and I shouldn't wonder at all if, in a very short time, he were
+able to walk almost as well as myself. Now, have you no confidence in my
+art?"
+
+"Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor averted himself; but, the wild laugh dying away,
+resumed:
+
+"I will not force confidence on you. Still, I would fain do the friendly
+thing by you. Here, take this box; just rub that liniment on the joints
+night and morning. Take it. Nothing to pay. God bless you. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay," pausing in his swing, not untouched by so unexpected an act;
+"stay--thank'ee--but will this really do me good? Honor bright, now;
+will it? Don't deceive a poor fellow," with changed mien and glistening
+eye.
+
+"Try it. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay! _Sure_ it will do me good?"
+
+"Possibly, possibly; no harm in trying. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay; give me three more boxes, and here's the money."
+
+"My friend," returning towards him with a sadly pleased sort of air, "I
+rejoice in the birth of your confidence and hopefulness. Believe me
+that, like your crutches, confidence and hopefulness will long support a
+man when his own legs will not. Stick to confidence and hopefulness,
+then, since how mad for the cripple to throw his crutches away. You ask
+for three more boxes of my liniment. Luckily, I have just that number
+remaining. Here they are. I sell them at half-a-dollar apiece. But I
+shall take nothing from you. There; God bless you again; good-bye."
+
+"Stay," in a convulsed voice, and rocking himself, "stay, stay! You have
+made a better man of me. You have borne with me like a good Christian,
+and talked to me like one, and all that is enough without making me a
+present of these boxes. Here is the money. I won't take nay. There,
+there; and may Almighty goodness go with you."
+
+As the herb-doctor withdrew, the cripple gradually subsided from his
+hard rocking into a gentle oscillation. It expressed, perhaps, the
+soothed mood of his reverie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+REAPPEARANCE OF ONE WHO MAY BE REMEMBERED.
+
+
+The herb-doctor had not moved far away, when, in advance of him, this
+spectacle met his eye. A dried-up old man, with the stature of a boy of
+twelve, was tottering about like one out of his mind, in rumpled clothes
+of old moleskin, showing recent contact with bedding, his ferret eyes,
+blinking in the sunlight of the snowy boat, as imbecilely eager, and, at
+intervals, coughing, he peered hither and thither as if in alarmed
+search for his nurse. He presented the aspect of one who, bed-rid, has,
+through overruling excitement, like that of a fire, been stimulated to
+his feet.
+
+"You seek some one," said the herb-doctor, accosting him. "Can I assist
+you?"
+
+"Do, do; I am so old and miserable," coughed the old man. "Where is he?
+This long time I've been trying to get up and find him. But I haven't
+any friends, and couldn't get up till now. Where is he?"
+
+"Who do you mean?" drawing closer, to stay the further wanderings of one
+so weakly.
+
+"Why, why, why," now marking the other's dress, "why you, yes you--you,
+you--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--you are the man he spoke of. Who is he?"
+
+"Faith, that is just what I want to know."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" coughed the old man, bewildered, "ever since seeing him,
+my head spins round so. I ought to have a guard_ee_an. Is this a
+snuff-colored surtout of yours, or ain't it? Somehow, can't trust my
+senses any more, since trusting him--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you have trusted somebody? Glad to hear it. Glad to hear of any
+instance, of that sort. Reflects well upon all men. But you inquire
+whether this is a snuff-colored surtout. I answer it is; and will add
+that a herb-doctor wears it."
+
+Upon this the old man, in his broken way, replied that then he (the
+herb-doctor) was the person he sought--the person spoken of by the other
+person as yet unknown. He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted to know
+who this last person was, and where he was, and whether he could be
+trusted with money to treble it.
+
+"Aye, now, I begin to understand; ten to one you mean my worthy friend,
+who, in pure goodness of heart, makes people's fortunes for them--their
+everlasting fortunes, as the phrase goes--only charging his one small
+commission of confidence. Aye, aye; before intrusting funds with my
+friend, you want to know about him. Very proper--and, I am glad to
+assure you, you need have no hesitation; none, none, just none in the
+world; bona fide, none. Turned me in a trice a hundred dollars the other
+day into as many eagles."
+
+"Did he? did he? But where is he? Take me to him."
+
+"Pray, take my arm! The boat is large! We may have something of a hunt!
+Come on! Ah, is that he?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"O, no; I took yonder coat-skirts for his. But no, my honest friend
+would never turn tail that way. Ah!----"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Another mistake. Surprising resemblance. I took yonder clergyman for
+him. Come on!"
+
+Having searched that part of the boat without success, they went to
+another part, and, while exploring that, the boat sided up to a landing,
+when, as the two were passing by the open guard, the herb-doctor
+suddenly rushed towards the disembarking throng, crying out: "Mr.
+Truman, Mr. Truman! There he goes--that's he. Mr. Truman, Mr.
+Truman!--Confound that steam-pipe., Mr. Truman! for God's sake, Mr.
+Truman!--No, no.--There, the plank's in--too late--we're off."
+
+With that, the huge boat, with a mighty, walrus wallow, rolled away from
+the shore, resuming her course.
+
+"How vexatious!" exclaimed the herb-doctor, returning. "Had we been but
+one single moment sooner.--There he goes, now, towards yon hotel, his
+portmanteau following. You see him, don't you?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Can't see him any more. Wheel-house shot between. I am very sorry. I
+should have so liked you to have let him have a hundred or so of your
+money. You would have been pleased with the investment, believe me."
+
+"Oh, I _have_ let him have some of my money," groaned the old man.
+
+"You have? My dear sir," seizing both the miser's hands in both his own
+and heartily shaking them. "My dear sir, how I congratulate you. You
+don't know."
+
+"Ugh, ugh! I fear I don't," with another groan. "His name is Truman, is
+it?"
+
+"John Truman."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"In St. Louis."
+
+"Where's his office?"
+
+"Let me see. Jones street, number one hundred and--no, no--anyway, it's
+somewhere or other up-stairs in Jones street."
+
+"Can't you remember the number? Try, now."
+
+"One hundred--two hundred--three hundred--"
+
+"Oh, my hundred dollars! I wonder whether it will be one hundred, two
+hundred, three hundred, with them! Ugh, ugh! Can't remember the number?"
+
+"Positively, though I once knew, I have forgotten, quite forgotten it.
+Strange. But never mind. You will easily learn in St. Louis. He is well
+known there."
+
+"But I have no receipt--ugh, ugh! Nothing to show--don't know where I
+stand--ought to have a guard_ee_an--ugh, ugh! Don't know anything. Ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Why, you know that you gave him your confidence, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But what, what--how, how--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Why, didn't he tell you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What! Didn't he tell you that it was a secret, a mystery?"
+
+"Oh--yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But I have no bond."
+
+"Don't need any with Mr. Truman. Mr. Truman's word is his bond."
+
+"But how am I to get my profits--ugh, ugh!--and my money back? Don't
+know anything. Ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you must have confidence."
+
+"Don't say that word again. Makes my head spin so. Oh, I'm so old and
+miserable, nobody caring for me, everybody fleecing me, and my head
+spins so--ugh, ugh!--and this cough racks me so. I say again, I ought to
+have a guard_ee_an."
+
+"So you ought; and Mr. Truman is your guardian to the extent you
+invested with him. Sorry we missed him just now. But you'll hear from
+him. All right. It's imprudent, though, to expose yourself this way. Let
+me take you to your berth."
+
+Forlornly enough the old miser moved slowly away with him. But, while
+descending a stairway, he was seized with such coughing that he was fain
+to pause.
+
+"That is a very bad cough."
+
+"Church-yard--ugh, ugh!--church-yard cough.--Ugh!"
+
+"Have you tried anything for it?"
+
+"Tired of trying. Nothing does me any good--ugh! ugh! Not even the
+Mammoth Cave. Ugh! ugh! Denned there six months, but coughed so bad the
+rest of the coughers--ugh! ugh!--black-balled me out. Ugh, ugh! Nothing
+does me good."
+
+"But have you tried the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator, sir?"
+
+"That's what that Truman--ugh, ugh!--said I ought to take.
+Yarb-medicine; you are that yarb-doctor, too?"
+
+"The same. Suppose you try one of my boxes now. Trust me, from what I
+know of Mr. Truman, he is not the gentleman to recommend, even in behalf
+of a friend, anything of whose excellence he is not conscientiously
+satisfied."
+
+"Ugh!--how much?"
+
+"Only two dollars a box."
+
+"Two dollars? Why don't you say two millions? ugh, ugh! Two dollars,
+that's two hundred cents; that's eight hundred farthings; that's two
+thousand mills; and all for one little box of yarb-medicine. My head, my
+head!--oh, I ought to have a guard_ee_an for; my head. Ugh, ugh, ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, if two dollars a box seems too much, take a dozen boxes at twenty
+dollars; and that will be getting four boxes for nothing, and you need
+use none but those four, the rest you can retail out at a premium, and
+so cure your cough, and make money by it. Come, you had better do it.
+Cash down. Can fill an order in a day or two. Here now," producing a
+box; "pure herbs."
+
+At that moment, seized with another spasm, the miser snatched each
+interval to fix his half distrustful, half hopeful eye upon the
+medicine, held alluringly up. "Sure--ugh! Sure it's all nat'ral? Nothing
+but yarbs? If I only thought it was a purely nat'ral medicine now--all
+yarbs--ugh, ugh!--oh this cough, this cough--ugh, ugh!--shatters my
+whole body. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"For heaven's sake try my medicine, if but a single box. That it is pure
+nature you may be confident, Refer you to Mr. Truman."
+
+"Don't know his number--ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh this cough. He did speak
+well of this medicine though; said solemnly it would cure me--ugh, ugh,
+ugh, ugh!--take off a dollar and I'll have a box."
+
+"Can't sir, can't."
+
+"Say a dollar-and-half. Ugh!"
+
+"Can't. Am pledged to the one-price system, only honorable one."
+
+"Take off a shilling--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Can't."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh--I'll take it.--There."
+
+Grudgingly he handed eight silver coins, but while still in his hand,
+his cough took him and they were shaken upon the deck.
+
+One by one, the herb-doctor picked them up, and, examining them, said:
+"These are not quarters, these are pistareens; and clipped, and sweated,
+at that."
+
+"Oh don't be so miserly--ugh, ugh!--better a beast than a miser--ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, let it go. Anything rather than the idea of your not being cured
+of such a cough. And I hope, for the credit of humanity, you have not
+made it appear worse than it is, merely with a view to working upon the
+weak point of my pity, and so getting my medicine the cheaper. Now,
+mind, don't take it till night. Just before retiring is the time. There,
+you can get along now, can't you? I would attend you further, but I land
+presently, and must go hunt up my luggage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A HARD CASE.
+
+
+"Yarbs, yarbs; natur, natur; you foolish old file you! He diddled you
+with that hocus-pocus, did he? Yarbs and natur will cure your incurable
+cough, you think."
+
+It was a rather eccentric-looking person who spoke; somewhat ursine in
+aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bear's-skin; a
+high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin, the long bushy tail switching over
+behind; raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a
+double-barreled gun in hand--a Missouri bachelor, a Hoosier gentleman,
+of Spartan leisure and fortune, and equally Spartan manners and
+sentiments; and, as the sequel may show, not less acquainted, in a
+Spartan way of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
+and rifles.
+
+He must have overheard some of the talk between the miser and the
+herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal of the one, he made up to
+the other--now at the foot of the stairs leaning against the baluster
+there--with the greeting above.
+
+"Think it will cure me?" coughed the miser in echo; "why shouldn't it?
+The medicine is nat'ral yarbs, pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me."
+
+"Because a thing is nat'ral, as you call it, you think it must be good.
+But who gave you that cough? Was it, or was it not, nature?"
+
+"Sure, you don't think that natur, Dame Natur, will hurt a body, do
+you?"
+
+"Natur is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?"
+
+"But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?"
+
+"What's deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur and yarbs--ugh, ugh,
+ugh!--ain't sick men sent out into the country; sent out to natur and
+grass?"
+
+"Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame
+horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of
+yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for
+sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster
+on the prairie? And who made an idiot of Peter the Wild Boy?"
+
+"Then you don't believe in these 'ere yarb-doctors?"
+
+"Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor I saw once on a
+hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the faculty passing round and seeing who
+lay there, said with professional triumph, 'Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
+don't help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and the mercury now,
+Dr. Green.--Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!'"
+
+"Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?" here said a
+flute-like voice, advancing.
+
+It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in hand, he happened to be
+strolling back that way.
+
+"Pardon me," addressing the Missourian, "but if I caught your words
+aright, you would seem to have little confidence in nature; which,
+really, in my way of thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of
+distrust pretty far."
+
+"And who of my sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon
+him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half
+cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the
+expression, which made its sincerity appear more or less dubious.
+
+"One who has confidence in nature, and confidence in man, with some
+little modest confidence in himself."
+
+"That's your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence in man, eh? Pray,
+which do you think are most, knaves or fools?"
+
+"Having met with few or none of either, I hardly think I am competent to
+answer."
+
+"I will answer for you. Fools are most."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses.
+Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"
+
+"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"But I'm in earnest."
+
+"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest
+air--knaves munching up fools as horses oats.--Faith, very droll,
+indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I
+was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about
+having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much as I
+have."
+
+"_I_ have confidence in nature? _I?_ I say again there is nothing I am
+more suspicious of. I once lost ten thousand dollars by nature. Nature
+embezzled that amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars'
+worth of my property; a plantation on this stream, swept clean away by
+one of those sudden shiftings of the banks in a freshet; ten thousand
+dollars' worth of alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters."
+
+"But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting that soil will
+come back after many days?--ah, here is my venerable friend," observing
+the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you _will_ keep afoot,
+don't lean against that baluster; take my arm."
+
+It was taken; and the two stood together; the old miser leaning against
+the herb-doctor with something of that air of trustful fraternity with
+which, when standing, the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually
+leans against the other.
+
+The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was broken by the
+herb-doctor.
+
+"You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly take under my
+protection a figure like this? But I am never ashamed of honesty,
+whatever his coat."
+
+"Look you," said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing pause, "you are a
+queer sort of chap. Don't know exactly what to make of you. Upon the
+whole though, you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my place."
+
+"Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?"
+
+"Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some kind of machine to do
+the sort of work which boys are supposed to be fitted for."
+
+"Then you have passed a veto upon boys?"
+
+"And men, too."
+
+"But, my dear sir, does not that again imply more or less lack of
+confidence?--(Stand up a little, just a very little, my venerable
+friend; you lean rather hard.)--No confidence in boys, no confidence in
+men, no confidence in nature. Pray, sir, who or what may you have
+confidence in?"
+
+"I have confidence in distrust; more particularly as applied to you and
+your herbs."
+
+"Well," with a forbearing smile, "that is frank. But pray, don't forget
+that when you suspect my herbs you suspect nature."
+
+"Didn't I say that before?"
+
+"Very good. For the argument's sake I will suppose you are in earnest.
+Now, can you, who suspect nature, deny, that this same nature not only
+kindly brought you into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your
+present vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature that you
+are indebted for that robustness of mind which you so unhandsomely use
+to her scandal? Pray, is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by
+which you criticise her?"
+
+"No! for the privilege of vision I am indebted to an oculist, who in my
+tenth year operated upon me in Philadelphia. Nature made me blind and
+would have kept me so. My oculist counterplotted her."
+
+"And yet, sir, by your complexion, I judge you live an out-of-door life;
+without knowing it, you are partial to nature; you fly to nature, the
+universal mother."
+
+"Very motherly! Sir, in the passion-fits of nature, I've known birds fly
+from nature to me, rough as I look; yes, sir, in a tempest, refuge
+here," smiting the folds of his bearskin. "Fact, sir, fact. Come, come,
+Mr. Palaverer, for all your palavering, did you yourself never shut out
+nature of a cold, wet night? Bar her out? Bolt her out? Lint her out?"
+
+"As to that," said the herb-doctor calmly, "much may be said."
+
+"Say it, then," ruffling all his hairs. "You can't, sir, can't." Then,
+as in apostrophe: "Look you, nature! I don't deny but your clover is
+sweet, and your dandelions don't roar; but whose hailstones smashed my
+windows?"
+
+"Sir," with unimpaired affability, producing one of his boxes, "I am
+pained to meet with one who holds nature a dangerous character. Though
+your manner is refined your voice is rough; in short, you seem to have a
+sore throat. In the calumniated name of nature, I present you with this
+box; my venerable friend here has a similar one; but to you, a free
+gift, sir. Through her regularly-authorized agents, of whom I happen to
+be one, Nature delights in benefiting those who most abuse her. Pray,
+take it."
+
+"Away with it! Don't hold it so near. Ten to one there is a torpedo in
+it. Such things have been. Editors been killed that way. Take it further
+off, I say."
+
+"Good heavens! my dear sir----"
+
+"I tell you I want none of your boxes," snapping his rifle.
+
+"Oh, take it--ugh, ugh! do take it," chimed in the old miser; "I wish he
+would give me one for nothing."
+
+"You find it lonely, eh," turning short round; "gulled yourself, you
+would have a companion."
+
+"How can he find it lonely," returned the herb-doctor, "or how desire a
+companion, when here I stand by him; I, even I, in whom he has trust.
+For the gulling, tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man?
+Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain, is it kind to
+deprive him of what, in mere imagination, if nothing more, may help eke
+out, with hope, his disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and,
+thanks to your native health, can get along without it, so far, at
+least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet, how cruel an argument to
+use, with this afflicted one here. Is it not for all the world as if
+some brawny pugilist, aglow in December, should rush in and put out a
+hospital-fire, because, forsooth, he feeling no need of artificial heat,
+the shivering patients shall have none? Put it to your conscience, sir,
+and you will admit, that, whatever be the nature of this afflicted one's
+trust, you, in opposing it, evince either an erring head or a heart
+amiss. Come, own, are you not pitiless?"
+
+"Yes, poor soul," said the Missourian, gravely eying the old man--"yes,
+it _is_ pitiless in one like me to speak too honestly to one like you.
+You are a late sitter-up in this life; past man's usual bed-time; and
+truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast, proves to all a
+supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives bad dreams."
+
+"What, in wonder's name--ugh, ugh!--is he talking about?" asked the old
+miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.
+
+"Heaven be praised for that!" cried the Missourian.
+
+"Out of his mind, ain't he?" again appealed the old miser.
+
+"Pray, sir," said the herb-doctor to the Missourian, "for what were you
+giving thanks just now?"
+
+"For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a
+thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded pistol found by poor devils
+of savages, it raises more wonder than terror--its peculiar virtue being
+unguessed, unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should happen to
+go off of itself."
+
+"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor,
+after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of
+pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his
+state of mind, and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him to
+it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your
+thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them,
+but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet
+recant."
+
+"Recant?"
+
+"Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when
+a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the
+dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence
+begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it
+return to you in age."
+
+"Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood, indeed. You are soft."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" cried the old miser, "what is all this!--ugh, ugh! Do
+talk sense, my good friends. Ain't you," to the Missourian, "going to
+buy some of that medicine?"
+
+"Pray, my venerable friend," said the herb-doctor, now trying to
+straighten himself, "don't lean _quite_ so hard; my arm grows numb;
+abate a little, just a very little."
+
+"Go," said the Missourian, "go lay down in your grave, old man, if you
+can't stand of yourself. It's a hard world for a leaner."
+
+"As to his grave," said the herb-doctor, "that is far enough off, so he
+but faithfully take my medicine."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--He says true. No, I ain't--ugh! a going to die
+yet--ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I approve your confidence," said the herb-doctor; "but your coughing
+distresses me, besides being injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you
+to your berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait till my
+return, I know."
+
+With which he led the old miser away, and then, coming back, the talk
+with the Missourian was resumed.
+
+"Sir," said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and more feeling, "now
+that our infirm friend is withdrawn, allow me, to the full, to express
+my concern at the words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
+of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to beget
+deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to convey unpleasant
+imputations against me, his physician."
+
+"Suppose they did?" with a menacing air.
+
+"Why, then--then, indeed," respectfully retreating, "I fall back upon my
+previous theory of your general facetiousness. I have the fortune to be
+in company with a humorist--a wag."
+
+"Fall back you had better, and wag it is," cried the Missourian,
+following him up, and wagging his raccoon tail almost into the
+herb-doctor's face, "look you!"
+
+"At what?"
+
+"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
+
+"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I
+flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or
+pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer
+that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the
+kind."
+
+"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
+
+"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me.
+The innocence in me heals me."
+
+"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man--a very queer
+and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met."
+
+The scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome to the diffidence of the
+herb-doctor. As if at once to attest the absence of resentment, as well
+as to change the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into
+his air, and said: "So you are going to get some machine made to do your
+work? Philanthropic scruples, doubtless, forbid your going as far as New
+Orleans for slaves?"
+
+"Slaves?" morose again in a twinkling, "won't have 'em! Bad enough to
+see whites ducking and grinning round for a favor, without having those
+poor devils of niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,
+the niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist, ain't
+you?" he added, squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for
+a staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence
+than if it were a target. "You are an abolitionist, ain't you?"
+
+"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a
+zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for
+all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's
+interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly
+abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among
+mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say."
+
+"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable
+understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for
+wrong, but are useless for right."
+
+"From all this," said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly, "I infer, that
+you, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state, are without slave
+sentiments."
+
+"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring
+and yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are
+you owned by a company?"
+
+"_My_ master?"
+
+"Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come from a slave-state, and a
+slave-pen, where the best breeds are to be bought up at any price from a
+livelihood to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but expresses the
+fellow-feeling of slave for slave."
+
+"The back-woods would seem to have given you rather eccentric notions,"
+now with polite superiority smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly
+intrepidity forbearing each unmanly thrust, "but to return; since, for
+your purpose, you will have neither man nor boy, bond nor free, truly,
+then some sort of machine for you is all there is left. My desires for
+your success attend you, sir.--Ah!" glancing shoreward, "here is Cape
+Girádeau; I must leave you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
+
+
+--"'Philosophical Intelligence Office'--novel idea! But how did you come
+to dream that I wanted anything in your absurd line, eh?"
+
+About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Girádeau, the above was growled
+out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had
+just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean
+five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate,
+inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk
+obliquely behind.
+
+"How did you come to dream that I wanted anything in your line, eh?"
+
+"Oh, respected sir," whined the other, crouching a pace nearer, and, in
+his obsequiousness, seeming to wag his very coat-tails behind him,
+shabby though they were, "oh, sir, from long experience, one glance
+tells me the gentleman who is in need of our humble services."
+
+"But suppose I did want a boy--what they jocosely call a good boy--how
+could your absurd office help me?--Philosophical Intelligence Office?"
+
+"Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical and
+physio----"
+
+"Look you--come up here--how, by philosophy or physiology either, make
+good boys to order? Come up here. Don't give me a crick in the neck.
+Come up here, come, sir, come," calling as if to his pointer. "Tell me,
+how put the requisite assortment of good qualities into a boy, as the
+assorted mince into the pie?"
+
+"Respected sir, our office----"
+
+"You talk much of that office. Where is it? On board this boat?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office----"
+
+"Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do you know a herb-doctor
+there? Smooth scamp in a snuff-colored surtout?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Girádeau. Though, now that you
+mention a snuff-colored surtout, I think I met such a man as you speak
+of stepping ashore as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
+somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian sort of person, I
+should say. Do you know him, respected sir?"
+
+"Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed with your business."
+
+With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission, the other began:
+"Our office----"
+
+"Look you," broke in the bachelor with ire, "have you the spinal
+complaint? What are you ducking and groveling about? Keep still. Where's
+your office?"
+
+"The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir, in the free state
+we now pass," (pointing somewhat proudly ashore).
+
+"Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself? With those coat-tails
+and that spinal complaint of servility? Free? Just cast up in your
+private mind who is your master, will you?"
+
+"Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand--indeed--indeed. But, respected sir, as
+before said, our office, founded on principles wholly new----"
+
+"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk
+of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I
+tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old
+home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels,
+chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and
+waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of
+your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've
+lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born
+cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
+mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your boys would be to me. A
+rot on your boys!"
+
+"But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might we not, in our
+small way, accommodate you with a man?"
+
+"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a
+bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate:
+there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a
+loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a
+chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be
+accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours,
+the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine
+to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill--does that ever steal my
+cider? My mowing-machine--does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My
+corn-husker--does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill,
+mowing-machine, corn-husker--all faithfully attend to their business.
+Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives
+long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward--the only practical
+Christians I know."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Yes, sir:--boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference, in a moral
+point of view, between a corn-husker and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for
+its patient continuance in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven.
+Do you suppose a boy will?"
+
+"A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites of his eyes). Respected
+sir, this way of talking as if heaven were a kind of Washington
+patent-office museum--oh, oh, oh!--as if mere machine-work and
+puppet-work went to heaven--oh, oh, oh! Things incapable of free agency,
+to receive the eternal reward of well-doing--oh, oh, oh!"
+
+"You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning about? Did I say
+anything of that sort? Seems to me, though you talk so good, you are
+mighty quick at a hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
+quarrel with me."
+
+"It may be so or not, respected sir," was now the demure reply; "but if
+it be, it is only because as a soldier out of honor is quick in taking
+affront, so a Christian out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a
+little too much so, in spying heresy."
+
+"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
+the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."
+
+So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
+brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
+that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
+further on the subject of servants.
+
+"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
+at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
+coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
+experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
+servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
+human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
+trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
+dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
+horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
+apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
+machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
+Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
+refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
+by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
+doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
+knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
+on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
+to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."
+
+"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
+as I ventured to observe----"
+
+"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
+"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
+now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
+boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."
+
+"Save us, save us!"
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
+fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
+English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
+me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
+Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
+my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
+Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
+juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
+twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
+viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
+myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
+exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
+those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
+virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
+boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
+offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
+the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
+request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
+nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
+island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
+deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
+why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
+too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
+always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
+combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
+singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
+family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
+would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
+out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
+he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
+so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
+there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
+please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
+scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
+didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
+to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
+polite he grew."
+
+"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
+exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
+for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
+After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
+slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
+Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
+strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
+settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
+thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
+dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
+Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
+less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
+fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
+afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
+across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
+rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
+black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
+are rascals."
+
+"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
+sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
+hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
+confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
+are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
+respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
+and wholly?"
+
+Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
+whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
+summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
+was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
+continued as follows:
+
+"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
+'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
+all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
+keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
+peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
+confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
+that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
+
+"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
+up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
+praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
+thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
+office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
+concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
+Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
+must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
+mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
+the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
+various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
+educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
+random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
+that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
+they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
+imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
+could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."
+
+"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
+sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
+your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
+for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
+wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
+into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
+put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
+insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--
+
+    'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--
+
+and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
+but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
+offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."
+
+"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
+less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
+are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
+enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
+have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
+me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
+man, I may have my small share of feelings."
+
+"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
+are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
+is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
+way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
+I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
+rascals."
+
+"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
+badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
+mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
+me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
+of the subject in hand?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
+other way. "Oh, yes; go on."
+
+"Well, then, respected sir," continued the other, now assuming as
+genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar
+suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the
+strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in
+dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office is
+founded, has led me and my associates, in our small, quiet way, to a
+careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory, and
+with an unobtrusive aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
+large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting from it, I will,
+by your permission, very briefly mention; such of them, I mean, as refer
+to the state of boyhood scientifically viewed."
+
+"Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied boys, eh? Why didn't
+you out with that before?"
+
+"Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed with so many
+masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing. I have been taught that in this
+world there is a precedence of opinions as well as of persons. You have
+kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty, about to give you
+mine."
+
+"Stop flunkying--go on."
+
+"In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed by analogy
+from the physical to the moral. Are we right there, sir? Now, sir, take
+a young boy, a young male infant rather, a man-child in short--what sir,
+I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?"
+
+"A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!"
+
+"Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. May I
+proceed? Well, then, what, in the first place, in a general view, do you
+remark, respected sir, in that male baby or man-child?"
+
+The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the whole, better
+governed himself than before, though not, indeed, to the degree of
+thinking it prudent to risk an articulate response.
+
+"What do you remark? I respectfully repeat." But, as no answer came,
+only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the
+questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small
+way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation;
+loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or
+careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected
+sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir,
+the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to
+deny it; but, then, he _promises_ well, does he not? Yes, promises very
+well indeed, I may say. (So, too, we say to our patrons in reference to
+some noble little youngster objected to for being a _dwarf_.) But, to
+advance one step further," extending his thread-bare leg, as he drew a
+pace nearer, "we must now drop the figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and
+borrow one--to use presently, when wanted--from the horticultural
+kingdom. Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such points as the
+new-born man-child has--as yet not all that could be desired, I am free
+to confess--still, such as they are, there they are, and palpable as
+those of an adult. But we stop not here," taking another step. "The
+man-child not only possesses these present points, small though they
+are, but, likewise--now our horticultural image comes into play--like
+the bud of the lily, he contains concealed rudiments of others; that
+is, points at present invisible, with beauties at present dormant."
+
+"Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural and beautiful
+altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!"
+
+"Respected sir," with a rustily martial sort of gesture, like a decayed
+corporal's, "when deploying into the field of discourse the vanguard of
+an important argument, much more in evolving the grand central forces of
+a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you will kindly allow
+scope adequate to the movement in hand, small and humble in its way as
+that movement may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected sir?"
+
+"Yes, stop flunkying and go on."
+
+Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate proceeded:
+
+"Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such terms, to an applicant
+for service, we allude to some patron we chance to have in our eye),
+supposing, respected sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
+dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture; supposing that,
+sir--then how could even the learned serpent himself have foreknown that
+such a downy-chinned little innocent would eventually rival the goat in
+a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality would have been
+entirely hidden from his wisdom."
+
+"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the
+event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who
+made him."
+
+"For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point. Can it now with
+fairness be denied that, in his beard, the man-child prospectively
+possesses an appendix, not less imposing than patriarchal; and for this
+goodly beard, should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
+even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now, sir? respectfully I put
+it."
+
+"Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it shoots," porcinely
+rubbing his stubble-chin against his coon-skins.
+
+"I have hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful
+of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble
+quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't
+you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon
+us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may be) has this boy a
+beard?' 'No.' 'Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
+quality?' 'No, indeed.' 'Then, madam, or sir, take him back, we humbly
+beseech; and keep him till that same noble quality sprouts; for, have
+confidence, it, like the beard, is in him.'"
+
+"Very fine theory," scornfully exclaimed the bachelor, yet in secret,
+perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by these strange new views of the
+matter; "but what trust is to be placed in it?"
+
+"The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed. Once more, if you
+please, regard the man-child."
+
+"Hold!" paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm, "don't intrude that
+man-child upon me too often. He who loves not bread, dotes not on
+dough. As little of your man-child as your logical arrangements will
+admit."
+
+"Anew regard the man-child," with inspired intrepidity repeated he with
+the brass-plate, "in the perspective of his developments, I mean. At
+first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month--am I right,
+sir?"
+
+"Don't know anything about it."
+
+"To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth, about the sixth
+month the man-child begins to put forth in that particular. And sweet
+those tender little puttings-forth are."
+
+"Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless enough."
+
+"Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning with a boy
+alleged not only to be deficient in goodness, but redundant in ill: 'The
+lad, madam or sir, evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
+them.' 'But, have confidence, there will be; for pray, madam, in this
+lad's early childhood, were not those frail first teeth, then his,
+followed by his present sound, even, beautiful and permanent set. And
+the more objectionable those first teeth became, was not that, madam, we
+respectfully submit, so much the more reason to look for their speedy
+substitution by the present sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.'
+'True, true, can't deny that.' 'Then, madam, take him back, we
+respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift course of nature,
+dropping those transient moral blemishes you complain of, he
+replacingly buds forth in the sound, even, beautiful and permanent
+virtues.'"
+
+"Very philosophical again," was the contemptuous reply--the outward
+contempt, perhaps, proportioned to the inward misgiving. "Vastly
+philosophical, indeed, but tell me--to continue your analogy--since the
+second teeth followed--in fact, came from--the first, is there no chance
+the blemish may be transmitted?"
+
+"Not at all." Abating in humility as he gained in the argument. "The
+second teeth follow, but do not come from, the first; successors, not
+sons. The first teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
+once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it foreruns; but
+they are thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the
+succeeding set--an illustration, by the way, which shows more for me
+than I meant, though not more than I wish."
+
+"What does it show?" Surly-looking as a thundercloud with the inkept
+unrest of unacknowledged conviction.
+
+"It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any boy, especially
+an ill one, to apply unconditionally the saying, that the 'child is
+father of the man', is, besides implying an uncharitable aspersion of
+the race, affirming a thing very wide of----"
+
+"--Your analogy," like a snapping turtle.
+
+"Yes, respected sir."
+
+"But is analogy argument? You are a punster."
+
+"Punster, respected sir?" with a look of being aggrieved.
+
+"Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with words."
+
+"Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever has no confidence
+in human reason, whoever despises human reason, in vain to reason with
+him. Still, respected sir," altering his air, "permit me to hint that,
+had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you would hardly have
+offered to contemn it."
+
+"Talk away," disdainfully; "but pray tell me what has that last analogy
+of yours to do with your intelligence office business?"
+
+"Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that analogy we derive
+the reply made to such a patron as, shortly after being supplied by us
+with an adult servant, proposes to return him upon our hands; not that,
+while with the patron, said adult has given any cause of
+dissatisfaction, but the patron has just chanced to hear something
+unfavorable concerning him from some gentleman who employed said adult,
+long before, while a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking
+said adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to the patron,
+say: 'Far be it from you, madam, or sir, to proceed in your censure
+against this adult, in anything of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law.
+Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In
+the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over
+and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better? Madam,
+or sir, take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar, but is now
+a butterfly."
+
+"Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount
+to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The
+butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
+lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped as
+before."
+
+"You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You deny that a youth of one
+character can be transformed into a man of an opposite character. Now
+then--yes, I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
+Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care
+bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish
+self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as
+would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or
+sir--patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you
+discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles
+more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
+him is working.' 'But he is a sad rake.' 'Therein is his promise; the
+rake being crude material for the saint.'"
+
+"Ah, you are a talking man--what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."
+
+"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or
+prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation
+of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best
+wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
+literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?"
+
+"You, you, you!" rattling down his rifle.
+
+"To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray, what is your
+opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?"
+
+"St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know of him? Seems to me,
+for one in such a business, to say nothing of such a coat, that though
+you don't know a great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
+you ought to know, or than you have a right to know, or than it is safe
+or expedient for you to know, or than, in the fair course of life, you
+could have honestly come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
+like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
+which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
+it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."
+
+"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
+suppose."
+
+"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
+where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
+speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
+altogether unexampled and extraordinary."
+
+"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
+method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
+has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
+fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
+to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
+included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
+say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
+among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"
+
+"Excellent genius!"
+
+"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
+Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
+dog?"
+
+"A saint a sad dog?"
+
+"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
+boy."
+
+"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
+tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."
+
+"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
+eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
+that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
+an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
+than in nature herself."
+
+"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
+his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
+don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
+five and thirty boys of mine."
+
+"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
+flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
+boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
+of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
+corn."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
+illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how often
+I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
+half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
+of August."
+
+"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
+analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
+thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
+thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
+hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
+at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."
+
+"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
+I intended."
+
+"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
+of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
+Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
+it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
+charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
+of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
+Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
+Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."
+
+"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
+said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
+asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
+reformado boys."
+
+"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
+never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
+juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
+boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
+measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
+but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
+you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
+boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."
+
+"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
+fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
+absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
+might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
+conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
+Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
+this sort of conditional confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a
+boy, in sober fact, could you send me? And what would be your fee?"
+
+"Conducted," replied the other somewhat loftily, rising now in eloquence
+as his proselyte, for all his pretenses, sunk in conviction, "conducted
+upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
+usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is
+forced to charge somewhat higher than customary. Briefly, our fee is
+three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a
+very promising little fellow now in my eye--a very likely little fellow,
+indeed."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at
+least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his
+head, submitted to me by the mother."
+
+"How old?"
+
+"Just fifteen."
+
+"Tall? Stout?"
+
+"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."
+
+"Industrious?"
+
+"The busy bee."
+
+The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy,
+he spoke:
+
+"Do you think now, candidly, that--I say candidly--candidly--could I
+have some small, limited--some faint, conditional degree of confidence
+in that boy? Candidly, now?"
+
+"Candidly, you could."
+
+"A sound boy? A good boy?"
+
+"Never knew one more so."
+
+The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well,
+now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too.
+Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
+Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try
+that boy. I don't think him an angel, mind. No, no. But I'll try him.
+There are my three dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
+day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money for his passage.
+There," handing it somewhat reluctantly.
+
+"Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;" then, altering in manner,
+and gravely holding the bills, continued: "Respected sir, never
+willingly do I handle money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a
+certain alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect and
+unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy now) or permit me
+respectfully to return these bills."
+
+"Put 'em up, put 'em-up!"
+
+"Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of
+business transactions. Without it, commerce between man and man, as
+between country and country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
+now, supposing that against present expectation the lad should, after
+all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
+dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
+vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
+and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
+grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
+the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
+brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE
+OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A
+RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.
+
+
+At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up
+its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand
+at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
+Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three
+undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.
+
+In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with
+fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain
+passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over
+the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
+medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his
+cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.
+He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this
+villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.
+Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform
+treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,
+had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To
+what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the
+mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with
+Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the
+morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere
+bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake
+up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and
+for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
+the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally
+little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.
+
+But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,
+experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but
+unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its
+genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
+indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished
+by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse
+henceforth.
+
+He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he
+fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a
+fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
+case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.
+He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the
+operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the
+lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And
+yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the
+person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,
+that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems
+him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make
+out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough
+doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of
+cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples
+the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast
+in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by
+the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the
+insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky
+beast that windeth his way on his belly.
+
+From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the
+shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which
+came a voice, sweet as a seraph's:
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET
+BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.
+
+
+"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
+moroseness.
+
+"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair
+has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a
+fine fellow wears it."
+
+"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't
+you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat."
+
+This ungentle mention of the toucan was not improbably suggested by the
+parti-hued, and rather plumagy aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would
+seem, but a liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
+than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
+informalities, might, even to observers less critical than the bachelor,
+have looked, if anything, a little out of the common; but not more so
+perhaps, than, considering the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor's
+own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture barred with
+various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style
+participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from
+its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
+while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over
+maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple
+crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently.
+Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused; all showed signs
+of easy service, the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
+That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was
+now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of
+Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its
+long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
+bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked
+nations--a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing
+essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something
+similar of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But rosy
+pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on that unrosy man, the
+bachelor, who, waiting a moment till the commotion, caused by the boat's
+renewed progress, had a little abated, thus continued:
+
+"Hark ye," jeeringly eying the cap and belt, "did you ever see Signor
+Marzetti in the African pantomime?"
+
+"No;--good performer?"
+
+"Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it. With such
+naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that
+of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
+hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that."
+
+The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on one hip, his right
+leg cavalierly crossed before the other, the toe of his vertical slipper
+pointed easily down on the deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of
+indifferent and charitable puff, betokening him more or less of the
+mature man of the world, a character which, like its opposite, the
+sincere Christian's, is not always swift to take offense; and then,
+drawing near, still smoking, again laid his hand, this time with mild
+impressiveness, on the ursine shoulder, and not unamiably said: "That in
+your address there is a sufficiency of the _fortiter in re_ few unbiased
+observers will question; but that this is duly attempered with the
+_suaviter in modo_ may admit, I think, of an honest doubt. My dear
+fellow," beaming his eyes full upon him, "what injury have I done you,
+that you should receive my greeting with a curtailed civility?"
+
+"Off hands;" once more shaking the friendly member from him. "Who in the
+name of the great chimpanzee, in whose likeness, you, Marzetti, and the
+other chatterers are made, who in thunder are you?"
+
+"A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such, ties himself to no
+narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume,
+something of the various gallantries of men under various suns. Oh, one
+roams not over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal and
+fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost anybody. Warm and
+confiding, you wait not for measured advances. And though, indeed,
+mine, in this instance, have met with no very hilarious encouragement,
+yet the principle of a true citizen of the world is still to return good
+for ill.--My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."
+
+"By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world, into the heart of
+the Lunar Mountains. You are another of them. Out of my sight!"
+
+"Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you then? Ah, I may be
+foolish, but for my part, in all its aspects, I love it. Served up à la
+Pole, or à la Moor, à la Ladrone, or à la Yankee, that good dish, man,
+still delights me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of comparing
+and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan, a sort of
+London-Dock-Vault connoisseur, going about from Teheran to Natchitoches,
+a taster of races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy
+creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal palates which have
+a distaste even for Amontillado, so I suppose there may be teetotal
+souls which relish not even the very best brands of humanity. Excuse me,
+but it just occurs to me that you, my dear fellow, possibly lead a
+solitary life."
+
+"Solitary?" starting as at a touch of divination.
+
+"Yes: in a solitary life one insensibly contracts oddities,--talking to
+one's self now."
+
+"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"
+
+"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without
+much reproach to the hearer."
+
+"You are an eaves-dropper."
+
+"Well. Be it so."
+
+"Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?"
+
+"I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing by, caught a
+word or two, and, by like chance, something previous of your chat with
+the Intelligence-office man;--a rather sensible fellow, by the way; much
+of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake, he were of my style of
+dress. Grief to good minds, to see a man of superior sense forced to
+hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.--Well, from what
+little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable
+philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have
+observed--excuse me--to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness,
+of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix
+in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a
+good time. Life is a pic-nic _en costume_; one must take a part, assume
+a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
+plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a
+discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold
+water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated
+ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
+confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
+soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
+Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
+beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."
+
+"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
+for?"
+
+"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
+story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
+wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
+might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
+green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
+into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
+her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
+after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
+husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured?' 'Indeed I do.'
+'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
+drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
+can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
+doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
+the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
+woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
+famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
+experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
+herself a cup too low."
+
+This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
+though hardly into approval.
+
+"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
+churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
+unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
+view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
+though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
+jug."
+
+"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
+see; you go in for the lofty."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
+story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
+sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
+leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
+philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
+be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
+humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
+is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
+one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
+one, or the one that has the pip."
+
+"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.
+
+"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
+race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."
+
+"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.
+
+"And what race may _you_ belong to? now don't you see, my dear fellow,
+in what inconsistencies one involves himself by affecting disesteem for
+men. To a charm, my little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
+of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude. I fear, by
+the way, you have at some time been reading Zimmermann, that old Mr.
+Megrims of a Zimmermann, whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume's on
+Suicide, as Bacon's on Knowledge; and, like these, will betray him who
+seeks to steer soul and body by it, like a false religion. All they, be
+they what boasted ones you please, who, to the yearning of our kind
+after a founded rule of content, offer aught not in the spirit of
+fellowly gladness based on due confidence in what is above, away with
+them for poor dupes, or still poorer impostors."
+
+His manner here was so earnest that scarcely any auditor, perhaps, but
+would have been more or less impressed by it, while, possibly, nervous
+opponents might have a little quailed under it. Thinking within himself
+a moment, the bachelor replied: "Had you experience, you would know that
+your tippling theory, take it in what sense you will, is poor as any
+other. And Rabelais's pro-wine Koran no more trustworthy than Mahomet's
+anti-wine one."
+
+"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and
+keep talking, and still stand where we did. What do you say for a walk?
+My arm, and let's a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck
+to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to save the
+pieces, you hold my loose change; and following that, I propose that
+you, my dear fellow, stack your gun, and throw your bearskins in a
+sailor's hornpipe--I holding your watch. What do you say?"
+
+At this proposition the other was himself again, all raccoon.
+
+"Look you," thumping down his rifle, "are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?"
+
+"Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor
+the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted
+with."
+
+"You are his confidential clerk, ain't you?"
+
+"_Whose_, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in,
+but I don't understand."
+
+"You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary
+metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that
+herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that
+come after him."
+
+"Herb-doctor? who is he?"
+
+"Like you--another of them."
+
+"_Who?_" Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his
+left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a
+ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter
+into a little argument and----"
+
+"No you don't. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little
+arguments to-day."
+
+"But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading
+a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions
+touching strangers?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the
+controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look,
+you----"
+
+"Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for
+double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say
+what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society
+in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace
+it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny."
+
+Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into
+the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening
+world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
+corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for
+disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through
+lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of
+man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.
+
+"Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could
+abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony,
+and Satire, his bosom friend."
+
+"A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his
+rifle-lock.
+
+"Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous. But, no, no, you didn't
+mean it; any way, I can make allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how
+much pleasanter to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
+fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your worldling, glutton,
+and coquette, though, doubtless, being such, they may have their little
+foibles--as who has not?--yet not one of the three can be reproached
+with that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for not seldom
+it presupposes a still darker thing than itself--remorse."
+
+"Remorse drives man away from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain,
+after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it
+that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?
+
+"My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you will, I for one must have
+my fellow-creatures round me. Thick, too--I must have them thick."
+
+"The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures round him.
+Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd but for his end; and the end of too
+many is the same as the pick-pocket's--a purse."
+
+"Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience to say that, when
+it is as much according to natural law that men are social as sheep
+gregarious. But grant that, in being social, each man has his end, do
+you, upon the strength of that, do you yourself, I say, mix with man,
+now, immediately, and be your end a more genial philosophy. Come, let's
+take a turn."
+
+Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor once more flung it
+off, and, raising his rifle in energetic invocation, cried: "Now the
+high-constable catch and confound all knaves in towns and rats in
+grain-bins, and if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the
+time, any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin him, thou
+high rat-catcher, against this rail."
+
+"A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And when a card's that,
+little matters it whether it be spade or diamond. You are good wine
+that, to be still better, only needs a shaking up. Come, let's agree
+that we'll to New Orleans, and there embark for London--I staying with
+my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting up at the Piazza, Covent
+Garden--Piazza, Covent Garden; for tell me--since you will not be a
+disciple to the full--tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes, which
+led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market, better than that
+of the less wise Athenian, which made him a skulking scare-crow in
+pine-barrens? An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon."
+
+"Your hand!" seizing it.
+
+"Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we shall be brothers,
+then?"
+
+"As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be," with another and
+terrific squeeze. "I had thought that the moderns had degenerated
+beneath the capacity of misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one
+instance, and that disguised, to be undeceived."
+
+The other stared in blank amaze.
+
+"Won't do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise. I say--Diogenes
+masquerading as a cosmopolitan."
+
+With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute awhile. At
+length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who,
+in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he
+but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change
+of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I
+came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for
+your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate
+accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
+but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
+"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
+men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
+See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
+beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
+I stark and stiff!"
+
+With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
+come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
+sapient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
+with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
+stranger.
+
+"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
+Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
+Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
+Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
+should think."
+
+It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
+deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
+vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
+speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
+scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.
+
+A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
+fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
+less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
+beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
+the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
+reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
+sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
+habit.
+
+But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
+unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
+not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
+curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
+contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
+saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
+thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
+fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
+were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might have hinted that
+they were too good to be true; or rather, were not so good as they might
+be; since the best false teeth are those made with at least two or three
+blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately for better
+constructions, no such critics had the stranger now in eye; only the
+cosmopolitan, who, after, in the first place, acknowledging his advances
+with a mute salute--in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
+spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably
+because of the saddening sequel of that late interview--thus now
+replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly;
+"that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he
+anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock Hall, Northamptonshire,
+England?"
+
+"I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall than of the Burdocks
+of Burdock Hut," returned the other, with the air somehow of one whose
+fortunes had been of his own making; "all I know is, that the late
+Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time; eye like Lochiel's;
+finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount's; and with but two little
+oddities--seldom stirred without his rifle, and hated Indians like
+snakes."
+
+"Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of Misanthrope Hall--the
+Woods. No very sleek creature, the colonel, I fancy."
+
+"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly
+headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians--how the
+late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians,
+to be sure!"
+
+"Never heard of such a thing. Hate Indians? Why should he or anybody
+else hate Indians? _I_ admire Indians. Indians I have always heard to be
+one of the finest of the primitive races, possessed of many heroic
+virtues. Some noble women, too. When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready
+to love Indians. Then there's Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and
+Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan--all heroes; and there's the Five
+Nations, and Araucanians--federations and communities of heroes. God
+bless me; hate Indians? Surely the late Colonel John Moredock must have
+wandered in his mind."
+
+"Wandered in the woods considerably, but never wandered elsewhere, that
+I ever heard."
+
+"Are you in earnest? Was there ever one who so made it his particular
+mission to hate Indians that, to designate him, a special word has been
+coined--Indian-hater?"
+
+"Even so."
+
+"Dear me, you take it very calmly.--But really, I would like to know
+something about this Indian-hating, I can hardly believe such a thing to
+be. Could you favor me with a little history of the extraordinary man
+you mentioned?"
+
+"With all my heart," and immediately stepping from the porch, gestured
+the cosmopolitan to a settee near by, on deck. "There, sir, sit you
+there, and I will sit here beside you--you desire to hear of Colonel
+John Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with a white
+stone--the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached, hanging
+in a cabin on the West bank of the Wabash river. I was going westward a
+long journey through the wilderness with my father. It was nigh noon,
+and we had stopped at the cabin to unsaddle and bait. The man at the
+cabin pointed out the rifle, and told whose it was, adding that the
+colonel was that moment sleeping on wolf-skins in the corn-loft above,
+so we must not talk very loud, for the colonel had been out all night
+hunting (Indians, mind), and it would be cruel to disturb his sleep.
+Curious to see one so famous, we waited two hours over, in hopes he
+would come forth; but he did not. So, it being necessary to get to the
+next cabin before nightfall, we had at last to ride off without the
+wished-for satisfaction. Though, to tell the truth, I, for one, did not
+go away entirely ungratified, for, while my father was watering the
+horses, I slipped back into the cabin, and stepping a round or two up
+the ladder, pushed my head through the trap, and peered about. Not much
+light in the loft; but off, in the further corner, I saw what I took to
+be the wolf-skins, and on them a bundle of something, like a drift of
+leaves; and at one end, what seemed a moss-ball; and over it,
+deer-antlers branched; and close by, a small squirrel sprang out from a
+maple-bowl of nuts, brushed the moss-ball with his tail, through a hole,
+and vanished, squeaking. That bit of woodland scene was all I saw. No
+Colonel Moredock there, unless that moss-ball was his curly head, seen
+in the back view. I would have gone clear up, but the man below had
+warned me, that though, from his camping habits, the colonel could sleep
+through thunder, he was for the same cause amazing quick to waken at the
+sound of footsteps, however soft, and especially if human."
+
+"Excuse me," said the other, softly laying his hand on the narrator's
+wrist, "but I fear the colonel was of a distrustful nature--little or no
+confidence. He _was_ a little suspicious-minded, wasn't he?"
+
+"Not a bit. Knew too much. Suspected nobody, but was not ignorant of
+Indians. Well: though, as you may gather, I never fully saw the man,
+yet, have I, one way and another, heard about as much of him as any
+other; in particular, have I heard his history again and again from my
+father's friend, James Hall, the judge, you know. In every company being
+called upon to give this history, which none could better do, the judge
+at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke
+less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking
+for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an
+equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you
+the judge upon the colonel almost word for word."
+
+"Do so, by all means," said the cosmopolitan, well pleased.
+
+"Shall I give you the judge's philosophy, and all?"
+
+"As to that," rejoined the other gravely, pausing over the pipe-bowl he
+was filling, "the desirableness, to a man of a certain mind, of having
+another man's philosophy given, depends considerably upon what school of
+philosophy that other man belongs to. Of what school or system was the
+judge, pray?"
+
+"Why, though he knew how to read and write, the judge never had much
+schooling. But, I should say he belonged, if anything, to the
+free-school system. Yes, a true patriot, the judge went in strong for
+free-schools."
+
+"In philosophy? The man of a certain mind, then, while respecting the
+judge's patriotism, and not blind to the judge's capacity for narrative,
+such as he may prove to have, might, perhaps, with prudence, waive an
+opinion of the judge's probable philosophy. But I am no rigorist;
+proceed, I beg; his philosophy or not, as you please."
+
+"Well, I would mostly skip that part, only, to begin, some
+reconnoitering of the ground in a philosophical way the judge always
+deemed indispensable with strangers. For you must know that
+Indian-hating was no monopoly of Colonel Moredock's; but a passion, in
+one form or other, and to a degree, greater or less, largely shared
+among the class to which he belonged. And Indian-hating still exists;
+and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do.
+Indian-hating, then, shall be my first theme, and Colonel Moredock, the
+Indian-hater, my next and last."
+
+With which the stranger, settling himself in his seat, commenced--the
+hearer paying marked regard, slowly smoking, his glance, meanwhile,
+steadfastly abstracted towards the deck, but his right ear so disposed
+towards the speaker that each word came through as little atmospheric
+intervention as possible. To intensify the sense of hearing, he seemed
+to sink the sense of sight. No complaisance of mere speech could have
+been so flattering, or expressed such striking politeness as this mute
+eloquence of thoroughly digesting attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CONTAINING THE METAPHYSICS OF INDIAN-HATING, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF
+ONE EVIDENTLY NOT SO PREPOSSESSED AS ROUSSEAU IN FAVOR OF SAVAGES.
+
+
+"The judge always began in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of
+the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the
+frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian
+rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once prevailed, the
+philanthropist is surprised that Indian-hating has not in like degree
+ceased with it. He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the red
+man in much the same spirit that a jury does a murderer, or a trapper a
+wild cat--a creature, in whose behalf mercy were not wisdom; truce is
+vain; he must be executed.
+
+"'A curious point,' the judge would continue, 'which perhaps not
+everybody, even upon explanation, may fully understand; while, in order
+for any one to approach to an understanding, it is necessary for him to
+learn, or if he already know, to bear in mind, what manner of man the
+backwoodsman is; as for what manner of man the Indian is, many know,
+either from history or experience.
+
+"'The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a man
+strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call
+unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less
+hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to
+see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he
+must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence
+self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it
+stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in
+following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines
+such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum.
+To these fellow-beings of the wilds their untutored sagacity is their
+best dependence. If with either it prove faulty, if the 'possum's betray
+it to the trap, or the backwoodsman's mislead him into ambuscade, there
+are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame. As with the
+'possum, instincts prevail with the backwoodsman over precepts. Like the
+'possum, the backwoodsman presents the spectacle of a creature dwelling
+exclusively among the works of God, yet these, truth must confess, breed
+little in him of a godly mind. Small bowing and scraping is his, further
+than when with bent knee he points his rifle, or picks its flint. With
+few companions, solitude by necessity his lengthened lot, he stands the
+trial--no slight one, since, next to dying, solitude, rightly borne, is
+perhaps of fortitude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
+backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases is anxious to be
+so. The sight of smoke ten miles off is provocation to one more remove
+from man, one step deeper into nature. Is it that he feels that whatever
+man may be, man is not the universe? that glory, beauty, kindness, are
+not all engrossed by him? that as the presence of man frights birds
+away, so, many bird-like thoughts? Be that how it will, the backwoodsman
+is not without some fineness to his nature. Hairy Orson as he looks, it
+may be with him as with the Shetland seal--beneath the bristles lurks
+the fur.
+
+"'Though held in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to
+America what Alexander was to Asia--captain in the vanguard of
+conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or
+power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to
+those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship.
+Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in
+Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted
+legions, marched so through the elements, day after day. The tide of
+emigration, let it roll as it will, never overwhelms the backwoodsman
+into itself; he rides upon advance, as the Polynesian upon the comb of
+the surf.
+
+"'Thus, though he keep moving on through life, he maintains with respect
+to nature much the same unaltered relation throughout; with her
+creatures, too, including panthers and Indians. Hence, it is not
+unlikely that, accurate as the theory of the Peace Congress may be with
+respect to those two varieties of beings, among others, yet the
+backwoodsman might be qualified to throw out some practical suggestions.
+
+"'As the child born to a backwoodsman must in turn lead his father's
+life--a life which, as related to humanity, is related mainly to
+Indians--it is thought best not to mince matters, out of delicacy; but
+to tell the boy pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must
+expect from him. For however charitable it may be to view Indians as
+members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one
+ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their
+lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel.
+At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which
+backwoods' education is based. Accordingly, if in youth the backwoodsman
+incline to knowledge, as is generally the case, he hears little from his
+schoolmasters, the old chroniclers of the forest, but histories of
+Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing, Indian fraud and
+perfidy, Indian want of conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian
+diabolism--histories which, though of wild woods, are almost as full of
+things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the Annals of Europe. In
+these Indian narratives and traditions the lad is thoroughly grounded.
+"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The instinct of antipathy
+against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and
+bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother is to be
+loved, and an Indian to be hated.
+
+"'Such are the facts,' the judge would say, 'upon which, if one seek to
+moralize, he must do so with an eye to them. It is terrible that one
+creature should so regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an
+entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising? Surprising, that one
+should hate a race which he believes to be red from a cause akin to that
+which makes some tribes of garden insects green? A race whose name is
+upon the frontier a _memento mori_; painted to him in every evil light;
+now a horse-thief like those in Moyamensing; now an assassin like a New
+York rowdy; now a treaty-breaker like an Austrian; now a Palmer with
+poisoned arrows; now a judicial murderer and Jeffries, after a fierce
+farce of trial condemning his victim to bloody death; or a Jew with
+hospitable speeches cozening some fainting stranger into ambuscade,
+there to burk him, and account it a deed grateful to Manitou, his god.
+
+"'Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians than as
+examples of the backwoodsman's impression of them--in which the
+charitable may think he does them some injustice. Certain it is, the
+Indians themselves think so; quite unanimously, too. The Indians, in
+deed, protest against the backwoodsman's view of them; and some think
+that one cause of their returning his antipathy so sincerely as they do,
+is their moral indignation at being so libeled by him, as they really
+believe and say. But whether, on this or any point, the Indians should
+be permitted to testify for themselves, to the exclusion of other
+testimony, is a question that may be left to the Supreme Court. At any
+rate, it has been observed that when an Indian becomes a genuine
+proselyte to Christianity (such cases, however, not being very many;
+though, indeed, entire tribes are sometimes nominally brought to the
+true light,) he will not in that case conceal his enlightened
+conviction, that his race's portion by nature is total depravity; and,
+in that way, as much as admits that the backwoodsman's worst idea of it
+is not very far from true; while, on the other hand, those red men who
+are the greatest sticklers for the theory of Indian virtue, and Indian
+loving-kindness, are sometimes the arrantest horse-thieves and
+tomahawkers among them. So, at least, avers the backwoodsman. And
+though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he does, he fancies he
+is not ignorant that an Indian may in some points deceive himself almost
+as effectually as in bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and his
+practice as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency so
+extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it on the supposition
+that when a tomahawking red-man advances the notion of the benignity of
+the red race, it is but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which
+he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general conduct of life.'
+
+"In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with which the
+backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge used to think it might
+perhaps a little help, to consider what kind of stimulus to it is
+furnished in those forest histories and traditions before spoken of. In
+which behalf, he would tell the story of the little colony of Wrights
+and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia, who, after
+successive removals with their families, at last established themselves
+near the southern frontier of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: 'They were
+strong, brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those days,
+theirs was no love of conflict for conflict's sake. Step by step they
+had been lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
+seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
+during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
+built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
+persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
+tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
+cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
+spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
+cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
+Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
+enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
+first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
+hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
+on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
+the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
+renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.
+
+"'But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly blind them to what the
+chief had been; so that, though in no small degree influenced by his
+change of bearing, they still distrusted him enough to covenant with
+him, among other articles on their side, that though friendly visits
+should be exchanged between the wigwams and the cabins, yet the five
+cousins should never, on any account, be expected to enter the chief's
+lodge together. The intention was, though they reserved it, that if
+ever, under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them mischief, and
+effect it, it should be but partially; so that some of the five might
+survive, not only for their families' sake, but also for retribution's.
+Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
+carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a
+feast of bear's meat, and there, by stratagem, ended them. Years after,
+over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief,
+reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
+jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant
+first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting
+Mocmohoc."'
+
+"At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his hand, and rolling
+his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough voice, 'Circling wiles and bloody
+lusts. The acuteness and genius of the chief but make him the more
+atrocious.'
+
+"After another pause, he would begin an imaginary kind of dialogue
+between a backwoodsman and a questioner:
+
+"'But are all Indians like Mocmohoc?--Not all have proved such; but in
+the least harmful may lie his germ. There is an Indian nature. "Indian
+blood is in me," is the half-breed's threat.--But are not some Indians
+kind?--Yes, but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed simple--at
+all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the red men being taken from
+the active, and those accounted wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind
+Indians have but proportionate influence. And kind Indians may be forced
+to do unkind biddings. So "beware the Indian, kind or unkind," said
+Daniel Boone, who lost his sons by them.--But, have all you backwoodsmen
+been some way victimized by Indians?--No.--Well, and in certain cases
+may not at least some few of you be favored by them?--Yes, but scarce
+one among us so self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his
+personal exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off against the
+contrary experience of so many others, as that he must needs, in a
+general way, think well of Indians; or, if he do, an arrow in his flank
+might suggest a pertinent doubt.
+
+"'In short,' according to the judge, 'if we at all credit the
+backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be taken aright, must be
+considered as being not so much on his own account as on others', or
+jointly on both accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some
+member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed or scalped. What
+avails, then, that some one Indian, or some two or three, treat a
+backwoodsman friendly-like? He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from
+me, give him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how know I what
+involuntary preparations may be going on in him for things as unbeknown
+in present time to him as me--a sort of chemical preparation in the
+soul for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for malady.'
+
+"Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words, you see, but the judge
+found him expression for his meaning. And this point he would conclude
+with saying, that, 'what is called a "friendly Indian" is a very rare
+sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness exceeds that
+of a "friendly Indian" turned enemy. A coward friend, he makes a valiant
+foe.
+
+"'But, thus far the passion in question has been viewed in a general way
+as that of a community. When to his due share of this the backwoodsman
+adds his private passion, we have then the stock out of which is formed,
+if formed at all, the Indian-hater _par excellence_.'
+
+"The Indian-hater _par excellence_ the judge defined to be one 'who,
+having with his mother's milk drank in small love for red men, in youth
+or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at
+their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same,
+some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her
+solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly
+does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as
+straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling
+thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus thought, assimilate with
+it, and swell it. At last, taking counsel with the elements, he comes to
+his resolution. An intenser Hannibal, he makes a vow, the hate of which
+is a vortex from whose suction scarce the remotest chip of the guilty
+race may reasonably feel secure. Next, he declares himself and settles
+his temporal affairs. With the solemnity of a Spaniard turned monk, he
+takes leave of his kin; or rather, these leave-takings have something of
+the still more impressive finality of death-bed adieus. Last, he commits
+himself to the forest primeval; there, so long as life shall be his, to
+act upon a calm, cloistered scheme of strategical, implacable, and
+lonesome vengeance. Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected,
+patient; less seen than felt; snuffing, smelling--a Leather-stocking
+Nemesis. In the settlements he will not be seen again; in eyes of old
+companions tears may start at some chance thing that speaks of him; but
+they never look for him, nor call; they know he will not come. Suns and
+seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap
+in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-hater is good as gone to his
+long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph.'
+
+"Here the judge, not unaffected, would pause again, but presently
+resume: 'How evident that in strict speech there can be no biography of
+an Indian-hater _par excellence_, any more than one of a sword-fish, or
+other deep-sea denizen; or, which is still less imaginable, one of a
+dead man. The career of the Indian-hater _par excellence_ has the
+impenetrability of the fate of a lost steamer. Doubtless, events,
+terrible ones, have happened, must have happened; but the powers that be
+in nature have taken order that they shall never become news.
+
+"'But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
+Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft
+enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail;
+a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too,
+though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green harbor
+which he does not forget. It is with him as with the Papist converts in
+Senegal; fasting and mortification prove hard to bear.'
+
+"The judge, with his usual judgment, always thought that the intense
+solitude to which the Indian-hater consigns himself, has, by its
+overawing influence, no little to do with relaxing his vow. He would
+relate instances where, after some months' lonely scoutings, the
+Indian-hater is suddenly seized with a sort of calenture; hurries openly
+towards the first smoke, though he knows it is an Indian's, announces
+himself as a lost hunter, gives the savage his rifle, throws himself
+upon his charity, embraces him with much affection, imploring the
+privilege of living a while in his sweet companionship. What is too
+often the sequel of so distempered a procedure may be best known by
+those who best know the Indian. Upon the whole, the judge, by two and
+thirty good and sufficient reasons, would maintain that there was no
+known vocation whose consistent following calls for such
+self-containings as that of the Indian-hater _par excellence_. In the
+highest view, he considered such a soul one peeping out but once an age.
+
+"For the diluted Indian-hater, although the vacations he permits himself
+impair the keeping of the character, yet, it should not be overlooked
+that this is the man who, by his very infirmity, enables us to form
+surmises, however inadequate, of what Indian-hating in its perfection
+is."
+
+"One moment," gently interrupted the cosmopolitan here, "and let me
+refill my calumet."
+
+Which being done, the other proceeded:--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+SOME ACCOUNT OF A MAN OF QUESTIONABLE MORALITY, BUT WHO, NEVERTHELESS,
+WOULD SEEM ENTITLED TO THE ESTEEM OF THAT EMINENT ENGLISH MORALIST WHO
+SAID HE LIKED A GOOD HATER.
+
+
+"Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus far said was but the
+introduction, the judge, who, like you, was a great smoker, would insist
+upon all the company taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one
+himself, rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice,
+say--'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'
+when, after several whiffs taken standing in deep silence and deeper
+reverie, he would resume his seat and his discourse, something in these
+words:
+
+"'Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater _par excellence_,
+he yet cherished a kind of sentiment towards the red man, and in that
+degree, and so acted out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the
+tribute just rendered to his memory.
+
+"'John Moredock was the son of a woman married thrice, and thrice
+widowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had
+been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
+wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last
+found herself at a little clearing, afterwards Vincennes. There she
+joined a company about to remove to the new country of Illinois. On the
+eastern side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on the west
+side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were, near the mouth of the
+Kaskaskia, some old hamlets of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets,
+very innocent and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's party
+was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines, they meant to settle.
+They embarked upon the Wabash in boats, proposing descending that stream
+into the Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
+towards the point to be reached. All went well till they made the rock
+of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where they had to land and drag
+their boats round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party of
+Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered nearly all of them. The
+widow was among the victims with her children, John excepted, who, some
+fifty miles distant, was following with a second party.
+
+"He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left in nature sole
+survivor of his race. Other youngsters might have turned mourners; he
+turned avenger. His nerves were electric wires--sensitive, but steel. He
+was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither to flush nor
+pale. It is said that when the tidings were brought him, he was ashore
+sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison--and as the
+tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but
+slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as
+if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his
+intent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms,
+prevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to
+discover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a
+band of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even among
+Indians, and who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew. No
+opportunity for action being at the time presented, he dismissed his
+friends; told them to go on, thanking them, and saying he would ask
+their aid at some future day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds,
+he watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable chance having
+occurred--it being midwinter, and the savages encamped, apparently to
+remain so--he anew mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,
+getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in such panic that
+everything was left behind but their weapons. During the winter, much
+the same thing happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next year he
+sought them at the head of a party pledged to serve him for forty days.
+At last the hour came. It was on the shore of the Mississippi. From
+their covert, Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains in
+the red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled island in
+mid-stream, there the more securely to lodge; for Moredock's retributive
+spirit in the wilderness spoke ever to their trepidations now, like the
+voice calling through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the
+whites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden with their arms.
+On landing, Moredock cut the fastenings of the enemy's canoes, and
+turned them, with his own raft, adrift; resolved that there should be
+neither escape for the Indians, nor safety, except in victory, for the
+whites. Victorious the whites were; but three of the Indians saved
+themselves by taking to the stream. Moredock's band lost not a man.
+
+"'Three of the murderers survived. He knew their names and persons. In
+the course of three years each successively fell by his own hand. All
+were now dead. But this did not suffice. He made no avowal, but to kill
+Indians had become his passion. As an athlete, he had few equals; as a
+shot, none; in single combat, not to be beaten. Master of that
+woodland-cunning enabling the adept to subsist where the tyro would
+perish, and expert in all those arts by which an enemy is pursued for
+weeks, perhaps months, without once suspecting it, he kept to the
+forest. The solitary Indian that met him, died. When a murder was
+descried, he would either secretly pursue their track for some chance to
+strike at least one blow; or if, while thus engaged, he himself was
+discovered, he would elude them by superior skill.
+
+"'Many years he spent thus; and though after a time he was, in a degree,
+restored to the ordinary life of the region and period, yet it is
+believed that John Moredock never let pass an opportunity of quenching
+an Indian. Sins of commission in that kind may have been his, but none
+of omission.
+
+"'It were to err to suppose,' the judge would say, 'that this gentleman
+was naturally ferocious, or peculiarly possessed of those qualities,
+which, unhelped by provocation of events, tend to withdraw man from
+social life. On the contrary, Moredock was an example of something
+apparently self-contradicting, certainly curious, but, at the same time,
+undeniable: namely, that nearly all Indian-haters have at bottom loving
+hearts; at any rate, hearts, if anything, more generous than the
+average. Certain it is, that, to the degree in which he mingled in the
+life of the settlements, Moredock showed himself not without humane
+feelings. No cold husband or colder father, he; and, though often and
+long away from his household, bore its needs in mind, and provided for
+them. He could be very convivial; told a good story (though never of his
+more private exploits), and sung a capital song. Hospitable, not
+backward to help a neighbor; by report, benevolent, as retributive, in
+secret; while, in a general manner, though sometimes grave--as is not
+unusual with men of his complexion, a sultry and tragical brown--yet
+with nobody, Indians excepted, otherwise than courteous in a manly
+fashion; a moccasined gentleman, admired and loved. In fact, no one more
+popular, as an incident to follow may prove.
+
+"'His bravery, whether in Indian fight or any other, was unquestionable.
+An officer in the ranging service during the war of 1812, he acquitted
+himself with more than credit. Of his soldierly character, this anecdote
+is told: Not long after Hull's dubious surrender at Detroit, Moredock
+with some of his rangers rode up at night to a log-house, there to rest
+till morning. The horses being attended to, supper over, and
+sleeping-places assigned the troop, the host showed the colonel his
+best bed, not on the ground like the rest, but a bed that stood on legs.
+But out of delicacy, the guest declined to monopolize it, or, indeed, to
+occupy it at all; when, to increase the inducement, as the host thought,
+he was told that a general officer had once slept in that bed. "Who,
+pray?" asked the colonel. "General Hull." "Then you must not take
+offense," said the colonel, buttoning up his coat, "but, really, no
+coward's bed, for me, however comfortable." Accordingly he took up with
+valor's bed--a cold one on the ground.
+
+"'At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial council of
+Illinois, and at the formation of the state government, was pressed to
+become candidate for governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he
+declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those who best knew
+him the cause was not wholly unsurmised. In his official capacity he
+might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes,
+a thing not to be thought of. And even did no such contingecy arise, yet
+he felt there would be an impropriety in the Governor of Illinois
+stealing out now and then, during a recess of the legislative bodies,
+for a few days' shooting at human beings, within the limits of his
+paternal chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large honors,
+from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These were incompatibles.
+In short, he was not unaware that to be a consistent Indian-hater
+involves the renunciation of ambition, with its objects--the pomps and
+glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing such things
+vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them, therefore, so far as this
+goes, Indian-hating, whatever may be thought of it in other respects,
+may be regarded as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout
+sentiment.'"
+
+Here the narrator paused. Then, after his long and irksome sitting,
+started to his feet, and regulating his disordered shirt-frill, and at
+the same time adjustingly shaking his legs down in his rumpled
+pantaloons, concluded: "There, I have done; having given you, not my
+story, mind, or my thoughts, but another's. And now, for your friend
+Coonskins, I doubt not, that, if the judge were here, he would pronounce
+him a sort of comprehensive Colonel Moredock, who, too much spreading
+his passion, shallows it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
+
+
+"Charity, charity!" exclaimed the cosmopolitan, "never a sound judgment
+without charity. When man judges man, charity is less a bounty from our
+mercy than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of human
+fallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should be what you
+hint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly. His outside deceived you;
+at first it came near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,
+owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself a little open;
+I seized that lucky chance, I say, to inspect his heart, and found it an
+inviting oyster in a forbidding shell. His outside is but put on.
+Ashamed of his own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange old
+uncles in romances do their nephews--snapping at them all the time and
+yet loving them as the apple of their eye."
+
+"Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is not what I took him
+for. Yes, for aught I know, you may be right."
+
+"Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only
+for its being graceful. And now, since you have renounced your notion,
+I should be happy, would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too.
+That, story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder. To me
+some parts don't hang together. If the man of hate, how could John
+Moredock be also the man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulous
+as Hercules'; or else, those being true, what was thrown in about his
+geniality is but garnish. In short, if ever there was such a man as
+Moredock, he, in my way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;
+and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused on one race of
+men. Though, like suicide, man-hatred would seem peculiarly a Roman and
+a Grecian passion--that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome nor
+Greece can produce the equal in man-hatred of Colonel Moredock, as the
+judge and you have painted him. As for this Indian-hating in general, I
+can only say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbon
+earthquake: 'Sir, I don't believe it.'"
+
+"Didn't believe it? Why not? Clashed with any little prejudice of his?"
+
+"Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain other person,"
+with an ingenuous smile, "he had sensibilities, and those were pained."
+
+"Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn't he?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"Suppose he had been something else."
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake."
+
+"Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?"
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders alleged to have
+been perpetrated under the pall of smoke and ashes. The infidels of the
+time were quick to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,
+while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certain
+cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claims
+to despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it."
+
+"You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity."
+
+"I do not jumble them; they are coordinates. For misanthropy, springing
+from the same root with disbelief of religion, is twin with that. It
+springs from the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and what
+is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a
+ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not,
+or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't you see?
+In either case the vice consists in a want of confidence."
+
+"What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?"
+
+"Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is hydrophobia. Don't know;
+never had it. But I have often wondered what it can be like. Can a
+misanthrope feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable with
+himself? Can a misanthrope smoke a cigar and muse? How fares he in
+solitude? Has the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a peach
+refresh him? The effervescence of champagne, with what eye does he
+behold it? Is summer good to him? Of long winters how much can he
+sleep? What are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, when
+suddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades of thunder?"
+
+"Like you," said the stranger, "I can't understand the misanthrope. So
+far as my experience goes, either mankind is worthy one's best love, or
+else I have been lucky. Never has it been my lot to have been wronged,
+though but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting,
+superciliousness, disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that brood, I know
+but by report. Cold regards tossed over the sinister shoulder of a
+former friend, ingratitude in a beneficiary, treachery in a
+confidant--such things may be; but I must take somebody's word for it.
+Now the bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not praise it?"
+
+"Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so. Man is a noble fellow,
+and in an age of satirists, I am not displeased to find one who has
+confidence in him, and bravely stands up for him."
+
+"Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what is more, am always
+ready to do a good deed for him."
+
+"You are a man after my own heart," responded the cosmopolitan, with a
+candor which lost nothing by its calmness. "Indeed," he added, "our
+sentiments agree so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,
+few but the nicest critics might determine."
+
+"Since we are thus joined in mind," said the stranger, "why not be
+joined in hand?"
+
+"My hand is always at the service of virtue," frankly extending it to
+him as to virtue personified.
+
+"And now," said the stranger, cordially retaining his hand, "you know
+our fashion here at the West. It may be a little low, but it is kind.
+Briefly, we being newly-made friends must drink together. What say you?"
+
+"Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so many old friends, all
+free-hearted, convivial gentlemen, that really, really, though for the
+present I succeed in mastering it, I am at bottom almost in the
+condition of a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, ere
+night reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity than his
+heart."
+
+At the allusion to old friends, the stranger's countenance a little
+fell, as a jealous lover's might at hearing from his sweetheart of
+former ones. But rallying, he said: "No doubt they treated you to
+something strong; but wine--surely, that gentle creature, wine; come,
+let us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables here.
+Come, come." Then essaying to roll about like a full pipe in the sea,
+sang in a voice which had had more of good-fellowship, had there been
+less of a latent squeak to it:
+
+    "Let us drink of the wine of the vine benign,
+    That sparkles warm in Zansovine."
+
+The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood as sorely tempted and
+wavering a moment; then, abruptly stepping towards him, with a look of
+dissolved surrender, said: "When mermaid songs move figure-heads, then
+may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments on me. But a good
+fellow, singing a good song, he woos forth my every spike, so that my
+whole hull, like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with
+acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain sort, it is in
+vain trying to be resolute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE BOON COMPANIONS.
+
+
+The wine, port, being called for, and the two seated at the little
+table, a natural pause of convivial expectancy ensued; the stranger's
+eye turned towards the bar near by, watching the red-cheeked,
+white-aproned man there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly
+arranging the salver and glasses; when, with a sudden impulse turning
+round his head towards his companion, he said, "Ours is friendship at
+first sight, ain't it?"
+
+"It is," was the placidly pleased reply: "and the same may be said of
+friendship at first sight as of love at first sight: it is the only true
+one, the only noble one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding
+his way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by night, into an
+enemy's harbor?"
+
+"Right. Boldly in before the wind. Agreeable, how we always agree.
+By-the-way, though but a formality, friends should know each other's
+names. What is yours, pray?"
+
+"Francis Goodman. But those who love me, call me Frank. And yours?"
+
+"Charles Arnold Noble. But do you call me Charlie."
+
+"I will, Charlie; nothing like preserving in manhood the fraternal
+familiarities of youth. It proves the heart a rosy boy to the last."
+
+"My sentiments again. Ah!"
+
+It was a smiling waiter, with the smiling bottle, the cork drawn; a
+common quart bottle, but for the occasion fitted at bottom into a little
+bark basket, braided with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian
+fashion. This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it with
+affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend
+not to, a handsome red label pasted on the bottle, bearing the capital
+letters, P. W.
+
+"P. W.," said he at last, perplexedly eying the pleasing poser, "now
+what does P. W. mean?"
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said the cosmopolitan gravely, "if it stood for port
+wine. You called for port wine, didn't you?"
+
+"Why so it is, so it is!"
+
+"I find some little mysteries not very hard to clear up," said the
+other, quietly crossing his legs.
+
+This commonplace seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of
+his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a
+strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good
+wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both
+glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air
+of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that
+now-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; that almost every variety on sale
+is less the vintage of vineyards than laboratories; that most
+bar-keepers are but a set of male Brinvilliarses, with complaisant arts
+practicing against the lives of their best friends, their customers."
+
+A shade passed over the cosmopolitan. After a few minutes' down-cast
+musing, he lifted his eyes and said: "I have long thought, my dear
+Charlie, that the spirit in which wine is regarded by too many in these
+days is one of the most painful examples of want of confidence. Look at
+these glasses. He who could mistrust poison in this wine would mistrust
+consumption in Hebe's cheek. While, as for suspicions against the
+dealers in wine and sellers of it, those who cherish such suspicions can
+have but limited trust in the human heart. Each human heart they must
+think to be much like each bottle of port, not such port as this, but
+such port as they hold to. Strange traducers, who see good faith in
+nothing, however sacred. Not medicines, not the wine in sacraments, has
+escaped them. The doctor with his phial, and the priest with his
+chalice, they deem equally the unconscious dispensers of bogus cordials
+to the dying."
+
+"Dreadful!"
+
+"Dreadful indeed," said the cosmopolitan solemnly. "These distrusters
+stab at the very soul of confidence. If this wine," impressively holding
+up his full glass, "if this wine with its bright promise be not true,
+how shall man be, whose promise can be no brighter? But if wine be
+false, while men are true, whither shall fly convivial geniality? To
+think of sincerely-genial souls drinking each other's health at unawares
+in perfidious and murderous drugs!"
+
+"Horrible!"
+
+"Much too much so to be true, Charlie. Let us forget it. Come, you are
+my entertainer on this occasion, and yet you don't pledge me. I have
+been waiting for it."
+
+"Pardon, pardon," half confusedly and half ostentatiously lifting his
+glass. "I pledge you, Frank, with my whole heart, believe me," taking a
+draught too decorous to be large, but which, small though it was, was
+followed by a slight involuntary wryness to the mouth.
+
+"And I return you the pledge, Charlie, heart-warm as it came to me, and
+honest as this wine I drink it in," reciprocated the cosmopolitan with
+princely kindliness in his gesture, taking a generous swallow,
+concluding in a smack, which, though audible, was not so much so as to
+be unpleasing.
+
+"Talking of alleged spuriousness of wines," said he, tranquilly setting
+down his glass, and then sloping back his head and with friendly
+fixedness eying the wine, "perhaps the strangest part of those allegings
+is, that there is, as claimed, a kind of man who, while convinced that
+on this continent most wines are shams, yet still drinks away at them;
+accounting wine so fine a thing, that even the sham article is better
+than none at all. And if the temperance people urge that, by this
+course, he will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers,
+'And do you think I don't know that? But health without cheer I hold a
+bore; and cheer, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am
+willing to pay.'"
+
+"Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably bacchanalian."
+
+"Yes, if such a man there be, which I don't credit. It is a fable, but a
+fable from which I once heard a person of less genius than grotesqueness
+draw a moral even more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that
+it illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition
+ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly associate with men,
+though, at the same time, he believed the greater part of men
+false-hearted--accounting society so sweet a thing that even the
+spurious sort was better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites
+urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in
+security, he answers, 'And do you think I don't know that? But security
+without society I hold a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort,
+has its price, which I am willing to pay.'"
+
+"A most singular theory," said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying
+his companion with some inquisitiveness, "indeed, Frank, a most
+slanderous thought," he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary
+look almost of being personally aggrieved.
+
+"In one sense it merits all you say, and more," rejoined the other with
+wonted mildness, "but, for a kind of drollery in it, charity might,
+perhaps, overlook something of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so
+blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human
+mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are
+clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all
+the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any
+rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of
+beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm--nearly all men
+agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else--and in
+its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world,
+that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man
+capable of a good loud laugh--seem how he may in other things--can
+hardly be a heartless scamp."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale
+pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it
+were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some
+mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and
+curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"I see," said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a
+kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in
+this case accompanied it, "I see; and the way in which it moves you,
+Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of.
+Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so.
+For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a
+sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and
+smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may
+laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!--no no, no no."
+
+"Why Charlie, your explosions illustrate my remarks almost as aptly as
+the chemist's imitation volcano did his lectures. But even if experience
+did not sanction the proverb, that a good laugher cannot be a bad man, I
+should yet feel bound in confidence to believe it, since it is a saying
+current among the people, and I doubt not originated among them, and
+hence _must_ be true; for the voice of the people is the voice of truth.
+Don't you think so?"
+
+"Of course I do. If Truth don't speak through the people, it never
+speaks at all; so I heard one say."
+
+"A true saying. But we stray. The popular notion of humor, considered as
+index to the heart, would seem curiously confirmed by Aristotle--I
+think, in his 'Politics,' (a work, by-the-by, which, however it may be
+viewed upon the whole, yet, from the tenor of certain sections, should
+not, without precaution, be placed in the hands of youth)--who remarks
+that the least lovable men in history seem to have had for humor not
+only a disrelish, but a hatred; and this, in some cases, along with an
+extraordinary dry taste for practical punning. I remember it is related
+of Phalaris, the capricious tyrant of Sicily, that he once caused a poor
+fellow to be beheaded on a horse-block, for no other cause than having a
+horse-laugh."
+
+"Funny Phalaris!"
+
+"Cruel Phalaris!"
+
+As after fire-crackers, there was a pause, both looking downward on the
+table as if mutually struck by the contrast of exclamations, and
+pondering upon its significance, if any. So, at least, it seemed; but on
+one side it might have been otherwise: for presently glancing up, the
+cosmopolitan said: "In the instance of the moral, drolly cynic, drawn
+from the queer bacchanalian fellow we were speaking of, who had his
+reasons for still drinking spurious wine, though knowing it to be
+such--there, I say, we have an example of what is certainly a wicked
+thought, but conceived in humor. I will now give you one of a wicked
+thought conceived in wickedness. You shall compare the two, and answer,
+whether in the one case the sting is not neutralized by the humor, and
+whether in the other the absence of humor does not leave the sting free
+play. I once heard a wit, a mere wit, mind, an irreligious Parisian wit,
+say, with regard to the temperance movement, that none, to their
+personal benefit, joined it sooner than niggards and knaves; because, as
+he affirmed, the one by it saved money and the other made money, as in
+ship-owners cutting off the spirit ration without giving its equivalent,
+and gamblers and all sorts of subtle tricksters sticking to cold water,
+the better to keep a cool head for business."
+
+"A wicked thought, indeed!" cried the stranger, feelingly.
+
+"Yes," leaning over the table on his elbow and genially gesturing at him
+with his forefinger: "yes, and, as I said, you don't remark the sting of
+it?"
+
+"I do, indeed. Most calumnious thought, Frank!"
+
+"No humor in it?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"Well now, Charlie," eying him with moist regard, "let us drink. It
+appears to me you don't drink freely."
+
+"Oh, oh--indeed, indeed--I am not backward there. I protest, a freer
+drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal
+snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it.
+"By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention
+from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital
+thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me so, I got it by heart at
+two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in
+something the same relation to blank verse which that does to rhyme. A
+sort of free-and-easy chant with refrains to it. Shall I recite it?"
+
+"Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to hear," rejoined the
+cosmopolitan, "the more so," he gravely proceeded, "as of late I have
+observed in some quarters a disposition to disparage the press."
+
+"Disparage the press?"
+
+"Even so; some gloomy souls affirming that it is proving with that great
+invention as with brandy or eau-de-vie, which, upon its first discovery,
+was believed by the doctors to be, as its French name implies, a
+panacea--a notion which experience, it may be thought, has not fully
+verified."
+
+"You surprise me, Frank. Are there really those who so decry the press?
+Tell me more. Their reasons."
+
+"Reasons they have none, but affirmations they have many; among other
+things affirming that, while under dynastic despotisms, the press is to
+the people little but an improvisatore, under popular ones it is too apt
+to be their Jack Cade. In fine, these sour sages regard the press in the
+light of a Colt's revolver, pledged to no cause but his in whose chance
+hands it may be; deeming the one invention an improvement upon the pen,
+much akin to what the other is upon the pistol; involving, along with
+the multiplication of the barrel, no consecration of the aim. The term
+'freedom of the press' they consider on a par with _freedom of Colt's
+revolver_. Hence, for truth and the right, they hold, to indulge hopes
+from the one is little more sensible than for Kossuth and Mazzini to
+indulge hopes from the other. Heart-breaking views enough, you think;
+but their refutation is in every true reformer's contempt. Is it not
+so?"
+
+"Without doubt. But go on, go on. I like to hear you," flatteringly
+brimming up his glass for him.
+
+"For one," continued the cosmopolitan, grandly swelling his chest, "I
+hold the press to be neither the people's improvisatore, nor Jack Cade;
+neither their paid fool, nor conceited drudge. I think interest never
+prevails with it over duty. The press still speaks for truth though
+impaled, in the teeth of lies though intrenched. Disdaining for it the
+poor name of cheap diffuser of news, I claim for it the independent
+apostleship of Advancer of Knowledge:--the iron Paul! Paul, I say; for
+not only does the press advance knowledge, but righteousness. In the
+press, as in the sun, resides, my dear Charlie, a dedicated principle of
+beneficent force and light. For the Satanic press, by its coappearance
+with the apostolic, it is no more an aspersion to that, than to the true
+sun is the coappearance of the mock one. For all the baleful-looking
+parhelion, god Apollo dispenses the day. In a word, Charlie, what the
+sovereign of England is titularly, I hold the press to be
+actually--Defender of the Faith!--defender of the faith in the final
+triumph of truth over error, metaphysics over superstition, theory over
+falsehood, machinery over nature, and the good man over the bad. Such
+are my views, which, if stated at some length, you, Charlie, must
+pardon, for it is a theme upon which I cannot speak with cold brevity.
+And now I am impatient for your panegyric, which, I doubt not, will put
+mine to the blush."
+
+"It is rather in the blush-giving vein," smiled the other; "but such as
+it is, Frank, you shall have it."
+
+"Tell me when you are about to begin," said the cosmopolitan, "for, when
+at public dinners the press is toasted, I always drink the toast
+standing, and shall stand while you pronounce the panegyric."
+
+"Very good, Frank; you may stand up now."
+
+He accordingly did so, when the stranger likewise rose, and uplifting
+the ruby wine-flask, began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+OPENING WITH A POETICAL EULOGY OF THE PRESS AND CONTINUING WITH TALK
+INSPIRED BY THE SAME.
+
+
+"'Praise be unto the press, not Faust's, but Noah's; let us extol and
+magnify the press, the true press of Noah, from which breaketh the true
+morning. Praise be unto the press, not the black press but the red; let
+us extol and magnify the press, the red press of Noah, from which cometh
+inspiration. Ye pressmen of the Rhineland and the Rhine, join in with
+all ye who tread out the glad tidings on isle Madeira or Mitylene.--Who
+giveth redness of eyes by making men long to tarry at the fine
+print?--Praise be unto the press, the rosy press of Noah, which giveth
+rosiness of hearts, by making men long to tarry at the rosy wine.--Who
+hath babblings and contentions? Who, without cause, inflicteth wounds?
+Praise be unto the press, the kindly press of Noah, which knitteth
+friends, which fuseth foes.--Who may be bribed?--Who may be
+bound?--Praise be unto the press, the free press of Noah, which will not
+lie for tyrants, but make tyrants speak the truth.--Then praise be unto
+the press, the frank old press of Noah; then let us extol and magnify
+the press, the brave old press of Noah; then let us with roses garland
+and enwreath the press, the grand old press of Noah, from which flow
+streams of knowledge which give man a bliss no more unreal than his
+pain.'"
+
+"You deceived me," smiled the cosmopolitan, as both now resumed their
+seats; "you roguishly took advantage of my simplicity; you archly played
+upon my enthusiasm. But never mind; the offense, if any, was so
+charming, I almost wish you would offend again. As for certain poetic
+left-handers in your panegyric, those I cheerfully concede to the
+indefinite privileges of the poet. Upon the whole, it was quite in the
+lyric style--a style I always admire on account of that spirit of
+Sibyllic confidence and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime
+ingredient. But come," glancing at his companion's glass, "for a lyrist,
+you let the bottle stay with you too long."
+
+"The lyre and the vine forever!" cried the other in his rapture, or what
+seemed such, heedless of the hint, "the vine, the vine! is it not the
+most graceful and bounteous of all growths? And, by its being such, is
+not something meant--divinely meant? As I live, a vine, a Catawba vine,
+shall be planted on my grave!"
+
+"A genial thought; but your glass there."
+
+"Oh, oh," taking a moderate sip, "but you, why don't you drink?"
+
+"You have forgotten, my dear Charlie, what I told you of my previous
+convivialities to-day."
+
+"Oh," cried the other, now in manner quite abandoned to the lyric mood,
+not without contrast to the easy sociability of his companion. "Oh, one
+can't drink too much of good old wine--the genuine, mellow old port.
+Pooh, pooh! drink away."
+
+"Then keep me company."
+
+"Of course," with a flourish, taking another sip--"suppose we have
+cigars. Never mind your pipe there; a pipe is best when alone. I say,
+waiter, bring some cigars--your best."
+
+They were brought in a pretty little bit of western pottery,
+representing some kind of Indian utensil, mummy-colored, set down in a
+mass of tobacco leaves, whose long, green fans, fancifully grouped,
+formed with peeps of red the sides of the receptacle.
+
+Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of pottery, but smaller,
+both globes; one in guise of an apple flushed with red and gold to the
+life, and, through a cleft at top, you saw it was hollow. This was for
+the ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a
+wasp's nest, was the match-box. "There," said the stranger, pushing over
+the cigar-stand, "help yourself, and I will touch you off," taking a
+match. "Nothing like tobacco," he added, when the fumes of the cigar
+began to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, "I will have
+a Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the Catawba vine."
+
+"Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself was good--but you
+don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently--let me fill your glass again. You don't drink."
+
+"Thank you; but no more just now. Fill _your_ glass."
+
+"Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it
+strikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or
+fanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious
+abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron
+boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain
+revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists
+must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the
+cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still,
+after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good
+goads him on to his fierce misery once more--poor eunuch!"
+
+"I agree with you," said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, "but
+you don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was saying about----"
+
+"But _why_ don't you smoke--come. You don't think that tobacco, when in
+league with wine, too much enhances the latter's vinous quality--in
+short, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do
+you?"
+
+"To think that, were treason to good fellowship," was the warm
+disclaimer. "No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in
+my mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't
+smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But
+smoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink. By-the-way, while we
+sit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing,
+your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought
+to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real
+heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind."
+
+"Why," with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, "I thought
+I had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better
+understanding of my eccentric friend."
+
+"Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know.
+In truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance
+things which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had
+with him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West
+here, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less
+to make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles
+sometimes effect great results, I shouldn't wonder, if his history were
+probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias
+to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of
+Polonius to Laertes--advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is
+almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of
+money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small
+retail traders in New England."
+
+"I do hope now, my dear fellow," said the cosmopolitan with an air of
+bland protest, "that, in my presence at least, you will throw out
+nothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans."
+
+"Hey-day and high times indeed," exclaimed the other, nettled, "sons of
+the Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must
+do them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom
+Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies."
+
+"Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius," observed
+the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a
+superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; "how do you
+characterize his advice to Laertes?"
+
+"As false, fatal, and calumnious," exclaimed the other, with a degree of
+ardor befitting one resenting a stigma upon the family escutcheon, "and
+for a father to give his son--monstrous. The case you see is this: The
+son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke
+God's blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams
+him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France,
+with maxims of Italy."
+
+"No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not among other things
+say:--
+
+    'The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+    Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel'?
+
+Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?"
+
+"Yes it is, Frank. Don't you see? Laertes is to take the best of care of
+his friends--his proved friends, on the same principle that a
+wine-corker takes the best of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle
+gets a sharp knock and don't break, he says, 'Ah, I'll keep that
+bottle.' Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular use for it."
+
+"Dear, dear!" appealingly turning in distress, "that--that kind of
+criticism is--is--in fact--it won't do."
+
+"Won't truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with everybody, do but
+consider the tone of the speech. Now I put it to you, Frank; is there
+anything in it hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything
+like 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor?' And, in other points,
+what desire seems most in the father's mind, that his son should cherish
+nobleness for himself, or be on his guard against the contrary thing in
+others? An irreligious warner, Frank--no devout counselor, is Polonius.
+I hate him. Nor can I bear to hear your veterans of the world affirm,
+that he who steers through life by the advice of old Polonius will not
+steer among the breakers."
+
+"No, no--I hope nobody affirms that," rejoined the cosmopolitan, with
+tranquil abandonment; sideways reposing his arm at full length upon the
+table. "I hope nobody affirms that; because, if Polonius' advice be
+taken in your sense, then the recommendation of it by men of experience
+would appear to involve more or less of an unhandsome sort of reflection
+upon human nature. And yet," with a perplexed air, "your suggestions
+have put things in such a strange light to me as in fact a little to
+disturb my previous notions of Polonius and what he says. To be frank,
+by your ingenuity you have unsettled me there, to that degree that were
+it not for our coincidence of opinion in general, I should almost think
+I was now at length beginning to feel the ill effect of an immature
+mind, too much consorting with a mature one, except on the ground of
+first principles in common."
+
+"Really and truly," cried the other with a kind of tickled modesty and
+pleased concern, "mine is an understanding too weak to throw out
+grapnels and hug another to it. I have indeed heard of some great
+scholars in these days, whose boast is less that they have made
+disciples than victims. But for me, had I the power to do such things, I
+have not the heart to desire."
+
+"I believe you, my dear Charlie. And yet, I repeat, by your commentaries
+on Polonius you have, I know not how, unsettled me; so that now I don't
+exactly see how Shakespeare meant the words he puts in Polonius' mouth."
+
+"Some say that he meant them to open people's eyes; but I don't think
+so."
+
+"Open their eyes?" echoed the cosmopolitan, slowly expanding his; "what
+is there in this world for one to open his eyes to? I mean in the sort
+of invidious sense you cite?"
+
+"Well, others say he meant to corrupt people's morals; and still others,
+that he had no express intention at all, but in effect opens their eyes
+and corrupts their morals in one operation. All of which I reject."
+
+"Of course you reject so crude an hypothesis; and yet, to confess, in
+reading Shakespeare in my closet, struck by some passage, I have laid
+down the volume, and said: 'This Shakespeare is a queer man.' At times
+seeming irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There appears
+to be a certain--what shall I call it?--hidden sun, say, about him, at
+once enlightening and mystifying. Now, I should be afraid to say what I
+have sometimes thought that hidden sun might be."
+
+"Do you think it was the true light?" with clandestine geniality again
+filling the other's glass.
+
+"I would prefer to decline answering a categorical question there.
+Shakespeare has got to be a kind of deity. Prudent minds, having certain
+latent thoughts concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of
+lasting probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations, we are
+permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to be adored, not arraigned;
+but, so we do it with humility, we may a little canvass his characters.
+There's his Autolycus now, a fellow that always puzzled me. How is one
+to take Autolycus? A rogue so happy, so lucky, so triumphant, of so
+almost captivatingly vicious a career that a virtuous man reduced to the
+poor-house (were such a contingency conceivable), might almost long to
+change sides with him. And yet, see the words put into his mouth: 'Oh,'
+cries Autolycus, as he comes galloping, gay as a buck, upon the stage,
+'oh,' he laughs, 'oh what a fool is Honesty, and Trust, his sworn
+brother, a very simple gentleman.' Think of that. Trust, that is,
+confidence--that is, the thing in this universe the sacredest--is
+rattlingly pronounced just the simplest. And the scenes in which the
+rogue figures seem purposely devised for verification of his principles.
+Mind, Charlie, I do not say it _is_ so, far from it; but I _do_ say it
+seems so. Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon the
+persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets than picking
+them, more to be made by an expert knave than a bungling beggar; and for
+this reason, as he thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft
+hearts. The devil's drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore
+the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one
+thus wicked and thus happy, my sole consolation is in the fact that no
+such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which
+evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he is, though only a
+poet was his maker. It may be, that in that paper-and-ink investiture of
+his, Autolycus acts more effectively upon mankind than he would in a
+flesh-and-blood one. Can his influence be salutary? True, in Autolycus
+there is humor; but though, according to my principle, humor is in
+general to be held a saving quality, yet the case of Autolycus is an
+exception; because it is his humor which, so to speak, oils his
+mischievousness. The bravadoing mischievousness of Autolycus is slid
+into the world on humor, as a pirate schooner, with colors flying, is
+launched into the sea on greased ways."
+
+"I approve of Autolycus as little as you," said the stranger, who,
+during his companion's commonplaces, had seemed less attentive to them
+than to maturing with in his own mind the original conceptions destined
+to eclipse them. "But I cannot believe that Autolycus, mischievous as he
+must prove upon the stage, can be near so much so as such a character as
+Polonius."
+
+"I don't know about that," bluntly, and yet not impolitely, returned the
+cosmopolitan; "to be sure, accepting your view of the old courtier,
+then if between him and Autolycus you raise the question of
+unprepossessingness, I grant you the latter comes off best. For a moist
+rogue may tickle the midriff, while a dry worldling may but wrinkle the
+spleen."
+
+"But Polonius is not dry," said the other excitedly; "he drules. One
+sees the fly-blown old fop drule and look wise. His vile wisdom is made
+the viler by his vile rheuminess. The bowing and cringing, time-serving
+old sinner--is such an one to give manly precepts to youth? The
+discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state; senile prudence; fatuous
+soullessness! The ribanded old dog is paralytic all down one side, and
+that the side of nobleness. His soul is gone out. Only nature's
+automatonism keeps him on his legs. As with some old trees, the bark
+survives the pith, and will still stand stiffly up, though but to rim
+round punk, so the body of old Polonius has outlived his soul."
+
+"Come, come," said the cosmopolitan with serious air, almost displeased;
+"though I yield to none in admiration of earnestness, yet, I think, even
+earnestness may have limits. To human minds, strong language is always
+more or less distressing. Besides, Polonius is an old man--as I remember
+him upon the stage--with snowy locks. Now charity requires that such a
+figure--think of it how you will--should at least be treated with
+civility. Moreover, old age is ripeness, and I once heard say, 'Better
+ripe than raw.'"
+
+"But not better rotten than raw!" bringing down his hand with energy on
+the table.
+
+"Why, bless me," in mild surprise contemplating his heated comrade, "how
+you fly out against this unfortunate Polonius--a being that never was,
+nor will be. And yet, viewed in a Christian light," he added pensively,
+"I don't know that anger against this man of straw is a whit less wise
+than anger against a man of flesh, Madness, to be mad with anything."
+
+"That may be, or may not be," returned the other, a little testily,
+perhaps; "but I stick to what I said, that it is better to be raw than
+rotten. And what is to be feared on that head, may be known from this:
+that it is with the best of hearts as with the best of pears--a
+dangerous experiment to linger too long upon the scene. This did
+Polonius. Thank fortune, Frank, I am young, every tooth sound in my
+head, and if good wine can keep me where I am, long shall I remain so."
+
+"True," with a smile. "But wine, to do good, must be drunk. You have
+talked much and well, Charlie; but drunk little and indifferently--fill
+up."
+
+"Presently, presently," with a hasty and preoccupied air. "If I remember
+right, Polonius hints as much as that one should, under no
+circumstances, commit the indiscretion of aiding in a pecuniary way an
+unfortunate friend. He drules out some stale stuff about 'loan losing
+both itself and friend,' don't he? But our bottle; is it glued fast?
+Keep it moving, my dear Frank. Good wine, and upon my soul I begin to
+feel it, and through me old Polonius--yes, this wine, I fear, is what
+excites me so against that detestable old dog without a tooth."
+
+Upon this, the cosmopolitan, cigar in mouth, slowly raised the bottle,
+and brought it slowly to the light, looking at it steadfastly, as one
+might at a thermometer in August, to see not how low it was, but how
+high. Then whiffing out a puff, set it down, and said: "Well, Charlie,
+if what wine you have drunk came out of this bottle, in that case I
+should say that if--supposing a case--that if one fellow had an object
+in getting another fellow fuddled, and this fellow to be fuddled was of
+your capacity, the operation would be comparatively inexpensive. What do
+you think, Charlie?"
+
+"Why, I think I don't much admire the supposition," said Charlie, with a
+look of resentment; "it ain't safe, depend upon it, Frank, to venture
+upon too jocose suppositions with one's friends."
+
+"Why, bless you, Frank, my supposition wasn't personal, but general. You
+mustn't be so touchy."
+
+"If I am touchy it is the wine. Sometimes, when I freely drink, it has a
+touchy effect on me, I have observed."
+
+"Freely drink? you haven't drunk the perfect measure of one glass, yet.
+While for me, this must be my fourth or fifth, thanks to your
+importunity; not to speak of all I drank this morning, for old
+acquaintance' sake. Drink, drink; you must drink."
+
+"Oh, I drink while you are talking," laughed the other; "you have not
+noticed it, but I have drunk my share. Have a queer way I learned from a
+sedate old uncle, who used to tip off his glass-unperceived. Do you fill
+up, and my glass, too. There! Now away with that stump, and have a new
+cigar. Good fellowship forever!" again in the lyric mood, "Say, Frank,
+are we not men? I say are we not human? Tell me, were they not human who
+engendered us, as before heaven I believe they shall be whom we shall
+engender? Fill up, up, up, my friend. Let the ruby tide aspire, and all
+ruby aspirations with it! Up, fill up! Be we convivial. And
+conviviality, what is it? The word, I mean; what expresses it? A living
+together. But bats live together, and did you ever hear of convivial
+bats?"
+
+"If I ever did," observed the cosmopolitan, "it has quite slipped my
+recollection."
+
+"But _why_ did you never hear of convivial bats, nor anybody else?
+Because bats, though they live together, live not together genially.
+Bats are not genial souls. But men are; and how delightful to think that
+the word which among men signifies the highest pitch of geniality,
+implies, as indispensable auxiliary, the cheery benediction of the
+bottle. Yes, Frank, to live together in the finest sense, we must drink
+together. And so, what wonder that he who loves not wine, that sober
+wretch has a lean heart--a heart like a wrung-out old bluing-bag, and
+loves not his kind? Out upon him, to the rag-house with him, hang
+him--the ungenial soul!"
+
+"Oh, now, now, can't you be convivial without being censorious? I like
+easy, unexcited conviviality. For the sober man, really, though for my
+part I naturally love a cheerful glass, I will not prescribe my nature
+as the law to other natures. So don't abuse the sober man. Conviviality
+is one good thing, and sobriety is another good thing. So don't be
+one-sided."
+
+"Well, if I am one-sided, it is the wine. Indeed, indeed, I have
+indulged too genially. My excitement upon slight provocation shows it.
+But yours is a stronger head; drink you. By the way, talking of
+geniality, it is much on the increase in these days, ain't it?"
+
+"It is, and I hail the fact. Nothing better attests the advance of the
+humanitarian spirit. In former and less humanitarian ages--the ages of
+amphitheatres and gladiators--geniality was mostly confined to the
+fireside and table. But in our age--the age of joint-stock companies and
+free-and-easies--it is with this precious quality as with precious gold
+in old Peru, which Pizarro found making up the scullion's sauce-pot as
+the Inca's crown. Yes, we golden boys, the moderns, have geniality
+everywhere--a bounty broadcast like noonlight."
+
+"True, true; my sentiments again. Geniality has invaded each department
+and profession. We have genial senators, genial authors, genial
+lecturers, genial doctors, genial clergymen, genial surgeons, and the
+next thing we shall have genial hangmen."
+
+"As to the last-named sort of person," said the cosmopolitan, "I trust
+that the advancing spirit of geniality will at last enable us to
+dispense with him. No murderers--no hangmen. And surely, when the whole
+world shall have been genialized, it will be as out of place to talk of
+murderers, as in a Christianized world to talk of sinners."
+
+"To pursue the thought," said the other, "every blessing is attended
+with some evil, and----"
+
+"Stay," said the cosmopolitan, "that may be better let pass for a loose
+saying, than for hopeful doctrine."
+
+"Well, assuming the saying's truth, it would apply to the future
+supremacy of the genial spirit, since then it will fare with the hangman
+as it did with the weaver when the spinning-jenny whizzed into the
+ascendant. Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch turn his hand
+to? Butchering?"
+
+"That he could turn his hand to it seems probable; but that, under the
+circumstances, it would be appropriate, might in some minds admit of a
+question. For one, I am inclined to think--and I trust it will not be
+held fastidiousness--that it would hardly be suitable to the dignity of
+our nature, that an individual, once employed in attending the last
+hours of human unfortunates, should, that office being extinct, transfer
+himself to the business of attending the last hours of unfortunate
+cattle. I would suggest that the individual turn valet--a vocation to
+which he would, perhaps, appear not wholly inadapted by his familiar
+dexterity about the person. In particular, for giving a finishing tie to
+a gentleman's cravat, I know few who would, in all likelihood, be, from
+previous occupation, better fitted than the professional person in
+question."
+
+"Are you in earnest?" regarding the serene speaker with unaffected
+curiosity; "are you really in earnest?"
+
+"I trust I am never otherwise," was the mildly earnest reply; "but
+talking of the advance of geniality, I am not without hopes that it
+will eventually exert its influence even upon so difficult a subject as
+the misanthrope."
+
+"A genial misanthrope! I thought I had stretched the rope pretty hard in
+talking of genial hangmen. A genial misanthrope is no more conceivable
+than a surly philanthropist."
+
+"True," lightly depositing in an unbroken little cylinder the ashes of
+his cigar, "true, the two you name are well opposed."
+
+"Why, you talk as if there _was_ such a being as a surly
+philanthropist."
+
+"I do. My eccentric friend, whom you call Coonskins, is an example. Does
+he not, as I explained to you, hide under a surly air a philanthropic
+heart? Now, the genial misanthrope, when, in the process of eras, he
+shall turn up, will be the converse of this; under an affable air, he
+will hide a misanthropical heart. In short, the genial misanthrope will
+be a new kind of monster, but still no small improvement upon the
+original one, since, instead of making faces and throwing stones at
+people, like that poor old crazy man, Timon, he will take steps, fiddle
+in hand, and set the tickled world a'dancing. In a word, as the progress
+of Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind,
+much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so,
+thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish
+address, will take on refinement and softness--to so genial a degree,
+indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the
+coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to
+say, some philanthropists of the present time would seem not to be, as
+witness my eccentric friend named before."
+
+"Well," cried the other, a little weary, perhaps, of a speculation so
+abstract, "well, however it may be with the century to come, certainly
+in the century which is, whatever else one may be, he must be genial or
+he is nothing. So fill up, fill up, and be genial!"
+
+"I am trying my best," said the cosmopolitan, still calmly
+companionable. "A moment since, we talked of Pizarro, gold, and Peru; no
+doubt, now, you remember that when the Spaniard first entered Atahalpa's
+treasure-chamber, and saw such profusion of plate stacked up, right and
+left, with the wantonness of old barrels in a brewer's yard, the needy
+fellow felt a twinge of misgiving, of want of confidence, as to the
+genuineness of an opulence so profuse. He went about rapping the shining
+vases with his knuckles. But it was all gold, pure gold, good gold,
+sterling gold, which how cheerfully would have been stamped such at
+Goldsmiths' Hall. And just so those needy minds, which, through their
+own insincerity, having no confidence in mankind, doubt lest the liberal
+geniality of this age be spurious. They are small Pizarros in their
+way--by the very princeliness of men's geniality stunned into distrust
+of it."
+
+"Far be such distrust from you and me, my genial friend," cried the
+other fervently; "fill up, fill up!"
+
+"Well, this all along seems a division of labor," smiled the
+cosmopolitan. "I do about all the drinking, and you do about all--the
+genial. But yours is a nature competent to do that to a large
+population. And now, my friend," with a peculiarly grave air, evidently
+foreshadowing something not unimportant, and very likely of close
+personal interest; "wine, you know, opens the heart, and----"
+
+"Opens it!" with exultation, "it thaws it right out. Every heart is
+ice-bound till wine melt it, and reveal the tender grass and sweet
+herbage budding below, with every dear secret, hidden before like a
+dropped jewel in a snow-bank, lying there unsuspected through winter
+till spring."
+
+"And just in that way, my dear Charlie, is one of my little secrets now
+to be shown forth."
+
+"Ah!" eagerly moving round his chair, "what is it?"
+
+"Be not so impetuous, my dear Charlie. Let me explain. You see,
+naturally, I am a man not overgifted with assurance; in general, I am,
+if anything, diffidently reserved; so, if I shall presently seem
+otherwise, the reason is, that you, by the geniality you have evinced in
+all your talk, and especially the noble way in which, while affirming
+your good opinion of men, you intimated that you never could prove false
+to any man, but most by your indignation at a particularly illiberal
+passage in Polonius' advice--in short, in short," with extreme
+embarrassment, "how shall I express what I mean, unless I add that by
+your whole character you impel me to throw myself upon your nobleness;
+in one word, put confidence in you, a generous confidence?"
+
+"I see, I see," with heightened interest, "something of moment you wish
+to confide. Now, what is it, Frank? Love affair?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"What, then, my _dear_ Frank? Speak--depend upon me to the last. Out
+with it."
+
+"Out it shall come, then," said the cosmopolitan. "I am in want, urgent
+want, of money."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A METAMORPHOSIS MORE SURPRISING THAN ANY IN OVID.
+
+
+"In want of money!" pushing back his chair as from a suddenly-disclosed
+man-trap or crater.
+
+"Yes," naïvely assented the cosmopolitan, "and you are going to loan me
+fifty dollars. I could almost wish I was in need of more, only for your
+sake. Yes, my dear Charlie, for your sake; that you might the better
+prove your noble, kindliness, my dear Charlie."
+
+"None of your dear Charlies," cried the other, springing to his feet,
+and buttoning up his coat, as if hastily to depart upon a long journey.
+
+"Why, why, why?" painfully looking up.
+
+"None of your why, why, whys!" tossing out a foot, "go to the devil,
+sir! Beggar, impostor!--never so deceived in a man in my life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+SHOWING THAT THE AGE OF MAGIC AND MAGICIANS IS NOT YET OVER.
+
+
+While speaking or rather hissing those words, the boon companion
+underwent much such a change as one reads of in fairy-books. Out of old
+materials sprang a new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake.
+
+The cosmopolitan rose, the traces of previous feeling vanished; looked
+steadfastly at his transformed friend a moment, then, taking ten
+half-eagles from his pocket, stooped down, and laid them, one by one, in
+a circle round him; and, retiring a pace, waved his long tasseled pipe
+with the air of a necromancer, an air heightened by his costume,
+accompanying each wave with a solemn murmur of cabalistical words.
+
+Meantime, he within the magic-ring stood suddenly rapt, exhibiting every
+symptom of a successful charm--a turned cheek, a fixed attitude, a
+frozen eye; spellbound, not more by the waving wand than by the ten
+invincible talismans on the floor.
+
+"Reappear, reappear, reappear, oh, my former friend! Replace this
+hideous apparition with thy blest shape, and be the token of thy return
+the words, 'My dear Frank.'"
+
+"My dear Frank," now cried the restored friend, cordially stepping out
+of the ring, with regained self-possession regaining lost identity, "My
+dear Frank, what a funny man you are; full of fun as an egg of meat. How
+could you tell me that absurd story of your being in need? But I relish
+a good joke too well to spoil it by letting on. Of course, I humored the
+thing; and, on my side, put on all the cruel airs you would have me.
+Come, this little episode of fictitious estrangement will but enhance
+the delightful reality. Let us sit down again, and finish our bottle."
+
+"With all my heart," said the cosmopolitan, dropping the necromancer
+with the same facility with which he had assumed it. "Yes," he added,
+soberly picking up the gold pieces, and returning them with a chink to
+his pocket, "yes, I am something of a funny man now and then; while for
+you, Charlie," eying him in tenderness, "what you say about your
+humoring the thing is true enough; never did man second a joke better
+than you did just now. You played your part better than I did mine; you
+played it, Charlie, to the life."
+
+"You see, I once belonged to an amateur play company; that accounts for
+it. But come, fill up, and let's talk of something else."
+
+"Well," acquiesced the cosmopolitan, seating himself, and quietly
+brimming his glass, "what shall we talk about?"
+
+"Oh, anything you please," a sort of nervously accommodating.
+
+"Well, suppose we talk about Charlemont?"
+
+"Charlemont? What's Charlemont? Who's Charlemont?"
+
+"You shall hear, my dear Charlie," answered the cosmopolitan. "I will
+tell you the story of Charlemont, the gentleman-madman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+WHICH MAY PASS FOR WHATEVER IT MAY PROVE TO BE WORTH.
+
+
+But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont, a reply must in
+civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view
+of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics
+appear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like
+your cosmopolitan? And who, it might be returned, did ever dress or act
+like harlequin?
+
+Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real life
+should be exacted by any one, who, by taking up such a work,
+sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn,
+for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any
+one should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, for
+any cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is to
+divert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.
+
+There is another class, and with this class we side, who sit down to a
+work of amusement tolerantly as they sit at a play, and with much the
+same expectations and feelings. They look that fancy shall evoke scenes
+different from those of the same old crowd round the custom-house
+counter, and same old dishes on the boardinghouse table, with characters
+unlike those of the same old acquaintances they meet in the same old way
+every day in the same old street. And as, in real life, the proprieties
+will not allow people to act out themselves with that unreserve
+permitted to the stage; so, in books of fiction, they look not only for
+more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real
+life itself can show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want nature,
+too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed. In this
+way of thinking, the people in a fiction, like the people in a play,
+must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act
+as nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion: it should
+present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
+
+If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely a
+little is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does but
+seek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish of
+the more indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin can
+never appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut capers too fantastic.
+
+One word more. Though every one knows how bootless it is to be in all
+cases vindicating one's self, never mind how convinced one may be that
+he is never in the wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation of
+his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied to
+but a work of imagination, is no easy thing. The mention of this
+weakness will explain why such readers as may think they perceive
+something harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitan
+with the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with the
+boon-companion, are now referred to that chapter where some similar
+apparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles,
+modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN TELLS THE STORY OF THE GENTLEMAN MADMAN.
+
+
+"Charlemont was a young merchant of French descent, living in St.
+Louis--a man not deficient in mind, and possessed of that sterling and
+captivating kindliness, seldom in perfection seen but in youthful
+bachelors, united at times to a remarkable sort of gracefully
+devil-may-care and witty good-humor. Of course, he was admired by
+everybody, and loved, as only mankind can love, by not a few. But in his
+twenty-ninth year a change came over him. Like one whose hair turns gray
+in a night, so in a day Charlemont turned from affable to morose. His
+acquaintances were passed without greeting; while, as for his
+confidential friends, them he pointedly, unscrupulously, and with a kind
+of fierceness, cut dead.
+
+"One, provoked by such conduct, would fain have resented it with words
+as disdainful; while another, shocked by the change, and, in concern for
+a friend, magnanimously overlooking affronts, implored to know what
+sudden, secret grief had distempered him. But from resentment and from
+tenderness Charlemont alike turned away.
+
+"Ere long, to the general surprise, the merchant Charlemont was
+gazetted, and the same day it was reported that he had withdrawn from
+town, but not before placing his entire property in the hands of
+responsible assignees for the benefit of creditors.
+
+"Whither he had vanished, none could guess. At length, nothing being
+heard, it was surmised that he must have made away with himself--a
+surmise, doubtless, originating in the remembrance of the change some
+months previous to his bankruptcy--a change of a sort only to be
+ascribed to a mind suddenly thrown from its balance.
+
+"Years passed. It was spring-time, and lo, one bright morning,
+Charlemont lounged into the St. Louis coffee-houses--gay, polite,
+humane, companionable, and dressed in the height of costly elegance. Not
+only was he alive, but he was himself again. Upon meeting with old
+acquaintances, he made the first advances, and in such a manner that it
+was impossible not to meet him half-way. Upon other old friends, whom he
+did not chance casually to meet, he either personally called, or left
+his card and compliments for them; and to several, sent presents of game
+or hampers of wine.
+
+"They say the world is sometimes harshly unforgiving, but it was not so
+to Charlemont. The world feels a return of love for one who returns to
+it as he did. Expressive of its renewed interest was a whisper, an
+inquiring whisper, how now, exactly, so long after his bankruptcy, it
+fared with Charlemont's purse. Rumor, seldom at a loss for answers,
+replied that he had spent nine years in Marseilles in France, and there
+acquiring a second fortune, had returned with it, a man devoted
+henceforth to genial friendships.
+
+"Added years went by, and the restored wanderer still the same; or
+rather, by his noble qualities, grew up like golden maize in the
+encouraging sun of good opinions. But still the latent wonder was, what
+had caused that change in him at a period when, pretty much as now, he
+was, to all appearance, in the possession of the same fortune, the same
+friends, the same popularity. But nobody thought it would be the thing
+to question him here.
+
+"At last, at a dinner at his house, when all the guests but one had
+successively departed; this remaining guest, an old acquaintance, being
+just enough under the influence of wine to set aside the fear of
+touching upon a delicate point, ventured, in a way which perhaps spoke
+more favorably for his heart than his tact, to beg of his host to
+explain the one enigma of his life. Deep melancholy overspread the
+before cheery face of Charlemont; he sat for some moments tremulously
+silent; then pushing a full decanter towards the guest, in a choked
+voice, said: 'No, no! when by art, and care, and time, flowers are made
+to bloom over a grave, who would seek to dig all up again only to know
+the mystery?--The wine.' When both glasses were filled, Charlemont took
+his, and lifting it, added lowly: 'If ever, in days to come, you shall
+see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble
+for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and, partly through
+love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand
+with the world, and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin
+to yourself, then will you do as one I now dream of once did, and like
+him will you suffer; but how fortunate and how grateful should you be,
+if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy
+again.'
+
+"When the guest went away, it was with the persuasion, that though
+outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of
+Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends
+to touch one dangerous string."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN STRIKINGLY EVINCES THE ARTLESSNESS OF HIS
+NATURE.
+
+
+"Well, what do you think of the story of Charlemont?" mildly asked he
+who had told it.
+
+"A very strange one," answered the auditor, who had been such not with
+perfect ease, "but is it true?"
+
+"Of course not; it is a story which I told with the purpose of every
+story-teller--to amuse. Hence, if it seem strange to you, that
+strangeness is the romance; it is what contrasts it with real life; it
+is the invention, in brief, the fiction as opposed to the fact. For do
+but ask yourself, my dear Charlie," lovingly leaning over towards him,
+"I rest it with your own heart now, whether such a forereaching motive
+as Charlemont hinted he had acted on in his change--whether such a
+motive, I say, were a sort of one at all justified by the nature of
+human society? Would you, for one, turn the cold shoulder to a friend--a
+convivial one, say, whose pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to
+you?"
+
+"How can you ask me, my dear Frank? You know I would scorn such
+meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted--"really, early as it is, I
+think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels
+unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of
+it, has played the deuce with me."
+
+"Little as you drank of this elixir of logwood? Why, Charlie, you are
+losing your mind. To talk so of the genuine, mellow old port. Yes, I
+think that by all means you had better away, and sleep it off.
+There--don't apologize--don't explain--go, go--I understand you exactly.
+I will see you to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON ENSUES
+PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.
+
+
+As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew, a stranger
+advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan, said: "I think I heard you say
+you would see that man again. Be warned; don't you do so."
+
+He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man, sandy-haired, and
+Saxon-looking; perhaps five and forty; tall, and, but for a certain
+angularity, well made; little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a
+look of plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
+dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow, placidly thoughtful,
+than by his general aspect, which had that look of youthfulness in
+maturity, peculiar sometimes to habitual health of body, the original
+gift of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance of
+the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution as much as morality. A
+neat, comely, almost ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red
+clover-blossom at coolish dawn--the color of warmth preserved by the
+virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what of
+shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled; in that way, he seemed a
+kind of cross between a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it
+seemed as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability play
+second fiddle to the last.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I
+cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just
+been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
+disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone
+have prompted such an intimation. My friend, whose seat is still warm,
+has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here.
+Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if you choose
+to hint aught further unfavorable to the man, the genial warmth of whose
+person in part passes into yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders
+through you--be it so."
+
+"Quite beautiful conceits," said the stranger, now scholastically and
+artistically eying the picturesque speaker, as if he were a statue in
+the Pitti Palace; "very beautiful:" then with the gravest interest,
+"yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul--one full of all
+love and truth; for where beauty is, there must those be."
+
+"A pleasing belief," rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning with an even
+air, "and to confess, long ago it pleased me. Yes, with you and
+Schiller, I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible
+with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the
+latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose
+lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft
+in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"
+
+As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit--as
+some earnest descriptive speakers will--as unconsciously to wreathe his
+form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature
+described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise,
+apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and
+presently said:
+
+"When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to
+change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to
+glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole
+beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish
+never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and
+conscience, and revel for a while in the carefree, joyous life of a
+perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"
+
+"Such a wish," replied the other, not perceptibly disturbed, "I must
+confess, never consciously was mine. Such a wish, indeed, could hardly
+occur to ordinary imaginations, and mine I cannot think much above the
+average."
+
+"But now that the idea is suggested," said the stranger, with infantile
+intellectuality, "does it not raise the desire?"
+
+"Hardly. For though I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice
+against the rattle-snake, still, I should not like to be one. If I were
+a rattle-snake now, there would be no such thing as being genial with
+men--men would be afraid of me, and then I should be a very lonesome and
+miserable rattle-snake."
+
+"True, men would be afraid of you. And why? Because of your rattle, your
+hollow rattle--a sound, as I have been told, like the shaking together
+of small, dry skulls in a tune of the Waltz of Death. And here we have
+another beautiful truth. When any creature is by its make inimical to
+other creatures, nature in effect labels that creature, much as an
+apothecary does a poison. So that whoever is destroyed by a
+rattle-snake, or other harmful agent, it is his own fault. He should
+have respected the label. Hence that significant passage in Scripture,
+'Who will pity the charmer that is bitten with a serpent?'"
+
+"_I_ would pity him," said the cosmopolitan, a little bluntly, perhaps.
+
+"But don't you think," rejoined the other, still maintaining his
+passionless air, "don't you think, that for a man to pity where nature
+is pitiless, is a little presuming?"
+
+"Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion the heart decides
+for itself. But, sir," deepening in seriousness, "as I now for the first
+realize, you but a moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a
+way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of a tolerant spirit, as I
+hope, I try my best never to be frightened at any speculation, so long
+as it is pursued in honesty, yet, for once, I must acknowledge that you
+do really, in the point cited, cause me uneasiness; because a proper
+view of the universe, that view which is suited to breed a proper
+confidence, teaches, if I err not, that since all things are justly
+presided over, not very many living agents but must be some way
+accountable."
+
+"Is a rattle-snake accountable?" asked the stranger with such a
+preternaturally cold, gemmy glance out of his pellucid blue eye, that he
+seemed more a metaphysical merman than a feeling man; "is a rattle-snake
+accountable?"
+
+"If I will not affirm that it is," returned the other, with the caution
+of no inexperienced thinker, "neither will I deny it. But if we suppose
+it so, I need not say that such accountability is neither to you, nor
+me, nor the Court of Common Pleas, but to something superior."
+
+He was proceeding, when the stranger would have interrupted him; but as
+reading his argument in his eye, the cosmopolitan, without waiting for
+it to be put into words, at once spoke to it: "You object to my
+supposition, for but such it is, that the rattle-snake's accountability
+is not by nature manifest; but might not much the same thing be urged
+against man's? A _reductio ad absurdum_, proving the objection vain. But
+if now," he continued, "you consider what capacity for mischief there is
+in a rattle-snake (observe, I do not charge it with being mischievous, I
+but say it has the capacity), could you well avoid admitting that that
+would be no symmetrical view of the universe which should maintain that,
+while to man it is forbidden to kill, without judicial cause, his
+fellow, yet the rattle-snake has an implied permit of unaccountability
+to murder any creature it takes capricious umbrage at--man
+included?--But," with a wearied air, "this is no genial talk; at least
+it is not so to me. Zeal at unawares embarked me in it. I regret it.
+Pray, sit down, and take some of this wine."
+
+"Your suggestions are new to me," said the other, with a kind of
+condescending appreciativeness, as of one who, out of devotion to
+knowledge, disdains not to appropriate the least crumb of it, even from
+a pauper's board; "and, as I am a very Athenian in hailing a new
+thought, I cannot consent to let it drop so abruptly. Now, the
+rattle-snake----"
+
+"Nothing more about rattle-snakes, I beseech," in distress; "I must
+positively decline to reenter upon that subject. Sit down, sir, I beg,
+and take some of this wine."
+
+"To invite me to sit down with you is hospitable," collectedly
+acquiescing now in the change of topics; "and hospitality being fabled
+to be of oriental origin, and forming, as it does, the subject of a
+pleasing Arabian romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in
+itself--hence I always hear the expressions of hospitality with
+pleasure. But, as for the wine, my regard for that beverage is so
+extreme, and I am so fearful of letting it sate me, that I keep my love
+for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I
+quaff immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but wine from a
+cup I seldom as much as sip."
+
+The cosmopolitan turned a mild glance upon the speaker, who, now
+occupying the chair opposite him, sat there purely and coldly radiant as
+a prism. It seemed as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and
+ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting with a sign, the
+cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of ice-water. "Ice it well, waiter,"
+said he; "and now," turning to the stranger, "will you, if you please,
+give me your reason for the warning words you first addressed to me?"
+
+"I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings are," said the
+stranger; "warnings which do not forewarn, but in mockery come after the
+fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent
+design your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains
+unaccomplished. You read his label."
+
+"And what did it say? 'This is a genial soul,' So you see you must
+either give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against
+my friend. But tell me," with renewed earnestness, "what do you take him
+for? What is he?"
+
+"What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which
+life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as
+insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to
+determine the triangle."
+
+"But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent with your
+doctrine of labels?"
+
+"Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a
+philosophical view, consistency is a certain level at all times,
+maintained in all the thoughts of one's mind. But, since nature is
+nearly all hill and dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in
+knowledge without submitting to the natural inequalities in the
+progress? Advance into knowledge is just like advance upon the grand
+Erie canal, where, from the character of the country, change of level is
+inevitable; you are locked up and locked down with perpetual
+inconsistencies, and yet all the time you get on; while the dullest part
+of the whole route is what the boatmen call the 'long level'--a
+consistently-flat surface of sixty miles through stagnant swamps."
+
+"In one particular," rejoined the cosmopolitan, "your simile is,
+perhaps, unfortunate. For, after all these weary lockings-up and
+lockings-down, upon how much of a higher plain do you finally stand?
+Enough to make it an object? Having from youth been taught reverence for
+knowledge, you must pardon me if, on but this one account, I reject your
+analogy. But really you someway bewitch me with your tempting discourse,
+so that I keep straying from my point unawares. You tell me you cannot
+certainly know who or what my friend is; pray, what do you conjecture
+him to be?"
+
+"I conjecture him to be what, among the ancient Egyptians, was called a
+----" using some unknown word.
+
+"A ----! And what is that?"
+
+"A ---- is what Proclus, in a little note to his third book on the
+theology of Plato, defines as ---- ----" coming out with a sentence of
+Greek.
+
+Holding up his glass, and steadily looking through its transparency, the
+cosmopolitan rejoined: "That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it
+to modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible
+of, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in
+words suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for a favor.
+
+"A favor!" slightly lifting his cool eyebrows; "a bridal favor I
+understand, a knot of white ribands, a very beautiful type of the purity
+of true marriage; but of other favors I am yet to learn; and still, in a
+vague way, the word, as you employ it, strikes me as unpleasingly
+significant in general of some poor, unheroic submission to being done
+good to."
+
+Here the goblet of iced-water was brought, and, in compliance with a
+sign from the cosmopolitan, was placed before the stranger, who, not
+before expressing acknowledgments, took a draught, apparently
+refreshing--its very coldness, as with some is the case, proving not
+entirely uncongenial.
+
+At last, setting down the goblet, and gently wiping from his lips the
+beads of water freshly clinging there as to the valve of a coral-shell
+upon a reef, he turned upon the cosmopolitan, and, in a manner the most
+cool, self-possessed, and matter-of-fact possible, said: "I hold to the
+metempsychosis; and whoever I may be now, I feel that I was once the
+stoic Arrian, and have inklings of having been equally puzzled by a word
+in the current language of that former time, very probably answering to
+your word _favor_."
+
+"Would you favor me by explaining?" said the cosmopolitan, blandly.
+
+"Sir," responded the stranger, with a very slight degree of severity, "I
+like lucidity, of all things, and am afraid I shall hardly be able to
+converse satisfactorily with you, unless you bear it in mind."
+
+The cosmopolitan ruminatingly eyed him awhile, then said: "The best way,
+as I have heard, to get out of a labyrinth, is to retrace one's steps. I
+will accordingly retrace mine, and beg you will accompany me. In short,
+once again to return to the point: for what reason did you warn me
+against my friend?"
+
+"Briefly, then, and clearly, because, as before said, I conjecture him
+to be what, among the ancient Egyptians----"
+
+"Pray, now," earnestly deprecated the cosmopolitan, "pray, now, why
+disturb the repose of those ancient Egyptians? What to us are their
+words or their thoughts? Are we pauper Arabs, without a house of our
+own, that, with the mummies, we must turn squatters among the dust of
+the Catacombs?"
+
+"Pharaoh's poorest brick-maker lies proudlier in his rags than the
+Emperor of all the Russias in his hollands," oracularly said the
+stranger; "for death, though in a worm, is majestic; while life, though
+in a king, is contemptible. So talk not against mummies. It is a part of
+my mission to teach mankind a due reverence for mummies."
+
+Fortunately, to arrest these incoherencies, or rather, to vary them, a
+haggard, inspired-looking man now approached--a crazy beggar, asking
+alms under the form of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by
+himself, and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship.
+Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for,
+by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared
+the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over
+with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge
+upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed
+his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by
+what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him
+any lasting good, but enough, perhaps, to suggest a torment of latent
+doubts at times, whether his addled dream of glory were true.
+
+Accepting the tract offered him, the cosmopolitan glanced over it, and,
+seeming to see just what it was, closed it, put it in his pocket, eyed
+the man a moment, then, leaning over and presenting him with a shilling,
+said to him, in tones kind and considerate: "I am sorry, my friend, that
+I happen to be engaged just now; but, having purchased your work, I
+promise myself much satisfaction in its perusal at my earliest leisure."
+
+In his tattered, single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned meagerly up to his
+chin, the shutter-brain made him a bow, which, for courtesy, would not
+have misbecome a viscount, then turned with silent appeal to the
+stranger. But the stranger sat more like a cold prism than ever, while
+an expression of keen Yankee cuteness, now replacing his former mystical
+one, lent added icicles to his aspect. His whole air said: "Nothing
+from me." The repulsed petitioner threw a look full of resentful pride
+and cracked disdain upon him, and went his way.
+
+"Come, now," said the cosmopolitan, a little reproachfully, "you ought
+to have sympathized with that man; tell me, did you feel no
+fellow-feeling? Look at his tract here, quite in the transcendental
+vein."
+
+"Excuse me," said the stranger, declining the tract, "I never patronize
+scoundrels."
+
+"Scoundrels?"
+
+"I detected in him, sir, a damning peep of sense--damning, I say; for
+sense in a seeming madman is scoundrelism. I take him for a cunning
+vagabond, who picks up a vagabond living by adroitly playing the madman.
+Did you not remark how he flinched under my eye?'
+
+"Really?" drawing a long, astonished breath, "I could hardly have
+divined in you a temper so subtlely distrustful. Flinched? to be sure he
+did, poor fellow; you received him with so lame a welcome. As for his
+adroitly playing the madman, invidious critics might object the same to
+some one or two strolling magi of these days. But that is a matter I
+know nothing about. But, once more, and for the last time, to return to
+the point: why sir, did you warn me against my friend? I shall rejoice,
+if, as I think it will prove, your want of confidence in my friend rests
+upon a basis equally slender with your distrust of the lunatic. Come,
+why did you warn me? Put it, I beseech, in few words, and those
+English."
+
+"I warned you against him because he is suspected for what on these
+boats is known--so they tell me--as a Mississippi operator."
+
+"An operator, ah? he operates, does he? My friend, then, is something
+like what the Indians call a Great Medicine, is he? He operates, he
+purges, he drains off the repletions."
+
+"I perceive, sir," said the stranger, constitutionally obtuse to the
+pleasant drollery, "that your notion, of what is called a Great
+Medicine, needs correction. The Great Medicine among the Indians is less
+a bolus than a man in grave esteem for his politic sagacity."
+
+"And is not my friend politic? Is not my friend sagacious? By your own
+definition, is not my friend a Great Medicine?"
+
+"No, he is an operator, a Mississippi operator; an equivocal character.
+That he is such, I little doubt, having had him pointed out to me as
+such by one desirous of initiating me into any little novelty of this
+western region, where I never before traveled. And, sir, if I am not
+mistaken, you also are a stranger here (but, indeed, where in this
+strange universe is not one a stranger?) and that is a reason why I felt
+moved to warn you against a companion who could not be otherwise than
+perilous to one of a free and trustful disposition. But I repeat the
+hope, that, thus far at least, he has not succeeded with you, and trust
+that, for the future, he will not."
+
+"Thank you for your concern; but hardly can I equally thank you for so
+steadily maintaining the hypothesis of my friend's objectionableness.
+True, I but made his acquaintance for the first to-day, and know little
+of his antecedents; but that would seem no just reason why a nature like
+his should not of itself inspire confidence. And since your own
+knowledge of the gentleman is not, by your account, so exact as it might
+be, you will pardon me if I decline to welcome any further suggestions
+unflattering to him. Indeed, sir," with friendly decision, "let us
+change the subject."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE MYSTICAL MASTER INTRODUCES THE PRACTICAL DISCIPLE.
+
+
+"Both, the subject and the interlocutor," replied the stranger rising,
+and waiting the return towards him of a promenader, that moment turning
+at the further end of his walk.
+
+"Egbert!" said he, calling.
+
+Egbert, a well-dressed, commercial-looking gentleman of about thirty,
+responded in a way strikingly deferential, and in a moment stood near,
+in the attitude less of an equal companion apparently than a
+confidential follower.
+
+"This," said the stranger, taking Egbert by the hand and leading him to
+the cosmopolitan, "this is Egbert, a disciple. I wish you to know
+Egbert. Egbert was the first among mankind to reduce to practice the
+principles of Mark Winsome--principles previously accounted as less
+adapted to life than the closet. Egbert," turning to the disciple, who,
+with seeming modesty, a little shrank under these compliments, "Egbert,
+this," with a salute towards the cosmopolitan, "is, like all of us, a
+stranger. I wish you, Egbert, to know this brother stranger; be
+communicative with him. Particularly if, by anything hitherto dropped,
+his curiosity has been roused as to the precise nature of my philosophy,
+I trust you will not leave such curiosity ungratified. You, Egbert, by
+simply setting forth your practice, can do more to enlighten one as to
+my theory, than I myself can by mere speech. Indeed, it is by you that I
+myself best understand myself. For to every philosophy are certain rear
+parts, very important parts, and these, like the rear of one's head, are
+best seen by reflection. Now, as in a glass, you, Egbert, in your life,
+reflect to me the more important part of my system. He, who approves
+you, approves the philosophy of Mark Winsome."
+
+Though portions of this harangue may, perhaps, in the phraseology seem
+self-complaisant, yet no trace of self-complacency was perceptible in
+the speaker's manner, which throughout was plain, unassuming, dignified,
+and manly; the teacher and prophet seemed to lurk more in the idea, so
+to speak, than in the mere bearing of him who was the vehicle of it.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, who seemed not a little interested in this
+new aspect of matters, "you speak of a certain philosophy, and a more or
+less occult one it may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life;
+pray, tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the same
+formation of character with the experiences of the world?"
+
+"It does; and that is the test of its truth; for any philosophy that,
+being in operation contradictory to the ways of the world, tends to
+produce a character at odds with it, such a philosophy must necessarily
+be but a cheat and a dream."
+
+"You a little surprise me," answered the cosmopolitan; "for, from an
+occasional profundity in you, and also from your allusions to a profound
+work on the theology of Plato, it would seem but natural to surmise
+that, if you are the originator of any philosophy, it must needs so
+partake of the abstruse, as to exalt it above the comparatively vile
+uses of life."
+
+"No uncommon mistake with regard to me," rejoined the other. Then meekly
+standing like a Raphael: "If still in golden accents old Memnon murmurs
+his riddle, none the less does the balance-sheet of every man's ledger
+unriddle the profit or loss of life. Sir," with calm energy, "man came
+into this world, not to sit down and muse, not to befog himself with
+vain subtleties, but to gird up his loins and to work. Mystery is in the
+morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is
+everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must
+be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be
+undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers
+before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg,
+though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the
+main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a
+man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know me for such.
+And as for my disciple here," turning towards him, "if you look to find
+any soft Utopianisms and last year's sunsets in him, I smile to think
+how he will set you right. The doctrines I have taught him will, I
+trust, lead him neither to the mad-house nor the poor-house, as so many
+other doctrines have served credulous sticklers. Furthermore," glancing
+upon him paternally, "Egbert is both my disciple and my poet. For poetry
+is not a thing of ink and rhyme, but of thought and act, and, in the
+latter way, is by any one to be found anywhere, when in useful action
+sought. In a word, my disciple here is a thriving young merchant, a
+practical poet in the West India trade. There," presenting Egbert's hand
+to the cosmopolitan, "I join you, and leave you." With which words, and
+without bowing, the master withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE DISCIPLE UNBENDS, AND CONSENTS TO ACT A SOCIAL PART.
+
+
+In the master's presence the disciple had stood as one not ignorant of
+his place; modesty was in his expression, with a sort of reverential
+depression. But the presence of the superior withdrawn, he seemed
+lithely to shoot up erect from beneath it, like one of those wire men
+from a toy snuff-box.
+
+He was, as before said, a young man of about thirty. His countenance of
+that neuter sort, which, in repose, is neither prepossessing nor
+disagreeable; so that it seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out.
+His dress was neat, with just enough of the mode to save it from the
+reproach of originality; in which general respect, though with a
+readjustment of details, his costume seemed modeled upon his master's.
+But, upon the whole, he was, to all appearances, the last person in the
+world that one would take for the disciple of any transcendental
+philosophy; though, indeed, something about his sharp nose and shaved
+chin seemed to hint that if mysticism, as a lesson, ever came in his
+way, he might, with the characteristic knack of a true New-Englander,
+turn even so profitless a thing to some profitable account.
+
+"Well" said he, now familiarly seating himself in the vacated chair,
+"what do you think of Mark? Sublime fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"That each member of the human guild is worthy respect my friend,"
+rejoined the cosmopolitan, "is a fact which no admirer of that guild
+will question; but that, in view of higher natures, the word sublime, so
+frequently applied to them, can, without confusion, be also applied to
+man, is a point which man will decide for himself; though, indeed, if he
+decide it in the affirmative, it is not for me to object. But I am
+curious to know more of that philosophy of which, at present, I have but
+inklings. You, its first disciple among men, it seems, are peculiarly
+qualified to expound it. Have you any objections to begin now?"
+
+"None at all," squaring himself to the table. "Where shall I begin? At
+first principles?"
+
+"You remember that it was in a practical way that you were represented
+as being fitted for the clear exposition. Now, what you call first
+principles, I have, in some things, found to be more or less vague.
+Permit me, then, in a plain way, to suppose some common case in real
+life, and that done, I would like you to tell me how you, the practical
+disciple of the philosophy I wish to know about, would, in that case,
+conduct."
+
+"A business-like view. Propose the case."
+
+"Not only the case, but the persons. The case is this: There are two
+friends, friends from childhood, bosom-friends; one of whom, for the
+first time, being in need, for the first time seeks a loan from the
+other, who, so far as fortune goes, is more than competent to grant it.
+And the persons are to be you and I: you, the friend from whom the loan
+is sought--I, the friend who seeks it; you, the disciple of the
+philosophy in question--I, a common man, with no more philosophy than to
+know that when I am comfortably warm I don't feel cold, and when I have
+the ague I shake. Mind, now, you must work up your imagination, and, as
+much as possible, talk and behave just as if the case supposed were a
+fact. For brevity, you shall call me Frank, and I will call you Charlie.
+Are you agreed?"
+
+"Perfectly. You begin."
+
+The cosmopolitan paused a moment, then, assuming a serious and care-worn
+air, suitable to the part to be enacted, addressed his hypothesized
+friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.
+
+
+"Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you."
+
+"You always have, and with reason. What is it Frank?"
+
+"Charlie, I am in want--urgent want of money."
+
+"That's not well."
+
+"But it _will_ be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. I
+would not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have so
+long shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side,
+that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the same
+inequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor won't
+you?"
+
+"Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do you a favor?"
+
+"Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so."
+
+"Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to talk so."
+
+"But won't you loan me the money?"
+
+"No, Frank."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but never loan it; and of
+course the man who calls himself my friend is above receiving alms. The
+negotiation of a loan is a business transaction. And I will transact no
+business with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially and
+intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too high
+to degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure
+there are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is,
+commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-ink
+line between them and my friends in the true sense--my friends social
+and intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
+he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such unfriendly
+accommodations as are to be had from the soulless corporation of a bank,
+by giving the regular security and paying the regular discount."
+
+"An _unfriendly_ accommodation? Do those words go together handsomely?"
+
+"Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and a cow--not handsomely,
+but to the purpose. Look, Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale
+of money on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an accommodation,
+but where is the friendliness? Few men in their senses, except
+operators, borrow money on interest, except upon a necessity akin to
+starvation. Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
+starving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of flour upon the
+condition that, on a given day, he shall let me have the money's worth
+of a barrel and a half of flour; especially if I add this further
+proviso, that if he fail so to do, I shall then, to secure to myself
+the money's worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up at
+public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families, throw in his
+wife's and children's?"
+
+"I understand," with a pathetic shudder; "but even did it come to that,
+such a step on the creditor's part, let us, for the honor of human
+nature, hope, were less the intention than the contingency."
+
+"But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in the taking beforehand
+of due securities."
+
+"Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a friend's act?"
+
+"And the auction in the last place an enemy's act. Don't you see? The
+enmity lies couched in the friendship, just as the ruin in the relief."
+
+"I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really, I can't understand
+this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but it strikes me that in going into
+the philosophy of the subject, you go somewhat out of your depth."
+
+"So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but the ocean replied:
+'It is just the other way, my wet friend,' and drowned him."
+
+"That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of
+Æsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would
+scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
+But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship,
+and ruin in relief."
+
+"I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train slipped off the
+rail. He who loans him money on interest is the one who, by way of
+accommodation, helps get the train back where it belongs; but then, by
+way of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an agent,
+thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just there, on his account,
+a beam across the track. Your needy man's principle-and-interest friend
+is, I say again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my dear
+friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest."
+
+"Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me without interest."
+
+"That would be alms again."
+
+"Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?"
+
+"Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest."
+
+"Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the alms. Seeing that it
+is you, Charlie, gratefully will I accept the alms of the interest. No
+humiliation between friends."
+
+"Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you suffer yourself to
+talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me. For though I am not of the sour
+mind of Solomon, that, in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a
+brother; yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his Essay
+on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a terrestrial convenience,
+not to his friend celestial (or friend social and intellectual) would he
+go; no: for his terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or
+humbler business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the reason:
+Because, for the superior nature, which on no account can ever descend
+to do good, to be annoyed with requests to do it, when the inferior
+one, which by no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands
+always inclined to it--this is unsuitable."
+
+"Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial, but as the other."
+
+"It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I'll do it. We are
+business friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan.
+Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where is
+your security?"
+
+"Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your old
+schoolmate--him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves of
+Academe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in
+kindliness--and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being
+fellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security."
+
+"Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst of
+securities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just no
+security at all. You forget we are now business friends."
+
+"And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend I
+can give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get an
+indorser."
+
+"No indorser, then, no business loan."
+
+"Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friend
+you have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, I
+sue as both?"
+
+"Are you a centaur?"
+
+"When all is said then, what good have I of your friendship, regarded in
+what light you will?"
+
+"The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome, as reduced to
+practice by a practical disciple."
+
+"And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy of Mark Winsome do
+me? Ah," turning invokingly, "what is friendship, if it be not the
+helping hand and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out at
+need the purse as the vial!"
+
+"Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through tears never did man see
+his way in the dark. I should hold you unworthy that sincere friendship
+I bear you, could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
+you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank, that you would
+seriously shake the foundations of our love, if ever again you should
+repeat the present scene. The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest
+way, teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most suitable
+time, candidly disclose certain circumstances you seem in ignorance of.
+Though our friendship began in boyhood, think not that, on my side at
+least, it began injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
+juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable points at the
+time; not the least of which were your good manners, handsome dress, and
+your parents' rank and repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man,
+boy though I was, I went into the market and chose me my mutton, not for
+its leanness, but its fatness. In other words, there seemed in you, the
+schoolboy who always had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probability
+that you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if my early
+impression has not been verified by the event, it is only because of
+the caprice of fortune producing a fallibility of human expectations,
+however discreet.'"
+
+"Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!"
+
+"A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear Frank, wouldn't do
+you any harm, let me tell you. Cold-blooded? You say that, because my
+disclosure seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not so. My
+reason for choosing you in part for the points I have mentioned, was
+solely with a view of preserving inviolate the delicacy of the
+connection. For--do but think of it--what more distressing to delicate
+friendship, formed early, than your friend's eventually, in manhood,
+dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five dollars or so?
+Can delicate friendship stand that? And, on the other side, would
+delicate friendship, so long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Would
+you not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry, 'I have
+been deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this man; he is no true friend
+that, in platonic love to demand love-rites?'"
+
+"And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!"
+
+"Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately claiming
+those rights, as you call them, you shake those foundations I hinted of.
+For though, as it turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fair
+house on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished on that
+house, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I would not lose the sweet
+boon of your friendship, Frank. But beware."
+
+"And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie! you talk not to a god, a
+being who in himself holds his own estate, but to a man who, being a
+man, is the sport of fate's wind and wave, and who mounts towards heaven
+or sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough or on crest."
+
+"Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that comes to--no poor
+drifting sea-weed of the universe. Man has a soul; which, if he will,
+puts him beyond fortune's finger and the future's spite. Don't whine
+like fortune's whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true friend, I
+will cut ye."
+
+"Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the quick. Call to mind
+the days we went nutting, the times we walked in the woods, arms
+wreathed about each other, showing trunks invined like the trees:--oh,
+Charlie!"
+
+"Pish! we were boys."
+
+"Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold in the grave ere
+maturity struck them with a sharper frost.--Charlie?"
+
+"Fie! you're a girl."
+
+"Help, help, Charlie, I want help!"
+
+"Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something wrong about the
+man who wants help. There is somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a
+need, a crying need, somewhere about that man."
+
+"So there is, Charlie.--Help, Help!"
+
+"How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself the proof of
+undesert of it."
+
+"Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some ventriloquist who
+usurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome that speaks, not Charlie."
+
+"If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is not alien but
+congenial to my larynx. If the philosophy of that illustrious teacher
+find little response among mankind at large, it is less that they do not
+possess teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate as not
+to have natures predisposed to accord with him.
+
+"Welcome, that compliment to humanity," exclaimed Frank with energy,
+"the truer because unintended. And long in this respect may humanity
+remain what you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardly
+feeling how subject it is to straits, and hence how precious is help,
+will, for selfishness' sake, if no other, long postpone ratifying a
+philosophy that banishes help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie!
+speak as you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case reversed,
+not less freely would I loan you the money than you would ask me to loan
+it.
+
+"_I_ ask? _I_ ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstances
+would I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. The
+experience of China Aster might warn me."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace
+of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace
+vanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do
+so in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller here has so
+tyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat his
+incidents without sliding into his style. I forewarn you of this, that
+you may not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story would seem
+to make its narrator. It is too bad that any intellect, especially in so
+small a matter, should have such power to impose itself upon another,
+against its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to know
+that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully approve. But, to
+begin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+IN WHICH THE STORY OF CHINA ASTER IS AT SECOND-HAND TOLD BY ONE WHO,
+WHILE NOT DISAPPROVING THE MORAL, DISCLAIMS THE SPIRIT OF THE STYLE.
+
+
+"China Aster was a young candle-maker of Marietta, at the mouth of the
+Muskingum--one whose trade would seem a kind of subordinate branch of
+that parent craft and mystery of the hosts of heaven, to be the means,
+effectively or otherwise, of shedding some light through the darkness of
+a planet benighted. But he made little money by the business. Much ado
+had poor China Aster and his family to live; he could, if he chose,
+light up from his stores a whole street, but not so easily could he
+light up with prosperity the hearts of his household.
+
+"Now, China Aster, it so happened, had a friend, Orchis, a shoemaker;
+one whose calling it is to defend the understandings of men from naked
+contact with the substance of things: a very useful vocation, and which,
+spite of all the wiseacres may prophesy, will hardly go out of fashion
+so long as rocks are hard and flints will gall. All at once, by a
+capital prize in a lottery, this useful shoemaker was raised from a
+bench to a sofa. A small nabob was the shoemaker now, and the
+understandings of men, let them shift for themselves. Not that Orchis
+was, by prosperity, elated into heartlessness. Not at all. Because, in
+his fine apparel, strolling one morning into the candlery, and gayly
+switching about at the candle-boxes with his gold-headed cane--while
+poor China Aster, with his greasy paper cap and leather apron, was
+selling one candle for one penny to a poor orange-woman, who, with the
+patronizing coolness of a liberal customer, required it to be carefully
+rolled up and tied in a half sheet of paper--lively Orchis, the woman
+being gone, discontinued his gay switchings and said: 'This is poor
+business for you, friend China Aster; your capital is too small. You
+must drop this vile tallow and hold up pure spermaceti to the world. I
+tell you what it is, you shall have one thousand dollars to extend with.
+In fact, you must make money, China Aster. I don't like to see your
+little boy paddling about without shoes, as he does.'
+
+"'Heaven bless your goodness, friend Orchis,' replied the candle-maker,
+'but don't take it illy if I call to mind the word of my uncle, the
+blacksmith, who, when a loan was offered him, declined it, saying: "To
+ply my own hammer, light though it be, I think best, rather than piece
+it out heavier by welding to it a bit off a neighbor's hammer, though
+that may have some weight to spare; otherwise, were the borrowed bit
+suddenly wanted again, it might not split off at the welding, but too
+much to one side or the other."'
+
+"'Nonsense, friend China Aster, don't be so honest; your boy is
+barefoot. Besides, a rich man lose by a poor man? Or a friend be the
+worse by a friend? China Aster, I am afraid that, in leaning over into
+your vats here, this, morning, you have spilled out your wisdom. Hush! I
+won't hear any more. Where's your desk? Oh, here.' With that, Orchis
+dashed off a check on his bank, and off-handedly presenting it, said:
+'There, friend China Aster, is your one thousand dollars; when you make
+it ten thousand, as you soon enough will (for experience, the only true
+knowledge, teaches me that, for every one, good luck is in store), then,
+China Aster, why, then you can return me the money or not, just as you
+please. But, in any event, give yourself no concern, for I shall never
+demand payment.'
+
+"Now, as kind heaven will so have it that to a hungry man bread is a
+great temptation, and, therefore, he is not too harshly to be blamed,
+if, when freely offered, he take it, even though it be uncertain whether
+he shall ever be able to reciprocate; so, to a poor man, proffered money
+is equally enticing, and the worst that can be said of him, if he accept
+it, is just what can be said in the other case of the hungry man. In
+short, the poor candle-maker's scrupulous morality succumbed to his
+unscrupulous necessity, as is now and then apt to be the case. He took
+the check, and was about carefully putting it away for the present, when
+Orchis, switching about again with his gold-headed cane, said:
+'By-the-way, China Aster, it don't mean anything, but suppose you make a
+little memorandum of this; won't do any harm, you know.' So China Aster
+gave Orchis his note for one thousand dollars on demand. Orchis took it,
+and looked at it a moment, 'Pooh, I told you, friend China Aster, I
+wasn't going ever to make any _demand_.' Then tearing up the note, and
+switching away again at the candle-boxes, said, carelessly; 'Put it at
+four years.' So China Aster gave Orchis his note for one thousand
+dollars at four years. 'You see I'll never trouble you about this,' said
+Orchis, slipping it in his pocket-book, 'give yourself no further
+thought, friend China Aster, than how best to invest your money. And
+don't forget my hint about spermaceti. Go into that, and I'll buy all my
+light of you,' with which encouraging words, he, with wonted, rattling
+kindness, took leave.
+
+"China Aster remained standing just where Orchis had left him; when,
+suddenly, two elderly friends, having nothing better to do, dropped in
+for a chat. The chat over, China Aster, in greasy cap and apron, ran
+after Orchis, and said: 'Friend Orchis, heaven will reward you for your
+good intentions, but here is your check, and now give me my note.'
+
+"'Your honesty is a bore, China Aster,' said Orchis, not without
+displeasure. 'I won't take the check from you.'
+
+"'Then you must take it from the pavement, Orchis,' said China Aster;
+and, picking up a stone, he placed the check under it on the walk.
+
+"'China Aster,' said Orchis, inquisitively eying him, after my leaving
+the candlery just now, what asses dropped in there to advise with you,
+that now you hurry after me, and act so like a fool? Shouldn't wonder if
+it was those two old asses that the boys nickname Old Plain Talk and Old
+Prudence.'
+
+"'Yes, it was those two, Orchis, but don't call them names.'
+
+"'A brace of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a
+wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke
+down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better
+sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out
+his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands by, leaning on his staff,
+wagging his frosty old pow, and chiming in at every clause.'
+
+"'How can you speak so, friend Orchis, of those who were my father's
+friends?'"
+
+"'Save me from my friends, if those old croakers were Old Honesty's
+friends. I call your father so, for every one used to. Why did they let
+him go in his old age on the town? Why, China Aster, I've often heard
+from my mother, the chronicler, that those two old fellows, with Old
+Conscience--as the boys called the crabbed old quaker, that's dead
+now--they three used to go to the poor-house when your father was there,
+and get round his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz,
+Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes, Job's comforters
+were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence, and Old Conscience, to your poor
+old father. Friends? I should like to know who you call foes? With their
+everlasting croaking and reproaching they tormented poor Old Honesty,
+your father, to death.'
+
+"At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy parent, China Aster
+could not restrain some tears. Upon which Orchis said: 'Why, China
+Aster, you are the dolefulest creature. Why don't you, China Aster,
+take a bright view of life? You will never get on in your business or
+anything else, if you don't take the bright view of life. It's the
+ruination of a man to take the dismal one.' Then, gayly poking at him
+with his gold-headed cane, 'Why don't you, then? Why don't you be bright
+and hopeful, like me? Why don't you have confidence, China Aster?
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, friend Orchis,' soberly replied China Aster,
+'but may be my not having drawn a lottery-prize, like you, may make some
+difference.'
+
+"Nonsense! before I knew anything about the prize I was gay as a lark,
+just as gay as I am now. In fact, it has always been a principle with me
+to hold to the bright view.'
+
+"Upon this, China Aster looked a little hard at Orchis, because the
+truth was, that until the lucky prize came to him, Orchis had gone under
+the nickname of Doleful Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a
+hypochondriac turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars of
+his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to groan so much
+about.
+
+"I tell you what it is, now, friend China Aster,' said Orchis, pointing
+down to the check under the stone, and then slapping his pocket, 'the
+check shall lie there if you say so, but your note shan't keep it
+company. In fact, China Aster, I am too sincerely your friend to take
+advantage of a passing fit of the blues in you. You _shall_ reap the
+benefit of my friendship.' With which, buttoning up his coat in a
+jiffy, away he ran, leaving the check behind.
+
+"At first, China Aster was going to tear it up, but thinking that this
+ought not to be done except in the presence of the drawer of the check,
+he mused a while, and picking it up, trudged back to the candlery, fully
+resolved to call upon Orchis soon as his day's work was over, and
+destroy the check before his eyes. But it so happened that when China
+Aster called, Orchis was out, and, having waited for him a weary time in
+vain, China Aster went home, still with the check, but still resolved
+not to keep it another day. Bright and early next morning he would a
+second time go after Orchis, and would, no doubt, make a sure thing of
+it, by finding him in his bed; for since the lottery-prize came to him,
+Orchis, besides becoming more cheery, had also grown a little lazy. But
+as destiny would have it, that same night China Aster had a dream, in
+which a being in the guise of a smiling angel, and holding a kind of
+cornucopia in her hand, hovered over him, pouring down showers of small
+gold dollars, thick as kernels of corn. 'I am Bright Future, friend
+China Aster,' said the angel, 'and if you do what friend Orchis would
+have you do, just see what will come of it.' With which Bright Future,
+with another swing of her cornucopia, poured such another shower of
+small gold dollars upon him, that it seemed to bank him up all round,
+and he waded about in it like a maltster in malt.
+
+"Now, dreams are wonderful things, as everybody knows--so wonderful,
+indeed, that some people stop not short of ascribing them directly to
+heaven; and China Aster, who was of a proper turn of mind in everything,
+thought that in consideration of the dream, it would be but well to wait
+a little, ere seeking Orchis again. During the day, China Aster's mind
+dwelling continually upon the dream, he was so full of it, that when Old
+Plain Talk dropped in to see him, just before dinnertime, as he often
+did, out of the interest he took in Old Honesty's son, China Aster told
+all about his vision, adding that he could not think that so radiant an
+angel could deceive; and, indeed, talked at such a rate that one would
+have thought he believed the angel some beautiful human philanthropist.
+Something in this sort Old Plain Talk understood him, and, accordingly,
+in his plain way, said: 'China Aster, you tell me that an angel appeared
+to you in a dream. Now, what does that amount to but this, that you
+dreamed an angel appeared to you? Go right away, China Aster, and return
+the check, as I advised you before. If friend Prudence were here, he
+would say just the same thing.' With which words Old Plain Talk went off
+to find friend Prudence, but not succeeding, was returning to the
+candlery himself, when, at distance mistaking him for a dun who had long
+annoyed him, China Aster in a panic barred all his doors, and ran to the
+back part of the candlery, where no knock could be heard.
+
+"By this sad mistake, being left with no friend to argue the other side
+of the question, China Aster was so worked upon at last, by musing over
+his dream, that nothing would do but he must get the check cashed, and
+lay out the money the very same day in buying a good lot of spermaceti
+to make into candles, by which operation he counted upon turning a
+better penny than he ever had before in his life; in fact, this he
+believed would prove the foundation of that famous fortune which the
+angel had promised him.
+
+"Now, in using the money, China Aster was resolved punctually to pay the
+interest every six months till the principal should be returned, howbeit
+not a word about such a thing had been breathed by Orchis; though,
+indeed, according to custom, as well as law, in such matters, interest
+would legitimately accrue on the loan, nothing to the contrary having
+been put in the bond. Whether Orchis at the time had this in mind or
+not, there is no sure telling; but, to all appearance, he never so much
+as cared to think about the matter, one way or other.
+
+"Though the spermaceti venture rather disappointed China Aster's
+sanguine expectations, yet he made out to pay the first six months'
+interest, and though his next venture turned out still less
+prosperously, yet by pinching his family in the matter of fresh meat,
+and, what pained him still more, his boys' schooling, he contrived to
+pay the second six months' interest, sincerely grieved that integrity,
+as well as its opposite, though not in an equal degree, costs something,
+sometimes.
+
+"Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by advice of a
+physician; it so happening that, since the lottery-prize came to him, it
+had been discovered to Orchis that his health was not very firm, though
+he had never complained of anything before but a slight ailing of the
+spleen, scarce worth talking about at the time. So Orchis, being abroad,
+could not help China Aster's paying his interest as he did, however much
+he might have been opposed to it; for China Aster paid it to Orchis's
+agent, who was of too business-like a turn to decline interest regularly
+paid in on a loan.
+
+"But overmuch to trouble the agent on that score was not again to be the
+fate of China Aster; for, not being of that skeptical spirit which
+refuses to trust customers, his third venture resulted, through bad
+debts, in almost a total loss--a bad blow for the candle-maker. Neither
+did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect the opportunity to read him
+an uncheerful enough lesson upon the consequences of his disregarding
+their advice in the matter of having nothing to do with borrowed money.
+'It's all just as I predicted,' said Old Plain Talk, blowing his old
+nose with his old bandana. 'Yea, indeed is it,' chimed in Old Prudence,
+rapping his staff on the floor, and then leaning upon it, looking with
+solemn forebodings upon China Aster. Low-spirited enough felt the poor
+candle-maker; till all at once who should come with a bright face to him
+but his bright friend, the angel, in another dream. Again the cornucopia
+poured out its treasure, and promised still more. Revived by the vision,
+he resolved not to be down-hearted, but up and at it once more--contrary
+to the advice of Old Plain Talk, backed as usual by his crony, which was
+to the effect, that, under present circumstances, the best thing China
+Aster could do, would be to wind up his business, settle, if he could,
+all his liabilities, and then go to work as a journeyman, by which he
+could earn good wages, and give up, from that time henceforth, all
+thoughts of rising above being a paid subordinate to men more able than
+himself, for China Aster's career thus far plainly proved him the
+legitimate son of Old Honesty, who, as every one knew, had never shown
+much business-talent, so little, in fact, that many said of him that he
+had no business to be in business. And just this plain saying Plain Talk
+now plainly applied to China Aster, and Old Prudence never disagreed
+with him. But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain Talk, put
+quite other notions into the candle-maker.
+
+"He considered what he should do towards reëstablishing himself.
+Doubtless, had Orchis been in the country, he would have aided him in
+this strait. As it was, he applied to others; and as in the world, much
+as some may hint to the contrary, an honest man in misfortune still can
+find friends to stay by him and help him, even so it proved with China
+Aster, who at last succeeded in borrowing from a rich old farmer the sum
+of six hundred dollars, at the usual interest of money-lenders, upon the
+security of a secret bond signed by China Aster's wife and himself, to
+the effect that all such right and title to any property that should be
+left her by a well-to-do childless uncle, an invalid tanner, such
+property should, in the event of China Aster's failing to return the
+borrowed sum on the given day, be the lawful possession of the
+money-lender. True, it was just as much as China Aster could possibly do
+to induce his wife, a careful woman, to sign this bond; because she had
+always regarded her promised share in her uncle's estate as an anchor
+well to windward of the hard times in which China Aster had always been
+more or less involved, and from which, in her bosom, she never had seen
+much chance of his freeing himself. Some notion may be had of China
+Aster's standing in the heart and head of his wife, by a short sentence
+commonly used in reply to such persons as happened to sound her on the
+point. 'China Aster,' she would say, 'is a good husband, but a bad
+business man!' Indeed, she was a connection on the maternal side of Old
+Plain Talk's. But had not China Aster taken good care not to let Old
+Plain Talk and Old Prudence hear of his dealings with the old farmer,
+ten to one they would, in some way, have interfered with his success in
+that quarter.
+
+"It has been hinted that the honesty of China Aster was what mainly
+induced the money-lender to befriend him in his misfortune, and this
+must be apparent; for, had China Aster been a different man, the
+money-lender might have dreaded lest, in the event of his failing to
+meet his note, he might some way prove slippery--more especially as, in
+the hour of distress, worked upon by remorse for so jeopardizing his
+wife's money, his heart might prove a traitor to his bond, not to hint
+that it was more than doubtful how such a secret security and claim, as
+in the last resort would be the old farmer's, would stand in a court of
+law. But though one inference from all this may be, that had China Aster
+been something else than what he was, he would not have been trusted,
+and, therefore, he would have been effectually shut out from running his
+own and wife's head into the usurer's noose; yet those who, when
+everything at last came out, maintained that, in this view and to this
+extent, the honesty of the candle-maker was no advantage to him, in so
+saying, such persons said what every good heart must deplore, and no
+prudent tongue will admit.
+
+"It may be mentioned, that the old farmer made China Aster take part of
+his loan in three old dried-up cows and one lame horse, not improved by
+the glanders. These were thrown in at a pretty high figure, the old
+money-lender having a singular prejudice in regard to the high value of
+any sort of stock raised on his farm. With a great deal of difficulty,
+and at more loss, China Aster disposed of his cattle at public auction,
+no private purchaser being found who could be prevailed upon to invest.
+And now, raking and scraping in every way, and working early and late,
+China Aster at last started afresh, nor without again largely and
+confidently extending himself. However, he did not try his hand at the
+spermaceti again, but, admonished by experience, returned to tallow.
+But, having bought a good lot of it, by the time he got it into candles,
+tallow fell so low, and candles with it, that his candles per pound
+barely sold for what he had paid for the tallow. Meantime, a year's
+unpaid interest had accrued on Orchis' loan, but China Aster gave
+himself not so much concern about that as about the interest now due to
+the old farmer. But he was glad that the principal there had yet some
+time to run. However, the skinny old fellow gave him some trouble by
+coming after him every day or two on a scraggy old white horse,
+furnished with a musty old saddle, and goaded into his shambling old
+paces with a withered old raw hide. All the neighbors said that surely
+Death himself on the pale horse was after poor China Aster now. And
+something so it proved; for, ere long, China Aster found himself
+involved in troubles mortal enough.
+
+At this juncture Orchis was heard of. Orchis, it seemed had returned
+from his travels, and clandestinely married, and, in a kind of queer
+way, was living in Pennsylvania among his wife's relations, who, among
+other things, had induced him to join a church, or rather semi-religious
+school, of Come-Outers; and what was still more, Orchis, without coming
+to the spot himself, had sent word to his agent to dispose of some of
+his property in Marietta, and remit him the proceeds. Within a year
+after, China Aster received a letter from Orchis, commending him for his
+punctuality in paying the first year's interest, and regretting the
+necessity that he (Orchis) was now under of using all his dividends; so
+he relied upon China Aster's paying the next six months' interest, and
+of course with the back interest. Not more surprised than alarmed, China
+Aster thought of taking steamboat to go and see Orchis, but he was saved
+that expense by the unexpected arrival in Marietta of Orchis in person,
+suddenly called there by that strange kind of capriciousness lately
+characterizing him. No sooner did China Aster hear of his old friend's
+arrival than he hurried to call upon him. He found him curiously rusty
+in dress, sallow in cheek, and decidedly less gay and cordial in manner,
+which the more surprised China Aster, because, in former days, he had
+more than once heard Orchis, in his light rattling way, declare that all
+he (Orchis) wanted to make him a perfectly happy, hilarious, and
+benignant man, was a voyage to Europe and a wife, with a free
+development of his inmost nature.
+
+"Upon China Aster's stating his case, his trusted friend was silent for
+a time; then, in an odd way, said that he would not crowd China Aster,
+but still his (Orchis') necessities were urgent. Could not China Aster
+mortgage the candlery? He was honest, and must have moneyed friends; and
+could he not press his sales of candles? Could not the market be forced
+a little in that particular? The profits on candles must be very great.
+Seeing, now, that Orchis had the notion that the candle-making business
+was a very profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an error was
+here, China Aster tried to undeceive him. But he could not drive the
+truth into Orchis--Orchis being very obtuse here, and, at the same time,
+strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis glanced off from so
+unpleasing a subject into the most unexpected reflections, taken from a
+religious point of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of the
+human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced something of that
+sort of thing, China Aster did not take exception to his friend's
+observations, but still refrained from so doing, almost as much for the
+sake of sympathetic sociality as anything else. Presently, Orchis,
+without much ceremony, rose, and saying he must write a letter to his
+wife, bade his friend good-bye, but without warmly shaking him by the
+hand as of old.
+
+"In much concern at the change, China Aster made earnest inquiries in
+suitable quarters, as to what things, as yet unheard of, had befallen
+Orchis, to bring about such a revolution; and learned at last that,
+besides traveling, and getting married, and joining the sect of
+Come-Outers, Orchis had somehow got a bad dyspepsia, and lost
+considerable property through a breach of trust on the part of a factor
+in New York. Telling these things to Old Plain Talk, that man of some
+knowledge of the world shook his old head, and told China Aster that,
+though he hoped it might prove otherwise, yet it seemed to him that all
+he had communicated about Orchis worked together for bad omens as to his
+future forbearance--especially, he added with a grim sort of smile, in
+view of his joining the sect of Come-Outers; for, if some men knew what
+was their inmost natures, instead of coming out with it, they would try
+their best to keep it in, which, indeed, was the way with the prudent
+sort. In all which sour notions Old Prudence, as usual, chimed in.
+
+"When interest-day came again, China Aster, by the utmost exertions,
+could only pay Orchis' agent a small part of what was due, and a part of
+that was made up by his children's gift money (bright tenpenny pieces
+and new quarters, kept in their little money-boxes), and pawning his
+best clothes, with those of his wife and children, so that all were
+subjected to the hardship of staying away from church. And the old
+usurer, too, now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid him his
+interest and some other pressing debts with money got by, at last,
+mortgaging the candlery.
+
+"When next interest-day came round for Orchis, not a penny could be
+raised. With much grief of heart, China Aster so informed Orchis' agent.
+Meantime, the note to the old usurer fell due, and nothing from China
+Aster was ready to meet it; yet, as heaven sends its rain on the just
+and unjust alike, by a coincidence not unfavorable to the old farmer,
+the well-to-do uncle, the tanner, having died, the usurer entered upon
+possession of such part of his property left by will to the wife of
+China Aster. When still the next interest-day for Orchis came round, it
+found China Aster worse off than ever; for, besides his other troubles,
+he was now weak with sickness. Feebly dragging himself to Orchis' agent,
+he met him in the street, told him just how it was; upon which the
+agent, with a grave enough face, said that he had instructions from his
+employer not to crowd him about the interest at present, but to say to
+him that about the time the note would mature, Orchis would have heavy
+liabilities to meet, and therefore the note must at that time be
+certainly paid, and, of course, the back interest with it; and not only
+so, but, as Orchis had had to allow the interest for good part of the
+time, he hoped that, for the back interest, China Aster would, in
+reciprocation, have no objections to allowing interest on the interest
+annually. To be sure, this was not the law; but, between friends who
+accommodate each other, it was the custom.
+
+"Just then, Old Plain Talk with Old Prudence turned the corner, coming
+plump upon China Aster as the agent left him; and whether it was a
+sun-stroke, or whether they accidentally ran against him, or whether it
+was his being so weak, or whether it was everything together, or how it
+was exactly, there is no telling, but poor China Aster fell to the
+earth, and, striking his head sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a
+day in July; such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of the
+inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home on a door; lingered a few
+days with a wandering mind, and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead
+of night, when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into the other
+world.
+
+"Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom ever omitted attending
+any funeral, which, indeed, was their chief exercise--these two were
+among the sincerest mourners who followed the remains of the son of
+their ancient friend to the grave.
+
+"It is needless to tell of the executions that followed; how that the
+candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how Orchis never got a penny for his
+loan; and how, in the case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered
+with mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
+childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of complaint, at
+what she impatiently called the bitterness of her lot and the hardness
+of the world, so preyed upon her, as ere long to hurry her from the
+obscurity of indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.
+
+"But though the straits in which China Aster had left his family had,
+besides apparently dimming the world's regard, likewise seemed to dim
+its sense of the probity of its deceased head, and though this, as some
+thought, did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this case,
+as in others, that, though the world may for a time seem insensible to
+that merit which lies under a cloud, yet, sooner or later, it always
+renders honor where honor is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the
+freemen of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and an
+expression of their conviction of his high moral worth, passed a
+resolution, that, until they attained maturity, his children should be
+considered the town's guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of
+some public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were officially
+installed in that hospitable edifice where their worthy grandfather, the
+town's guest before them, had breathed his last breath.
+
+"But sometimes honor maybe paid to the memory of an honest man, and
+still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the
+candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
+and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two to place upon it,
+when there was discovered, in China Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an
+epitaph, written, probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended
+with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent with him for
+some months prior to his end. A memorandum on the back expressed the
+wish that it might be placed over his grave. Though with the sentiment
+of the epitaph Plain Talk did not disagree, he himself being at times of
+a hypochondriac turn--at least, so many said--yet the language struck
+him as too much drawn out; so, after consultation with Old Prudence, he
+decided upon making use of the epitaph, yet not without verbal
+retrenchments. And though, when these were made, the thing still
+appeared wordy to him, nevertheless, thinking that, since a dead man was
+to be spoken about, it was but just to let him speak for himself,
+especially when he spoke sincerely, and when, by so doing, the more
+salutary lesson would be given, he had the retrenched inscription
+chiseled as follows upon the stone.
+
+  'HERE LIE
+  THE REMAINS OF
+  CHINA ASTER THE CANDLE-MAKER,
+  WHOSE CAREER
+  WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE, AS FOUND
+  IN THE
+  SOBER PHILOSOPHY
+  OF
+  SOLOMON THE WISE;
+  FOR HE WAS RUINED BY ALLOWING HIMSELF TO BE PERSUADED,
+  AGAINST HIS BETTER SENSE,
+  INTO THE FREE INDULGENCE OF CONFIDENCE,
+  AND
+  AN ARDENTLY BRIGHT VIEW OF LIFE,
+  TO THE EXCLUSION
+  OF
+  THAT COUNSEL WHICH COMES BY HEEDING
+  THE
+  OPPOSITE VIEW.'
+
+"This inscription raised some talk in the town, and was rather severely
+criticised by the capitalist--one of a very cheerful turn--who had
+secured his loan to China Aster by the mortgage; and though it also
+proved obnoxious to the man who, in town-meeting, had first moved for
+the compliment to China Aster's memory, and, indeed, was deemed by him a
+sort of slur upon the candle-maker, to that degree that he refused to
+believe that the candle-maker himself had composed it, charging Old
+Plain Talk with the authorship, alleging that the internal evidence
+showed that none but that veteran old croaker could have penned such a
+jeremiade--yet, for all this, the stone stood. In everything, of course,
+Old Plain Talk was seconded by Old Prudence; who, one day going to the
+grave-yard, in great-coat and over-shoes--for, though it was a sunshiny
+morning, he thought that, owing to heavy dews, dampness might lurk in
+the ground--long stood before the stone, sharply leaning over on his
+staff, spectacles on nose, spelling out the epitaph word by word; and,
+afterwards meeting Old Plain Talk in the street, gave a great rap with
+his stick, and said: 'Friend, Plain Talk, that epitaph will do very
+well. Nevertheless, one short sentence is wanting.' Upon which, Plain
+Talk said it was too late, the chiseled words being so arranged, after
+the usual manner of such inscriptions, that nothing could be interlined.
+Then,' said Old Prudence, 'I will put it in the shape of a postscript.'
+Accordingly, with the approbation of Old Plain Talk, he had the
+following words chiseled at the left-hand corner of the stone, and
+pretty low down:
+
+  'The root of all was a friendly loan.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.
+
+
+"With what heart," cried Frank, still in character, "have you told me
+this story? A story I can no way approve; for its moral, if accepted,
+would drain me of all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my
+last courage in life. For, what was that bright view of China Aster but
+a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up a brave heart, worked hard, and
+ever hoped for the best, all at last would go well? If your purpose,
+Charlie, in telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you have
+succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence, I praise God
+you have not."
+
+"Confidence?" cried Charlie, who, on his side, seemed with his whole
+heart to enter into the spirit of the thing, "what has confidence to do
+with the matter? That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
+you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping a friend.
+For was not that loan of Orchis to China Aster the first step towards
+their estrangement? And did it not bring about what in effect was the
+enmity of Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
+precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And what more
+meddlesome between friends than a loan? A regular marplot. For how can
+you help that the helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
+friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most lenient case; since,
+out of lenity to forego one's claim, is less to be a friendly creditor
+than to cease to be a creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon
+this lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the worst, is
+subject to all mortal contingencies. He may travel, he may marry, he may
+join the Come-Outers, or some equally untoward school or sect, not to
+speak of other things that more or less tend to new-cast the character.
+And were there nothing else, who shall answer for his digestion, upon
+which so much depends?"
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie----"
+
+"Nay, wait.--You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see
+that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is
+no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain
+personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may
+hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
+from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in your present need, be
+willing to accept a loan from a friend, securing him by a mortgage on
+your homestead, and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel
+satisfied that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred into the
+hands of a foe? Yet the difference between this man and that man is not
+so great as the difference between what the same man be to-day and what
+he may be in days to come. For there is no bent of heart or turn of
+thought which any man holds by virtue of an unalterable nature or will.
+Even those feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
+right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal persuasions,
+they may in reality be but the result of some chance tip of Fate's elbow
+in throwing her dice. For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and
+passing by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that habit
+of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you change this man's
+experiences or that man's books, will wisdom go surety for his unchanged
+convictions? As particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
+experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I will hear nothing
+of that fine babble about development and its laws; there is no
+development in opinion and feeling but the developments of time and
+tide. You may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids me
+show you how fundamental the reasons for treating you as I do."
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are these? I thought that
+man was no poor drifting weed of the universe, as you phrased it; that,
+if so minded, he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of his
+own? But now you have turned everything upside down again, with an
+inconsistency that amazes and shocks me."
+
+"Inconsistency? Bah!"
+
+"There speaks the ventriloquist again," sighed Frank, in bitterness.
+
+Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion little
+flattering to his originality, however much so to his docility, the
+disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming: "Yes, I turn over day and
+night, with indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master, and
+unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing _there_ that leads
+me to think otherwise than I do. But enough: in this matter the
+experience of China Aster teaches a moral more to the point than
+anything Mark Winsome can offer, or I either."
+
+"I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China Aster, nor do I
+stand in his position. The loan to China Aster was to extend his
+business with; the loan I seek is to relieve my necessities."
+
+"Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your cheek is not gaunt. Why
+talk of necessities when nakedness and starvation beget the only real
+necessities?"
+
+"But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now conjure you to
+forget that I was ever your friend, while I apply to you only as a
+fellow-being, whom, surely, you will not turn away."
+
+"That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to the ground, and
+supplicate an alms of me in the way of London streets, and you shall not
+be a sturdy beggar in vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
+friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for the honor of
+noble friendship, I turn stranger."
+
+"Enough," cried the other, rising, and with a toss of his shoulders
+seeming disdainfully to throw off the character he had assumed.
+"Enough. I have had my fill of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put
+into action. And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
+philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself engaged I should find.
+But, miserable for my race should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when
+he claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that the study of
+it tended to much the same formation of character with the experiences
+of the world.--Apt disciple! Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil
+both of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool by the
+under ice of the heart? What your illustrious magian has taught you, any
+poor, old, broken-down, heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray,
+leave me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman philosophy.
+And here, take this shilling, and at the first wood-landing buy yourself
+a few chips to warm the frozen natures of you and your philosopher by."
+
+With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan turned on his heel,
+leaving his companion at a loss to determine where exactly the
+fictitious character had been dropped, and the real one, if any,
+resumed. If any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to him,
+as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar lines:
+
+                  "All the world's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players,
+    Who have their exits and their entrances,
+    And one man in his time plays many parts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S
+SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.
+
+
+"Bless you, barber!"
+
+Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber had been all alone
+until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather
+dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with
+Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two
+very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an
+arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man
+would believe under oath.
+
+In short, with back presented to the glare of his lamps, and so to the
+door, the honest barber was taking what are called cat-naps, and
+dreaming in his chair; so that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction
+above, pronounced in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake, he
+stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger stood behind. What
+with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments, therefore, the voice seemed a
+sort of spiritual manifestation to him; so that, for the moment, he
+stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the air.
+
+"Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds there with salt?"
+
+"Ah!" turning round disenchanted, "it is only a man, then."
+
+"_Only_ a man? As if to be but a man were nothing. But don't be too sure
+what I am. You call me _man_, just as the townsfolk called the angels
+who, in man's form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
+the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs. You can conclude
+nothing absolute from the human form, barber."
+
+"But I can conclude something from that sort of talk, with that sort of
+dress," shrewdly thought the barber, eying him with regained
+self-possession, and not without some latent touch of apprehension at
+being alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed divined by the
+other, who now, more rationally and gravely, and as if he expected it
+should be attended to, said: "Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
+my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave," at the same time
+loosening his neck-cloth. "Are you competent to a good shave, barber?"
+
+"No broker more so, sir," answered the barber, whom the business-like
+proposition instinctively made confine to business-ends his views of the
+visitor.
+
+"Broker? What has a broker to do with lather? A broker I have always
+understood to be a worthy dealer in certain papers and metals."
+
+"He, he!" taking him now for some dry sort of joker, whose jokes, he
+being a customer, it might be as well to appreciate, "he, he! You
+understand well enough, sir. Take this seat, sir," laying his hand on a
+great stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered, and
+raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed but to lack a canopy and
+quarterings, to make it in aspect quite a throne, "take this seat, sir."
+
+"Thank you," sitting down; "and now, pray, explain that about the
+broker. But look, look--what's this?" suddenly rising, and pointing,
+with his long pipe, towards a gilt notification swinging among colored
+fly-papers from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, "_No Trust?_" "No trust
+means distrust; distrust means no confidence. Barber," turning upon him
+excitedly, "what fell suspiciousness prompts this scandalous confession?
+My life!" stamping his foot, "if but to tell a dog that you have no
+confidence in him be matter for affront to the dog, what an insult to
+take that way the whole haughty race of man by the beard! By my heart,
+sir! but at least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites with
+the pluck of Agamemnon."
+
+"Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line," said the barber,
+rather ruefully, being now again hopeless of his customer, and not
+without return of uneasiness; "not in my line, sir," he emphatically
+repeated.
+
+"But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit, barber, which I
+sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a disrespect for man. For how,
+indeed, may respectful conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual
+habit of taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too, clearly
+see the import of your notification, I do not, as yet, perceive the
+object. What is it?"
+
+"Now you speak a little in my line, sir," said the barber, not
+unrelieved at this return to plain talk; "that notification I find very
+useful, sparing me much work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good
+deal, off and on, before putting that up," gratefully glancing towards
+it.
+
+"But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to say, in so many
+words, that you have no confidence? For instance, now," flinging aside
+his neck-cloth, throwing back his blouse, and reseating himself on the
+tonsorial throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber mechanically
+filled a cup with hot water from a copper vessel over a spirit-lamp,
+"for instance, now, suppose I say to you, 'Barber, my dear barber,
+unhappily I have no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
+depend upon your money to-morrow'--suppose I should say that now, you
+would put trust in me, wouldn't you? You would have confidence?"
+
+"Seeing that it is you, sir," with complaisance replied the barber, now
+mixing the lather, "seeing that it is _you_ sir, I won't answer that
+question. No need to."
+
+"Of course, of course--in that view. But, as a supposition--you would
+have confidence in me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Why--yes, yes."
+
+"Then why that sign?"
+
+"Ah, sir, all people ain't like you," was the smooth reply, at the same
+time, as if smoothly to close the debate, beginning smoothly to apply
+the lather, which operation, however, was, by a motion, protested
+against by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which was
+done in these words:
+
+"All people ain't like me. Then I must be either better or worse than
+most people. Worse, you could not mean; no, barber, you could not mean
+that; hardly that. It remains, then, that you think me better than most
+people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe; though, from vanity, I
+confess, I could never yet, by my best wrestlings, entirely free myself;
+nor, indeed, to be frank, am I at bottom over anxious to--this same
+vanity, barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
+pleasingly preposterous a passion."
+
+"Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk very well. But the
+lather is getting a little cold, sir."
+
+"Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why that cold sign? Ah,
+I don't wonder you try to shirk the confession. You feel in your soul
+how ungenerous a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
+your eyes--which somehow speak to me of the mother that must have so
+often looked into them before me--I dare say, though you may not think
+it, that the spirit of that notification is not one with your nature.
+For look now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing in an
+abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber; supposing, I say,
+you see a stranger, his face accidentally averted, but his visible part
+very respectable-looking; what now, barber--I put it to your conscience,
+to your charity--what would be your impression of that man, in a moral
+point of view? Being in a signal sense a stranger, would you, for that,
+signally set him down for a knave?"
+
+"Certainly not, sir; by no means," cried the barber, humanely resentful.
+
+"You would upon the face of him----"
+
+"Hold, sir," said the barber, "nothing about the face; you remember,
+sir, that is out of sight."
+
+"I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the _back_ of him, conclude
+him to be, not improbably, some worthy sort of person; in short, an
+honest man: wouldn't you?"
+
+"Not unlikely I should, sir."
+
+"Well now--don't be so impatient with your brush, barber--suppose that
+honest man meet you by night in some dark corner of the boat where his
+face would still remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave--how
+then?"
+
+"Wouldn't trust him, sir."
+
+"But is not an honest man to be trusted?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir."
+
+"There! don't you see, now?"
+
+"See what?" asked the disconcerted barber, rather vexedly.
+
+"Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't you?"
+
+"No," doggedly.
+
+"Barber," gravely, and after a pause of concern, "the enemies of our
+race have a saying that insincerity is the most universal and
+inveterate vice of man--the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of
+individuals or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
+on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?"
+
+"Hity-tity!" cried the barber, losing patience, and with it respect;
+"stubbornness?" Then clattering round the brush in the cup, "Will you be
+shaved, or won't you?"
+
+"Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise
+your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your
+teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you will have."
+
+"I take as much comfort in this world as you or any other man," cried
+the barber, whom the other's sweetness of temper seemed rather to
+exasperate than soothe.
+
+"To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness I have often
+observed to be peculiar to certain orders of men," said the other
+pensively, and half to himself, "just as to be indifferent to that
+imputation, from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
+grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to other kinds of men.
+Pray, barber," innocently looking up, "which think you is the superior
+creature?"
+
+"All this sort of talk," cried the barber, still unmollified, "is, as I
+told you once before, not in my line. In a few minutes I shall shut up
+this shop. Will you be shaved?"
+
+"Shave away, barber. What hinders?" turning up his face like a flower.
+
+The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at length it became
+necessary to prepare to relather a little--affording an opportunity for
+resuming the subject, which, on one side, was not let slip.
+
+"Barber," with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling his way, "barber,
+now have a little patience with me; do; trust me, I wish not to offend.
+I have been thinking over that supposed case of the man with the averted
+face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that, by your opposite
+replies to my questions at the time, you showed yourself much of a piece
+with a good many other men--that is, you have confidence, and then
+again, you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you think it sensible
+standing for a sensible man, one foot on confidence and the other on
+suspicion? Don't you think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
+think consistency requires that you should either say 'I have confidence
+in all men,' and take down your notification; or else say, 'I suspect
+all men,' and keep it up."
+
+This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting the case, did not
+fail to impress the barber, and proportionately conciliate him.
+Likewise, from its pointedness, it served to make him thoughtful; for,
+instead of going to the copper vessel for more water, as he had
+purposed, he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
+hand, said: "Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice. I don't say, and
+can't say, and wouldn't say, that I suspect all men; but I _do_ say that
+strangers are not to be trusted, and so," pointing up to the sign, "no
+trust."
+
+"But look, now, I beg, barber," rejoined the other deprecatingly, not
+presuming too much upon the barber's changed temper; "look, now; to say
+that strangers are not to be trusted, does not that imply something like
+saying that mankind is not to be trusted; for the mass of mankind, are
+they not necessarily strangers to each individual man? Come, come, my
+friend," winningly, "you are no Timon to hold the mass of mankind
+untrustworthy. Take down your notification; it is misanthropical; much
+the same sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of a skull
+stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber; take it down to-night. Trust
+men. Just try the experiment of trusting men for this one little trip.
+Come now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against losing a
+cent."
+
+The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, "Sir, you must excuse me.
+I have a family."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+VERY CHARMING.
+
+
+"So you are a philanthropist, sir," added the barber with an illuminated
+look; "that accounts, then, for all. Very odd sort of man the
+philanthropist. You are the second one, sir, I have seen. Very odd sort
+of man, indeed, the philanthropist. Ah, sir," again meditatively
+stirring in the shaving-cup, "I sadly fear, lest you philanthropists
+know better what goodness is, than what men are." Then, eying him as if
+he were some strange creature behind cage-bars, "So you are a
+philanthropist, sir."
+
+"I am Philanthropos, and love mankind. And, what is more than you do,
+barber, I trust them."
+
+Here the barber, casually recalled to his business, would have
+replenished his shaving-cup, but finding now that on his last visit to
+the water-vessel he had not replaced it over the lamp, he did so now;
+and, while waiting for it to heat again, became almost as sociable as if
+the heating water were meant for whisky-punch; and almost as pleasantly
+garrulous as the pleasant barbers in romances.
+
+"Sir," said he, taking a throne beside his customer (for in a row there
+were three thrones on the dais, as for the three kings of Cologne, those
+patron saints of the barber), "sir, you say you trust men. Well, I
+suppose I might share some of your trust, were it not for this trade,
+that I follow, too much letting me in behind the scenes."
+
+"I think I understand," with a saddened look; "and much the same thing I
+have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours--from the
+lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others,
+each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his
+vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the
+conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which
+testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some
+disturbance in a good man's mind. But no, no; it is a mistake--all a
+mistake."
+
+"True, sir, very true," assented the barber.
+
+"Glad to hear that," brightening up.
+
+"Not so fast, sir," said the barber; "I agree with you in thinking that
+the lawyer, and the congressman, and the editor, are in error, but only
+in so far as each claims peculiar facilities for the sort of knowledge
+in question; because, you see, sir, the truth is, that every trade or
+pursuit which brings one into contact with the facts, sir, such trade or
+pursuit is equally an avenue to those facts."
+
+"_How_ exactly is that?"
+
+"Why, sir, in my opinion--and for the last twenty years I have, at odd
+times, turned the matter over some in my mind--he who comes to know
+man, will not remain in ignorance of man. I think I am not rash in
+saying that; am I, sir?"
+
+"Barber, you talk like an oracle--obscurely, barber, obscurely."
+
+"Well, sir," with some self-complacency, "the barber has always been
+held an oracle, but as for the obscurity, that I don't admit."
+
+"But pray, now, by your account, what precisely may be this mysterious
+knowledge gained in your trade? I grant you, indeed, as before hinted,
+that your trade, imposing on you the necessity of functionally tweaking
+the noses of mankind, is, in that respect, unfortunate, very much so;
+nevertheless, a well-regulated imagination should be proof even to such
+a provocation to improper conceits. But what I want to learn from you,
+barber, is, how does the mere handling of the outside of men's heads
+lead you to distrust the inside of their hearts?
+
+"What, sir, to say nothing more, can one be forever dealing in macassar
+oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches, wigs, and toupees, and
+still believe that men are wholly what they look to be? What think you,
+sir, are a thoughtful barber's reflections, when, behind a careful
+curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and then dismisses
+it to the world, radiant in curling auburn? To contrast the shamefaced
+air behind the curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly
+discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the cheerful assurance
+and challenging pride with which the same man steps forth again, a gay
+deception, into the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow
+humbly gives him the wall! Ah, sir, they may talk of the courage of
+truth, but my trade teaches me that truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies,
+lies, sir, brave lies are the lions!"
+
+"You twist the moral, barber; you sadly twist it. Look, now; take it
+this way: A modest man thrust out naked into the street, would he not be
+abashed? Take him in and clothe him; would not his confidence be
+restored? And in either case, is any reproach involved? Now, what is
+true of the whole, holds proportionably true of the part. The bald head
+is a nakedness which the wig is a coat to. To feel uneasy at the
+possibility of the exposure of one's nakedness at top, and to feel
+comforted by the consciousness of having it clothed--these feelings,
+instead of being dishonorable to a bold man, do, in fact, but attest a
+proper respect for himself and his fellows. And as for the deception,
+you may as well call the fine roof of a fine chateau a deception, since,
+like a fine wig, it also is an artificial cover to the head, and
+equally, in the common eye, decorates the wearer.--I have confuted you,
+my dear barber; I have confounded you."
+
+"Pardon," said the barber, "but I do not see that you have. His coat and
+his roof no man pretends to palm off as a part of himself, but the bald
+man palms off hair, not his, for his own."
+
+"Not _his_, barber? If he have fairly purchased his hair, the law will
+protect him in its ownership, even against the claims of the head on
+which it grew. But it cannot be that you believe what you say, barber;
+you talk merely for the humor. I could not think so of you as to suppose
+that you would contentedly deal in the impostures you condemn."
+
+"Ah, sir, I must live."
+
+"And can't you do that without sinning against your conscience, as you
+believe? Take up some other calling."
+
+"Wouldn't mend the matter much, sir."
+
+"Do you think, then, barber, that, in a certain point, all the trades
+and callings of men are much on a par? Fatal, indeed," raising his hand,
+"inexpressibly dreadful, the trade of the barber, if to such conclusions
+it necessarily leads. Barber," eying him not without emotion, "you
+appear to me not so much a misbeliever, as a man misled. Now, let me set
+you on the right track; let me restore you to trust in human nature, and
+by no other means than the very trade that has brought you to suspect
+it."
+
+"You mean, sir, you would have me try the experiment of taking down that
+notification," again pointing to it with his brush; "but, dear me, while
+I sit chatting here, the water boils over."
+
+With which words, and such a well-pleased, sly, snug, expression, as
+they say some men have when they think their little stratagem has
+succeeded, he hurried to the copper vessel, and soon had his cup foaming
+up with white bubbles, as if it were a mug of new ale.
+
+Meantime, the other would have fain gone on with the discourse; but the
+cunning barber lathered him with so generous a brush, so piled up the
+foam on him, that his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and
+vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea
+to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must
+keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative
+way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last
+removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his
+face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last,
+addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly so, from his
+previous one. Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any more than to
+hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign way, not wholly unlike the
+manner, fabled or otherwise, of certain creatures in nature, which have
+the power of persuasive fascination--the power of holding another
+creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite the serious
+disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest, of the victim. With this
+manner the conclusion of the matter was not out of keeping; for, in the
+end, all argument and expostulation proved vain, the barber being
+irresistibly persuaded to agree to try, for the remainder of the present
+trip, the experiment of trusting men, as both phrased it. True, to save
+his credit as a free agent, he was loud in averring that it was only for
+the novelty of the thing that he so agreed, and he required the other,
+as before volunteered, to go security to him against any loss that might
+ensue; but still the fact remained, that he engaged to trust men, a
+thing he had before said he would not do, at least not unreservedly.
+Still the more to save his credit, he now insisted upon it, as a last
+point, that the agreement should be put in black and white, especially
+the security part. The other made no demur; pen, ink, and paper were
+provided, and grave as any notary the cosmopolitan sat down, but, ere
+taking the pen, glanced up at the notification, and said: "First down
+with that sign, barber--Timon's sign, there; down with it."
+
+This, being in the agreement, was done--though a little
+reluctantly--with an eye to the future, the sign being carefully put
+away in a drawer.
+
+"Now, then, for the writing," said the cosmopolitan, squaring himself.
+"Ah," with a sigh, "I shall make a poor lawyer, I fear. Ain't used, you
+see, barber, to a business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds
+no nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber," taking up the blank paper,
+"that such flimsy stuff as this should make such strong hawsers; vile
+hawsers, too. Barber," starting up, "I won't put it in black and white.
+It were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your word, and
+you shall take mine."
+
+"But your memory may be none of the best, sir. Well for you, on your
+side, to have it in black and white, just for a memorandum like, you
+know."
+
+"That, indeed! Yes, and it would help _your_ memory, too, wouldn't it,
+barber? Yours, on your side, being a little weak, too, I dare say. Ah,
+barber! how ingenious we human beings are; and how kindly we reciprocate
+each other's little delicacies, don't we? What better proof, now, that
+we are kind, considerate fellows, with responsive fellow-feelings--eh,
+barber? But to business. Let me see. What's your name, barber?"
+
+"William Cream, sir."
+
+Pondering a moment, he began to write; and, after some corrections,
+leaned back, and read aloud the following:
+
+     "AGREEMENT
+     Between
+     FRANK GOODMAN, Philanthropist, and Citizen of the World,
+     and
+     WILLIAM CREAM, Barber of the Mississippi steamer, Fidèle.
+
+     "The first hereby agrees to make good to the last any loss that may
+     come from his trusting mankind, in the way of his vocation, for the
+     residue of the present trip; PROVIDED that William Cream keep out
+     of sight, for the given term, his notification of NO TRUST, and by
+     no other mode convey any, the least hint or intimation, tending to
+     discourage men from soliciting trust from him, in the way of his
+     vocation, for the time above specified; but, on the contrary, he
+     do, by all proper and reasonable words, gestures, manners, and
+     looks, evince a perfect confidence in all men, especially
+     strangers; otherwise, this agreement to be void.
+
+     "Done, in good faith, this 1st day of April 18--, at a quarter to
+     twelve o'clock, P. M., in the shop of said William Cream, on board
+     the said boat, Fidèle."
+
+"There, barber; will that do?"
+
+"That will do," said the barber, "only now put down your name."
+
+Both signatures being affixed, the question was started by the barber,
+who should have custody of the instrument; which point, however, he
+settled for himself, by proposing that both should go together to the
+captain, and give the document into his hands--the barber hinting that
+this would be a safe proceeding, because the captain was necessarily a
+party disinterested, and, what was more, could not, from the nature of
+the present case, make anything by a breach of trust. All of which was
+listened to with some surprise and concern.
+
+"Why, barber," said the cosmopolitan, "this don't show the right spirit;
+for me, I have confidence in the captain purely because he is a man; but
+he shall have nothing to do with our affair; for if you have no
+confidence in me, barber, I have in you. There, keep the paper
+yourself," handing it magnanimously.
+
+"Very good," said the barber, "and now nothing remains but for me to
+receive the cash."
+
+Though the mention of that word, or any of its singularly numerous
+equivalents, in serious neighborhood to a requisition upon one's purse,
+is attended with a more or less noteworthy effect upon the human
+countenance, producing in many an abrupt fall of it--in others, a
+writhing and screwing up of the features to a point not undistressing to
+behold, in some, attended with a blank pallor and fatal
+consternation--yet no trace of any of these symptoms was visible upon
+the countenance of the cosmopolitan, notwithstanding nothing could be
+more sudden and unexpected than the barber's demand.
+
+"You speak of cash, barber; pray in what connection?"
+
+"In a nearer one, sir," answered the barber, less blandly, "than I
+thought the man with the sweet voice stood, who wanted me to trust him
+once for a shave, on the score of being a sort of thirteenth cousin."
+
+"Indeed, and what did you say to him?"
+
+"I said, 'Thank you, sir, but I don't see the connection,'"
+
+"How could you so unsweetly answer one with a sweet voice?"
+
+"Because, I recalled what the son of Sirach says in the True Book: 'An
+enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips;' and so I did what the son of
+Sirach advises in such cases: 'I believed not his many words.'"
+
+"What, barber, do you say that such cynical sort of things are in the
+True Book, by which, of course, you mean the Bible?"
+
+"Yes, and plenty more to the same effect. Read the Book of Proverbs."
+
+"That's strange, now, barber; for I never happen to have met with those
+passages you cite. Before I go to bed this night, I'll inspect the Bible
+I saw on the cabin-table, to-day. But mind, you mustn't quote the True
+Book that way to people coming in here; it would be impliedly a
+violation of the contract. But you don't know how glad I feel that you
+have for one while signed off all that sort of thing."
+
+"No, sir; not unless you down with the cash."
+
+"Cash again! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, in this paper here, you engage, sir, to insure me against a
+certain loss, and----"
+
+"Certain? Is it so _certain_ you are going to lose?"
+
+"Why, that way of taking the word may not be amiss, but I didn't mean
+it so. I meant a _certain_ loss; you understand, a CERTAIN loss; that is
+to say, a certain loss. Now then, sir, what use your mere writing and
+saying you will insure me, unless beforehand you place in my hands a
+money-pledge, sufficient to that end?"
+
+"I see; the material pledge."
+
+"Yes, and I will put it low; say fifty dollars."
+
+"Now what sort of a beginning is this? You, barber, for a given time
+engage to trust man, to put confidence in men, and, for your first step,
+make a demand implying no confidence in the very man you engage with.
+But fifty dollars is nothing, and I would let you have it cheerfully,
+only I unfortunately happen to have but little change with me just now."
+
+"But you have money in your trunk, though?"
+
+"To be sure. But you see--in fact, barber, you must be consistent. No, I
+won't let you have the money now; I won't let you violate the inmost
+spirit of our contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you
+again."
+
+"Stay, sir"--humming and hawing--"you have forgotten something."
+
+"Handkerchief?--gloves? No, forgotten nothing. Good-night."
+
+"Stay, sir--the--the shaving."
+
+"Ah, I _did_ forget that. But now that it strikes me, I shan't pay you
+at present. Look at your agreement; you must trust. Tut! against loss
+you hold the guarantee. Good-night, my dear barber."
+
+With which words he sauntered off, leaving the barber in a maze, staring
+after.
+
+But it holding true in fascination as in natural philosophy, that
+nothing can act where it is not, so the barber was not long now in being
+restored to his self-possession and senses; the first evidence of which
+perhaps was, that, drawing forth his notification from the drawer, he
+put it back where it belonged; while, as for the agreement, that he tore
+up; which he felt the more free to do from the impression that in all
+human probability he would never again see the person who had drawn it.
+Whether that impression proved well-founded or not, does not appear. But
+in after days, telling the night's adventure to his friends, the worthy
+barber always spoke of his queer customer as the man-charmer--as certain
+East Indians are called snake-charmers--and all his friends united in
+thinking him QUITE AN ORIGINAL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF
+DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM
+THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
+
+
+"Quite an original:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the
+young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the
+well-read, or the man who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense
+of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its
+lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences.
+
+As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on
+meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes
+hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score
+such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in
+the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to
+say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel,
+or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.
+
+More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are
+no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is.
+But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
+up?
+
+Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in
+town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the
+novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the
+cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are
+hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters--that
+is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this,
+that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to
+speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.
+
+In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of
+personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there,
+as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or
+the founder of a new religion.
+
+In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works
+of invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of
+the age; which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the
+claim, judged by the principles here suggested.
+
+Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle
+characters in fiction to being deemed original, is but something
+personal--confined to itself. The character sheds not its characteristic
+on its surroundings, whereas, the original character, essentially such,
+is like a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all round
+it--everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is
+with Hamlet), so that, in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate
+conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
+which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things.
+
+For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so
+can there be but one such original character to one work of invention.
+Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more
+than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for
+new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining
+and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To
+produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen
+much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he
+must have had much luck.
+
+There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon
+in fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's
+imagination--it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life
+is from the egg.
+
+In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase,
+_Quite an Original_, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at
+unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps
+upon the smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned to, will be,
+by retiring under cover of it, in good trim as may be, to the story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN INCREASES IN SERIOUSNESS.
+
+
+In the middle of the gentleman's cabin burned a solar lamp, swung from
+the ceiling, and whose shade of ground glass was all round fancifully
+variegated, in transparency, with the image of a horned altar, from
+which flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed man, his head
+encircled by a halo. The light of this lamp, after dazzlingly striking
+on marble, snow-white and round--the slab of a centre-table beneath--on
+all sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness, till,
+like circles from a stone dropped in water, the rays died dimly away in
+the furthest nook of the place.
+
+Here and there, true to their place, but not to their function, swung
+other lamps, barren planets, which had either gone out from exhaustion,
+or been extinguished by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
+or who wanted to sleep, not see.
+
+By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining lamp would have
+been extinguished as well, had not a steward forbade, saying that the
+commands of the captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
+light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who, like many in
+his vocation, was apt to be a little free-spoken at times, had been
+provoked by the man's pertinacity to remind him, not only of the sad
+consequences which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being left
+in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that, in a place full of
+strangers, to show one's self anxious to produce darkness there, such an
+anxiety was, to say the least, not becoming. So the lamp--last survivor
+of many--burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some berths, and
+inwardly execrated by those in others.
+
+Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which lighted his book on
+the table, sat a clean, comely, old man, his head snowy as the marble,
+and a countenance like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
+when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed him and
+departed in peace. From his hale look of greenness in winter, and his
+hands ingrained with the tan, less, apparently, of the present summer,
+than of accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do farmer,
+happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity, from the fields to
+the fireside--one of those who, at three-score-and-ten, are
+fresh-hearted as at fifteen; to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed
+than knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted by the world,
+because ignorant of it; just as a countryman putting up at a London inn,
+and never stirring out of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last
+without once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.
+
+Redolent from the barber's shop, as any bridegroom tripping to the
+bridal chamber might come, and by his look of cheeriness seeming to
+dispense a sort of morning through the night, in came the cosmopolitan;
+but marking the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned himself down,
+and trod softly, and took a seat on the other side of the table, and
+said nothing. Still, there was a kind of waiting expression about him.
+
+"Sir," said the old man, after looking up puzzled at him a moment,
+"sir," said he, "one would think this was a coffee-house, and it was
+war-time, and I had a newspaper here with great news, and the only copy
+to be had, you sit there looking at me so eager."
+
+"And so you _have_ good news there, sir--the very best of good news."
+
+"Too good to be true," here came from one of the curtained berths.
+
+"Hark!" said the cosmopolitan. "Some one talks in his sleep."
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "and you--_you_ seem to be talking in a dream.
+Why speak you, sir, of news, and all that, when you must see this is a
+book I have here--the Bible, not a newspaper?"
+
+"I know that; and when you are through with it--but not a moment
+sooner--I will thank you for it. It belongs to the boat, I believe--a
+present from a society."
+
+"Oh, take it, take it!"
+
+"Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I simply stated the fact
+in explanation of my waiting here--nothing more. Read on, sir, or you
+will distress me."
+
+This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his spectacles, and
+saying he had about finished his chapter, the old man kindly presented
+the volume, which was received with thanks equally kind. After reading
+for some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness into
+seriousness, and from that into a kind of pain, the cosmopolitan slowly
+laid down the book, and turning to the old man, who thus far had been
+watching him with benign curiosity, said: "Can you, my aged friend,
+resolve me a doubt--a disturbing doubt?"
+
+"There are doubts, sir," replied the old man, with a changed
+countenance, "there are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not
+man that can solve them."
+
+"True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one who thinks well of man.
+I love man. I have confidence in man. But what was told me not a
+half-hour since? I was told that I would find it written--'Believe not
+his many words--an enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips'--and also I was
+told that I would find a good deal more to the same effect, and all in
+this book. I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself,
+what do I read? Not only just what was quoted, but also, as was engaged,
+more to the same purpose, such as this: 'With much communication he will
+tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair, and say What
+wantest thou? If thou be for his profit he will use thee; he will make
+thee bear, and will not be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed.
+When thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.'"
+
+"Who's that describing the confidence-man?" here came from the berth
+again.
+
+"Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan,
+again looking off in surprise. "Same voice as before, ain't it? Strange
+sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?"
+
+"Never mind _him_, sir," said the old man anxiously, "but tell me truly,
+did you, indeed, read from the book just now?"
+
+"I did," with changed air, "and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster
+in man; to me, a philanthropist."
+
+"Why," moved, "you don't mean to say, that what you repeated is really
+down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years,
+and don't remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it," rising
+earnestly, and going round to him.
+
+"There it is; and there--and there"--turning over the leaves, and
+pointing to the sentences one by one; "there--all down in the 'Wisdom of
+Jesus, the Son of Sirach.'"
+
+"Ah!" cried the old man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the
+leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one
+side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers
+he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the
+right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but
+all I hold in my hand here is apocrypha."
+
+"Apocrypha?"
+
+"Yes; and there's the word in black and white," pointing to it. "And
+what says the word? It says as much as 'not warranted;' for what do
+college men say of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal. The
+word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies something of uncertain
+credit. So if your disturbance be raised from aught in this apocrypha,"
+again taking up the pages, "in that case, think no more of it, for it's
+apocrypha."
+
+"What's that about the Apocalypse?" here, a third time, came from the
+berth.
+
+"He's seeing visions now, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan, once more
+looking in the direction of the interruption. "But, sir," resuming, "I
+cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the
+apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when
+all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part
+should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did
+those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I
+never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man.
+This son of Sirach even says--I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy
+friends;' not, observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends,
+thy false friends, but thy _friends_, thy real friends--that is to say,
+not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly trusted. Can
+Rochefoucault equal that? I should not wonder if his view of human
+nature, like Machiavelli's, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And to
+call it wisdom--the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach! Wisdom, indeed! What an
+ugly thing wisdom must be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek,
+say I, rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But no, no; it
+ain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir. For how can that be
+trustworthy that teaches distrust?"
+
+"I tell you what it is," here cried the same voice as before, only more
+in less of mockery, "if you two don't know enough to sleep, don't be
+keeping wiser men awake. And if you want to know what wisdom is, go find
+it under your blankets."
+
+"Wisdom?" cried another voice with a brogue; "arrah and is't wisdom the
+two geese are gabbling about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils,
+and don't be after burning your fingers with the likes of wisdom."
+
+"We must talk lower," said the old man; "I fear we have annoyed these
+good people."
+
+"I should be sorry if wisdom annoyed any one," said the other; "but we
+will lower our voices, as you say. To resume: taking the thing as I did,
+can you be surprised at my uneasiness in reading passages so charged
+with the spirit of distrust?"
+
+"No, sir, I am not surprised," said the old man; then added: "from what
+you say, I see you are something of my way of thinking--you think that
+to distrust the creature, is a kind of distrusting of the Creator. Well,
+my young friend, what is it? This is rather late for you to be about.
+What do you want of me?"
+
+These questions were put to a boy in the fragment of an old linen coat,
+bedraggled and yellow, who, coming in from the deck barefooted on the
+soft carpet, had been unheard. All pointed and fluttering, the rags of
+the little fellow's red-flannel shirt, mixed with those of his yellow
+coat, flamed about him like the painted flames in the robes of a victim
+in _auto-da-fe_. His face, too, wore such a polish of seasoned grime,
+that his sloe-eyes sparkled from out it like lustrous sparks in fresh
+coal. He was a juvenile peddler, or _marchand_, as the polite French
+might have called him, of travelers' conveniences; and, having no
+allotted sleeping-place, had, in his wanderings about the boat, spied,
+through glass doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was,
+thought it might never be too much so for turning a penny.
+
+Among other things, he carried a curious affair--a miniature mahogany
+door, hinged to its frame, and suitably furnished in all respects but
+one, which will shortly appear. This little door he now meaningly held
+before the old man, who, after staring at it a while, said: "Go thy ways
+with thy toys, child."
+
+"Now, may I never get so old and wise as that comes to," laughed the boy
+through his grime; and, by so doing, disclosing leopard-like teeth, like
+those of Murillo's wild beggar-boy's.
+
+"The divils are laughing now, are they?" here came the brogue from the
+berth. "What do the divils find to laugh about in wisdom, begorrah? To
+bed with ye, ye divils, and no more of ye."
+
+"You see, child, you have disturbed that person," said the old man; "you
+mustn't laugh any more."
+
+"Ah, now," said the cosmopolitan, "don't, pray, say that; don't let him
+think that poor Laughter is persecuted for a fool in this world."
+
+"Well," said the old man to the boy, "you must, at any rate, speak very
+low."
+
+"Yes, that wouldn't be amiss, perhaps," said the cosmopolitan; "but, my
+fine fellow, you were about saying something to my aged friend here;
+what was it?"
+
+"Oh," with a lowered voice, coolly opening and shutting his little door,
+"only this: when I kept a toy-stand at the fair in Cincinnati last
+month, I sold more than one old man a child's rattle."
+
+"No doubt of it," said the old man. "I myself often buy such things for
+my little grandchildren."
+
+"But these old men I talk of were old bachelors."
+
+The old man stared at him a moment; then, whispering to the
+cosmopolitan: "Strange boy, this; sort of simple, ain't he? Don't know
+much, hey?"
+
+"Not much," said the boy, "or I wouldn't be so ragged."
+
+"Why, child, what sharp ears you have!" exclaimed the old man.
+
+"If they were duller, I would hear less ill of myself," said the boy.
+
+"You seem pretty wise, my lad," said the cosmopolitan; "why don't you
+sell your wisdom, and buy a coat?"
+
+"Faith," said the boy, "that's what I did to-day, and this is the coat
+that the price of my wisdom bought. But won't you trade? See, now, it
+is not the door I want to sell; I only carry the door round for a
+specimen, like. Look now, sir," standing the thing up on the table,
+"supposing this little door is your state-room door; well," opening it,
+"you go in for the night; you close your door behind you--thus. Now, is
+all safe?"
+
+"I suppose so, child," said the old man.
+
+"Of course it is, my fine fellow," said the cosmopolitan.
+
+"All safe. Well. Now, about two o'clock in the morning, say, a
+soft-handed gentleman comes softly and tries the knob here--thus; in
+creeps my soft-handed gentleman; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft
+cash?"
+
+"I see, I see, child," said the old man; "your fine gentleman is a fine
+thief, and there's no lock to your little door to keep him out;" with
+which words he peered at it more closely than before.
+
+"Well, now," again showing his white teeth, "well, now, some of you old
+folks are knowing 'uns, sure enough; but now comes the great invention,"
+producing a small steel contrivance, very simple but ingenious, and
+which, being clapped on the inside of the little door, secured it as
+with a bolt. "There now," admiringly holding it off at arm's-length,
+"there now, let that soft-handed gentleman come now a' softly trying
+this little knob here, and let him keep a' trying till he finds his head
+as soft as his hand. Buy the traveler's patent lock, sir, only
+twenty-five cents."
+
+"Dear me," cried the old man, "this beats printing. Yes, child, I will
+have one, and use it this very night."
+
+With the phlegm of an old banker pouching the change, the boy now turned
+to the other: "Sell you one, sir?"
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use such blacksmiths' things."
+
+"Those who give the blacksmith most work seldom do," said the boy,
+tipping him a wink expressive of a degree of indefinite knowingness, not
+uninteresting to consider in one of his years. But the wink was not
+marked by the old man, nor, to all appearances, by him for whom it was
+intended.
+
+"Now then," said the boy, again addressing the old man. "With your
+traveler's lock on your door to-night, you will think yourself all safe,
+won't you?"
+
+"I think I will, child."
+
+"But how about the window?"
+
+"Dear me, the window, child. I never thought of that. I must see to
+that."
+
+"Never you mind about the window," said the boy, "nor, to be honor
+bright, about the traveler's lock either, (though I ain't sorry for
+selling one), do you just buy one of these little jokers," producing a
+number of suspender-like objects, which he dangled before the old man;
+"money-belts, sir; only fifty cents."
+
+"Money-belt? never heard of such a thing."
+
+"A sort of pocket-book," said the boy, "only a safer sort. Very good for
+travelers."
+
+"Oh, a pocket-book. Queer looking pocket-books though, seems to me.
+Ain't they rather long and narrow for pocket-books?"
+
+"They go round the waist, sir, inside," said the boy "door open or
+locked, wide awake on your feet or fast asleep in your chair, impossible
+to be robbed with a money-belt."
+
+"I see, I see. It _would_ be hard to rob one's money-belt. And I was
+told to-day the Mississippi is a bad river for pick-pockets. How much
+are they?"
+
+"Only fifty cents, sir."
+
+"I'll take one. There!"
+
+"Thank-ee. And now there's a present for ye," with which, drawing from
+his breast a batch of little papers, he threw one before the old man,
+who, looking at it, read "_Counterfeit Detector_."
+
+"Very good thing," said the boy, "I give it to all my customers who
+trade seventy-five cents' worth; best present can be made them. Sell you
+a money-belt, sir?" turning to the cosmopolitan.
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that sort of thing; my money
+I carry loose."
+
+"Loose bait ain't bad," said the boy, "look a lie and find the truth;
+don't care about a Counterfeit Detector, do ye? or is the wind East,
+d'ye think?"
+
+"Child," said the old man in some concern, "you mustn't sit up any
+longer, it affects your mind; there, go away, go to bed."
+
+"If I had some people's brains to lie on. I would," said the boy, "but
+planks is hard, you know."
+
+"Go, child--go, go!"
+
+"Yes, child,--yes, yes," said the boy, with which roguish parody, by way
+of congé, he scraped back his hard foot on the woven flowers of the
+carpet, much as a mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
+in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat--which, like the
+rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard times, a belonging beyond his
+years, though not beyond his experience, being a grown man's cast-off
+beaver--turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the place.
+
+"That's a strange boy," said the old man, looking after him. "I wonder
+who's his mother; and whether she knows what late hours he keeps?"
+
+"The probability is," observed the other, "that his mother does not
+know. But if you remember, sir, you were saying something, when the boy
+interrupted you with his door."
+
+"So I was.--Let me see," unmindful of his purchases for the moment,
+"what, now, was it? What was that I was saying? Do _you_ remember?"
+
+"Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was something like
+this: you hoped you did not distrust the creature; for that would imply
+distrust of the Creator."
+
+"Yes, that was something like it," mechanically and unintelligently
+letting his eye fall now on his purchases.
+
+"Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?"
+
+"It's best, ain't it?" with a slight start. "Never too late to be
+cautious. 'Beware of pick-pockets' is all over the boat."
+
+"Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or some other morbid
+cynic, who put them there. But that's not to the purpose. Since you are
+minded to it, pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
+between us, we can make a secure thing of it."
+
+"Oh no, no, no!" said the old man, not unperturbed, "no, no, I wouldn't
+trouble you for the world," then, nervously folding up the belt, "and I
+won't be so impolite as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
+now that I think of it," after a pause, carefully taking a little wad
+from a remote corner of his vest pocket, "here are two bills they gave
+me at St. Louis, yesterday. No doubt they are all right; but just to
+pass time, I'll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed boy to make
+me such a present. Public benefactor, that little boy!"
+
+Laying the Detector square before him on the table, he then, with
+something of the air of an officer bringing by the collar a brace of
+culprits to the bar, placed the two bills opposite the Detector, upon
+which, the examination began, lasting some time, prosecuted with no
+small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the right hand proving
+of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out and pointing the evidence,
+whichever way it might go.
+
+After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in a formal voice,
+"Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman; guilty, or not guilty?--Not guilty,
+ain't it?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed, "there's
+so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind of uncertain.
+Here, now, is this bill," touching one, "it looks to be a three dollar
+bill on the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company. Well, the
+Detector says----"
+
+"But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and Insurance! What
+more would you have?"
+
+"No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things, that, if a good
+bill, it must have, thickened here and there into the substance of the
+paper, little wavy spots of red; and it says they must have a kind of
+silky feel, being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred up
+in the paper-maker's vat--the paper being made to order for the
+company."
+
+"Well, and is----"
+
+"Stay. But then it adds, that sign is not always to be relied on; for
+some good bills get so worn, the red marks get rubbed out. And that's
+the case with my bill here--see how old it is--or else it's a
+counterfeit, or else--I don't see right--or else--dear, dear me--I don't
+know what else to think."
+
+"What a peck of trouble that Detector makes for you now; believe me, the
+bill is good; don't be so distrustful. Proves what I've always thought,
+that much of the want of confidence, in these days, is owing to these
+Counterfeit Detectors you see on every desk and counter. Puts people up
+to suspecting good bills. Throw it away, I beg, if only because of the
+trouble it breeds you."
+
+"No; it's troublesome, but I think I'll keep it.--Stay, now, here's
+another sign. It says that, if the bill is good, it must have in one
+corner, mixed in with the vignette, the figure of a goose, very small,
+indeed, all but microscopic; and, for added precaution, like the figure
+of Napoleon outlined by the tree, not observable, even if magnified,
+unless the attention is directed to it. Now, pore over it as I will, I
+can't see this goose."
+
+"Can't see the goose? why, I can; and a famous goose it is. There"
+(reaching over and pointing to a spot in the vignette).
+
+"I don't see it--dear me--I don't see the goose. Is it a real goose?"
+
+"A perfect goose; beautiful goose."
+
+"Dear, dear, I don't see it."
+
+"Then throw that Detector away, I say again; it only makes you purblind;
+don't you see what a wild-goose chase it has led you? The bill is good.
+Throw the Detector away."
+
+"No; it ain't so satisfactory as I thought for, but I must examine this
+other bill."
+
+"As you please, but I can't in conscience assist you any more; pray,
+then, excuse me."
+
+So, while the old man with much painstakings resumed his work, the
+cosmopolitan, to allow him every facility, resumed his reading. At
+length, seeing that he had given up his undertaking as hopeless, and was
+at leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravely interesting
+remarks to him about the book before him, and, presently, becoming more
+and more grave, said, as he turned the large volume slowly over on the
+table, and with much difficulty traced the faded remains of the gilt
+inscription giving the name of the society who had presented it to the
+boat, "Ah, sir, though every one must be pleased at the thought of the
+presence in public places of such a book, yet there is something that
+abates the satisfaction. Look at this volume; on the outside, battered
+as any old valise in the baggage-room; and inside, white and virgin as
+the hearts of lilies in bud."
+
+"So it is, so it is," said the old man sadly, his attention for the
+first directed to the circumstance.
+
+"Nor is this the only time," continued the other, "that I have observed
+these public Bibles in boats and hotels. All much like this--old
+without, and new within. True, this aptly typifies that internal
+freshness, the best mark of truth, however ancient; but then, it speaks
+not so well as could be wished for the good book's esteem in the minds
+of the traveling public. I may err, but it seems to me that if more
+confidence was put in it by the traveling public, it would hardly be
+so."
+
+With an expression very unlike that with which he had bent over the
+Detector, the old man sat meditating upon his companions remarks a
+while; and, at last, with a rapt look, said: "And yet, of all people,
+the traveling public most need to put trust in that guardianship which
+is made known in this book."
+
+"True, true," thoughtfully assented the other. "And one would think they
+would want to, and be glad to," continued the old man kindling; "for,
+in all our wanderings through this vale, how pleasant, not less than
+obligatory, to feel that we need start at no wild alarms, provide for no
+wild perils; trusting in that Power which is alike able and willing to
+protect us when we cannot ourselves."
+
+His manner produced something answering to it in the cosmopolitan, who,
+leaning over towards him, said sadly: "Though this is a theme on which
+travelers seldom talk to each other, yet, to you, sir, I will say, that
+I share something of your sense of security. I have moved much about the
+world, and still keep at it; nevertheless, though in this land, and
+especially in these parts of it, some stories are told about steamboats
+and railroads fitted to make one a little apprehensive, yet, I may say
+that, neither by land nor by water, am I ever seriously disquieted,
+however, at times, transiently uneasy; since, with you, sir, I believe
+in a Committee of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an
+invisible patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose beat lies
+as much through forests as towns, along rivers as streets. In short, I
+never forget that passage of Scripture which says, 'Jehovah shall be thy
+confidence.' The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable
+misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted care must he take
+of himself."
+
+"Even so," said the old man, lowly.
+
+"There is a chapter," continued the other, again taking the book,
+"which, as not amiss, I must read you. But this lamp, solar-lamp as it
+is, begins to burn dimly."
+
+"So it does, so it does," said the old man with changed air, "dear me,
+it must be very late. I must to bed, to bed! Let me see," rising and
+looking wistfully all round, first on the stools and settees, and then
+on the carpet, "let me see, let me see;--is there anything I have
+forgot,--forgot? Something I a sort of dimly remember. Something, my
+son--careful man--told me at starting this morning, this very morning.
+Something about seeing to--something before I got into my berth. What
+could it be? Something for safety. Oh, my poor old memory!"
+
+"Let me give a little guess, sir. Life-preserver?"
+
+"So it was. He told me not to omit seeing I had a life-preserver in my
+state-room; said the boat supplied them, too. But where are they? I
+don't see any. What are they like?"
+
+"They are something like this, sir, I believe," lifting a brown stool
+with a curved tin compartment underneath; "yes, this, I think, is a
+life-preserver, sir; and a very good one, I should say, though I don't
+pretend to know much about such things, never using them myself."
+
+"Why, indeed, now! Who would have thought it? _that_ a life-preserver?
+That's the very stool I was sitting on, ain't it?"
+
+"It is. And that shows that one's life is looked out for, when he ain't
+looking out for it himself. In fact, any of these stools here will float
+you, sir, should the boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But,
+since you want one in your room, pray take this one," handing it to him.
+"I think I can recommend this one; the tin part," rapping it with his
+knuckles, "seems so perfect--sounds so very hollow."
+
+"Sure it's _quite_ perfect, though?" Then, anxiously putting on his
+spectacles, he scrutinized it pretty closely--"well soldered? quite
+tight?"
+
+"I should say so, sir; though, indeed, as I said, I never use this sort
+of thing, myself. Still, I think that in case of a wreck, barring
+sharp-pointed timbers, you could have confidence in that stool for a
+special providence."
+
+"Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have both of us in its
+good keeping."
+
+"Be sure it will," eying the old man with sympathy, as for the moment he
+stood, money-belt in hand, and life-preserver under arm, "be sure it
+will, sir, since in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.
+But, bless me, we are being left in the dark here. Pah! what a smell,
+too."
+
+"Ah, my way now," cried the old man, peering before him, "where lies my
+way to my state-room?"
+
+"I have indifferent eyes, and will show you; but, first, for the good of
+all lungs, let me extinguish this lamp."
+
+The next moment, the waning light expired, and with it the waning flames
+of the horned altar, and the waning halo round the robed man's brow;
+while in the darkness which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old
+man away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note and Errata                                |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following words were seen in both hyphenated and         |
+  | un-hyphenated forms:                                         |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |church-yard (2) |churchyard (1) |                           |
+  | |cross-wise (1)  |crosswise (1)  |                           |
+  | |thread-bare (1) |threadbare (1) |                           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following typographical errors were corrected:           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |Error               |Correction          |                  |
+  | |                    |                    |                  |
+  | |ACQUANTANCE         |ACQUAINTANCE        |                  |
+  | |prevailent          |prevalent           |                  |
+  | |the the             |the                 |                  |
+  | |tranquillity        |tranquility         |                  |
+  | |abox                |a box               |                  |
+  | |acommodates         |accommodates        |                  |
+  | |have have           |have                |                  |
+  | |worldlingg, lutton, |worldling, glutton, |                  |
+  | |backswoods'         |backwoods'          |                  |
+  | |it it               |it is               |                  |
+  | |fellew              |fellow              |                  |
+  | |principal           |principle           |                  |
+  | |it it               |it                  |                  |
+  | |everwhere           |everywhere          |                  |
+  | |SUPRISING           |SURPRISING          |                  |
+  | |freind              |friend              |                  |
+  |                                                              |
+  | One 'oe' ligature was replaced with oe.                      |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville
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@@ -0,0 +1,11425 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Confidence-Man
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21816]
+Last Updated: February 11, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFIDENCE-MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by LN Yaddanapudi and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFIDENCE-MAN:
+HIS MASQUERADE.
+
+BY
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+AUTHOR OF "PIAZZA TALES," "OMOO," "TYPEE," ETC., ETC.
+
+NEW YORK:
+DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY
+1857.
+
+
+Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
+HERMAN MELVILLE,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+MILLER & HOLMAN,
+Printers and Stereotypers, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A mute goes aboard a boat on the Mississippi.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Showing that many men have many minds.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+In which a variety of characters appear.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Renewal of old acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The man with the weed makes it an even question whether he be a great
+sage or a great simpleton.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+At the outset of which certain passengers prove deaf to the call of
+charity.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A gentleman with gold sleeve-buttons.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A charitable lady.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Two business men transact a little business.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+In the cabin.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Only a page or so.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The story of the unfortunate man, from which may be gathered whether or
+no he has been justly so entitled.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The man with the traveling-cap evinces much humanity, and in a way which
+would seem to show him to be one of the most logical of optimists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+An old miser, upon suitable representations, is prevailed upon to
+venture an investment.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A sick man, after some impatience, is induced to become a patient.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Towards the end of which the Herb-Doctor proves himself a forgiver of
+injuries.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Inquest into the true character of the Herb-Doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A soldier of fortune.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Reappearance of one who may be remembered.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A hard case.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+In the polite spirit of the Tusculan disputations.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+In which the powerful effect of natural scenery is evinced in the case
+of the Missourian, who, in view of the region round about Cairo, has a
+return of his chilly fit.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A philanthropist undertakes to convert a misanthrope, but does not get
+beyond confuting him.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan makes an acquaintance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Containing the metaphysics of Indian-hating, according to the views of
+one evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in favor of savages.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Some account of a man of questionable morality, but who, nevertheless,
+would seem entitled to the esteem of that eminent English moralist who
+said he liked a good hater.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Moot points touching the late Colonel John Moredock.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+The boon companions.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Opening with a poetical eulogy of the Press, and continuing with talk
+inspired by the same.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A metamorphosis more surprising than any in Ovid.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Showing that the age of music and magicians is not yet over.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan tells the story of the gentleman-madman.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan strikingly evinces the artlessness of his
+nature.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+In which the Cosmopolitan is accosted by a mystic, whereupon ensues
+pretty much such talk as might be expected.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+The mystical master introduces the practical disciple.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+The disciple unbends, and consents to act a social part.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+The hypothetical friends.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+In which the story of China Aster is, at second-hand, told by one who,
+while not disapproving the moral, disclaims the spirit of the style.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+Ending with a rupture of the hypothesis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+Upon the heel of the last scene, the Cosmopolitan enters the barber's
+shop, a benediction on his lips.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+Very charming.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of
+the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention
+from those readers who do not skip it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+The Cosmopolitan increases in seriousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
+
+
+At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac
+at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the
+city of St. Louis.
+
+His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur
+one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag,
+nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends.
+From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd,
+it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a
+stranger.
+
+In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite
+steamer Fidele, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but
+unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but
+evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities,
+he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a
+placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of
+a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East;
+quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though
+wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what
+purported to be a careful description of his person followed.
+
+As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the
+announcement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was
+plain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of
+them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were
+enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these
+chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another
+chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular
+safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile
+chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the
+bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers
+Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky--creatures,
+with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for
+the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same
+regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause
+for unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think
+that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes
+increase.
+
+Pausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded in threading his
+way, as at last to plant himself just beside the placard, when,
+producing a small slate and tracing some words upon if, he held it up
+before him on a level with the placard, so that they who read the one
+might read the other. The words were these:--
+
+"Charity thinketh no evil."
+
+As, in gaining his place, some little perseverance, not to say
+persistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been unavoidable, it was
+not with the best relish that the crowd regarded his apparent intrusion;
+and upon a more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about
+him, but rather something quite the contrary--he being of an aspect so
+singularly innocent; an aspect too, which they took to be somehow
+inappropriate to the time and place, and inclining to the notion that
+his writing was of much the same sort: in short, taking him for some
+strange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself,
+but not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder--they made no scruple to
+jostle him aside; while one, less kind than the rest, or more of a wag,
+by an unobserved stroke, dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon
+his head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly turned, and
+writing anew upon the slate, again held it up:--
+
+"Charity suffereth long, and is kind."
+
+Illy pleased with his pertinacity, as they thought it, the crowd a
+second time thrust him aside, and not without epithets and some buffets,
+all of which were unresented. But, as if at last despairing of so
+difficult an adventure, wherein one, apparently a non-resistant, sought
+to impose his presence upon fighting characters, the stranger now moved
+slowly away, yet not before altering his writing to this:--
+
+"Charity endureth all things."
+
+Shield-like bearing his slate before him, amid stares and jeers he moved
+slowly up and down, at his turning points again changing his inscription
+to--
+
+"Charity believeth all things."
+
+and then--
+
+"Charity never faileth."
+
+The word charity, as originally traced, remained throughout uneffaced,
+not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date, otherwise left for
+convenience in blank.
+
+To some observers, the singularity, if not lunacy, of the stranger was
+heightened by his muteness, and, perhaps also, by the contrast to his
+proceedings afforded in the actions--quite in the wonted and sensible
+order of things--of the barber of the boat, whose quarters, under a
+smoking-saloon, and over against a bar-room, was next door but two to
+the captain's office. As if the long, wide, covered deck, hereabouts
+built up on both sides with shop-like windowed spaces, were some
+Constantinople arcade or bazaar, where more than one trade is plied,
+this river barber, aproned and slippered, but rather crusty-looking for
+the moment, it may be from being newly out of bed, was throwing open
+his premises for the day, and suitably arranging the exterior. With
+business-like dispatch, having rattled down his shutters, and at a
+palm-tree angle set out in the iron fixture his little ornamental pole,
+and this without overmuch tenderness for the elbows and toes of the
+crowd, he concluded his operations by bidding people stand still more
+aside, when, jumping on a stool, he hung over his door, on the customary
+nail, a gaudy sort of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed
+by himself, gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in readiness to
+shave, and also, for the public benefit, with two words not unfrequently
+seen ashore gracing other shops besides barbers':--
+
+"NO TRUST."
+
+An inscription which, though in a sense not less intrusive than the
+contrasted ones of the stranger, did not, as it seemed, provoke any
+corresponding derision or surprise, much less indignation; and still
+less, to all appearances, did it gain for the inscriber the repute of
+being a simpleton.
+
+Meanwhile, he with the slate continued moving slowly up and down, not
+without causing some stares to change into jeers, and some jeers into
+pushes, and some pushes into punches; when suddenly, in one of his
+turns, he was hailed from behind by two porters carrying a large trunk;
+but as the summons, though loud, was without effect, they accidentally
+or otherwise swung their burden against him, nearly overthrowing him;
+when, by a quick start, a peculiar inarticulate moan, and a pathetic
+telegraphing of his fingers, he involuntarily betrayed that he was not
+alone dumb, but also deaf.
+
+Presently, as if not wholly unaffected by his reception thus far, he
+went forward, seating himself in a retired spot on the forecastle, nigh
+the foot of a ladder there leading to a deck above, up and down which
+ladder some of the boatmen, in discharge of their duties, were
+occasionally going.
+
+From his betaking himself to this humble quarter, it was evident that,
+as a deck-passenger, the stranger, simple though he seemed, was not
+entirely ignorant of his place, though his taking a deck-passage might
+have been partly for convenience; as, from his having no luggage, it was
+probable that his destination was one of the small wayside landings
+within a few hours' sail. But, though he might not have a long way to
+go, yet he seemed already to have come from a very long distance.
+
+Though neither soiled nor slovenly, his cream-colored suit had a tossed
+look, almost linty, as if, traveling night and day from some far country
+beyond the prairies, he had long been without the solace of a bed. His
+aspect was at once gentle and jaded, and, from the moment of seating
+himself, increasing in tired abstraction and dreaminess. Gradually
+overtaken by slumber, his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like
+figure relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder's foot, lay
+motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly stealing down
+over night, with its white placidity startles the brown farmer peering
+out from his threshold at daybreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SHOWING THAT MANY MEN HAVE MANY MINDS.
+
+
+"Odd fish!"
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+"Who can he be?"
+
+"Casper Hauser."
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+"Uncommon countenance."
+
+"Green prophet from Utah."
+
+"Humbug!"
+
+"Singular innocence."
+
+"Means something."
+
+"Spirit-rapper."
+
+"Moon-calf."
+
+"Piteous."
+
+"Trying to enlist interest."
+
+"Beware of him."
+
+"Fast asleep here, and, doubtless, pick-pockets on board."
+
+"Kind of daylight Endymion."
+
+"Escaped convict, worn out with dodging."
+
+"Jacob dreaming at Luz."
+
+Such the epitaphic comments, conflictingly spoken or thought, of a
+miscellaneous company, who, assembled on the overlooking, cross-wise
+balcony at the forward end of the upper deck near by, had not witnessed
+preceding occurrences.
+
+Meantime, like some enchanted man in his grave, happily oblivious of all
+gossip, whether chiseled or chatted, the deaf and dumb stranger still
+tranquilly slept, while now the boat started on her voyage.
+
+The great ship-canal of Ving-King-Ching, in the Flowery Kingdom, seems
+the Mississippi in parts, where, amply flowing between low, vine-tangled
+banks, flat as tow-paths, it bears the huge toppling steamers, bedizened
+and lacquered within like imperial junks.
+
+Pierced along its great white bulk with two tiers of small
+embrasure-like windows, well above the waterline, the Fiddle, though,
+might at distance have been taken by strangers for some whitewashed fort
+on a floating isle.
+
+Merchants on 'change seem the passengers that buzz on her decks, while,
+from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Fine
+promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential
+passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes, and
+out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers in an escritoire, present
+like facilities for publicity or privacy. Auctioneer or coiner, with
+equal ease, might somewhere here drive his trade.
+
+Though her voyage of twelve hundred miles extends from apple to orange,
+from clime to clime, yet, like any small ferry-boat, to right and left,
+at every landing, the huge Fidele still receives additional passengers
+in exchange for those that disembark; so that, though always full of
+strangers, she continually, in some degree, adds to, or replaces them
+with strangers still more strange; like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed from
+the Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters,
+but never with the same strange particles in every part.
+
+Though hitherto, as has been seen, the man in cream-colors had by no
+means passed unobserved, yet by stealing into retirement, and there
+going asleep and continuing so, he seemed to have courted oblivion, a
+boon not often withheld from so humble an applicant as he. Those staring
+crowds on the shore were now left far behind, seen dimly clustering like
+swallows on eaves; while the passengers' attention was soon drawn away
+to the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers on the Missouri
+shore, or the bluff-looking Missourians and towering Kentuckians among
+the throngs on the decks.
+
+By-and-by--two or three random stoppages having been made, and the last
+transient memory of the slumberer vanished, and he himself, not
+unlikely, waked up and landed ere now--the crowd, as is usual, began in
+all parts to break up from a concourse into various clusters or squads,
+which in some cases disintegrated again into quartettes, trios, and
+couples, or even solitaires; involuntarily submitting to that natural
+law which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in time to the
+member.
+
+As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing
+the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of
+variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men
+of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters;
+heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters,
+happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all
+these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern
+speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch,
+Danes; Santa Fe traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in
+cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and
+Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters; Quakers in full drab, and
+United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto,
+quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews;
+Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotalers
+and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists and
+clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests.
+In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all
+kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.
+
+As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood,
+maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals
+blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like
+picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned
+the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the
+Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and
+opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan
+and confident tide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN WHICH A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS APPEAR.
+
+
+In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive object, for a
+time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in tow-cloth attire and an old
+coal-sifter of a tamborine in his hand, who, owing to something wrong
+about his legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a
+Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest
+black face rubbing against the upper part of people's thighs as he made
+shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was, and raising a
+smile even from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his very
+deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily endured, raising
+mirth in some of that crowd, whose own purses, hearths, hearts, all
+their possessions, sound limbs included, could not make gay.
+
+"What is your name, old boy?" said a purple-faced drover, putting his
+large purple hand on the cripple's bushy wool, as if it were the curled
+forehead of a black steer.
+
+"Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar."
+
+"And who is your master, Guinea?"
+
+"Oh sar, I am der dog widout massa."
+
+"A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I'm sorry for that, Guinea. Dogs
+without masters fare hard."
+
+"So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What
+ge'mman want to own dese here legs?"
+
+"But where do you live?"
+
+"All 'long shore, sar; dough now. I'se going to see brodder at der
+landing; but chiefly I libs in dey city."
+
+"St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of nights?"
+
+"On der floor of der good baker's oven, sar."
+
+"In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should like to know, bakes such
+black bread in his oven, alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is
+that too charitable baker, pray?"
+
+"Dar he be," with a broad grin lifting his tambourine high over his
+head.
+
+"The sun is the baker, eh?"
+
+"Yes sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones for dis ole darkie
+when he sleeps out on der pabements o' nights."
+
+"But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when
+the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old
+boy?"
+
+"Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh sar, oh!
+don't speak ob der winter," he added, with a reminiscent shiver,
+shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black
+sheep nudging itself a cozy berth in the heart of the white flock.
+
+Thus far not very many pennies had been given him, and, used at last to
+his strange looks, the less polite passengers of those in that part of
+the boat began to get their fill of him as a curious object; when
+suddenly the negro more than revived their first interest by an
+expedient which, whether by chance or design, was a singular temptation
+at once to _diversion_ and charity, though, even more than his crippled
+limbs, it put him on a canine footing. In short, as in appearance he
+seemed a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to be treated.
+Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing
+back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples
+at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a
+bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple's mouth being at
+once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a
+cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject of alms-giving is
+trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under
+the trial, must be still more so; but whatever his secret emotions, he
+swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this side the
+oesophagus. And nearly always he grinned, and only once or twice did
+he wince, which was when certain coins, tossed by more playful almoners,
+came inconveniently nigh to his teeth, an accident whose unwelcomeness
+was not unedged by the circumstance that the pennies thus thrown proved
+buttons.
+
+While this game of charity was yet at its height, a limping,
+gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person--it may be some discharged custom-house
+officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had
+concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself
+miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting everything and
+everybody--this shallow unfortunate, after sundry sorry observations of
+the negro, began to croak out something about his deformity being a
+sham, got up for financial purposes, which immediately threw a damp upon
+the frolic benignities of the pitch-penny players.
+
+But that these suspicions came from one who himself on a wooden leg went
+halt, this did not appear to strike anybody present. That cripples,
+above all men should be companionable, or, at least, refrain from
+picking a fellow-limper to pieces, in short, should have a little
+sympathy in common misfortune, seemed not to occur to the company.
+
+Meantime, the negro's countenance, before marked with even more than
+patient good-nature, drooped into a heavy-hearted expression, full of
+the most painful distress. So far abased beneath its proper physical
+level, that Newfoundland-dog face turned in passively hopeless appeal,
+as if instinct told it that the right or the wrong might not have
+overmuch to do with whatever wayward mood superior intelligences might
+yield to.
+
+But instinct, though knowing, is yet a teacher set below reason, which
+itself says, in the grave words of Lysander in the comedy, after Puck
+has made a sage of him with his spell:--
+
+"The will of man is by his reason swayed."
+
+So that, suddenly change as people may, in their dispositions, it is not
+always waywardness, but improved judgment, which, as in Lysander's case,
+or the present, operates with them.
+
+Yes, they began to scrutinize the negro curiously enough; when,
+emboldened by this evidence of the efficacy of his words, the
+wooden-legged man hobbled up to the negro, and, with the air of a
+beadle, would, to prove his alleged imposture on the spot, have stripped
+him and then driven him away, but was prevented by the crowd's clamor,
+now taking part with the poor fellow, against one who had just before
+turned nearly all minds the other way. So he with the wooden leg was
+forced to retire; when the rest, finding themselves left sole judges in
+the case, could not resist the opportunity of acting the part: not
+because it is a human weakness to take pleasure in sitting in judgment
+upon one in a box, as surely this unfortunate negro now was, but that it
+strangely sharpens human perceptions, when, instead of standing by and
+having their fellow-feelings touched by the sight of an alleged culprit
+severely handled by some one justiciary, a crowd suddenly come to be all
+justiciaries in the same case themselves; as in Arkansas once, a man
+proved guilty, by law, of murder, but whose condemnation was deemed
+unjust by the people, so that they rescued him to try him themselves;
+whereupon, they, as it turned out, found him even guiltier than the
+court had done, and forthwith proceeded to execution; so that the
+gallows presented the truly warning spectacle of a man hanged by his
+friends.
+
+But not to such extremities, or anything like them, did the present
+crowd come; they, for the time, being content with putting the negro
+fairly and discreetly to the question; among other things, asking him,
+had he any documentary proof, any plain paper about him, attesting that
+his case was not a spurious one.
+
+"No, no, dis poor ole darkie haint none o' dem waloable papers," he
+wailed.
+
+"But is there not some one who can speak a good word for you?" here said
+a person newly arrived from another part of the boat, a young Episcopal
+clergyman, in a long, straight-bodied black coat; small in stature, but
+manly; with a clear face and blue eye; innocence, tenderness, and good
+sense triumvirate in his air.
+
+"Oh yes, oh yes, ge'mmen," he eagerly answered, as if his memory, before
+suddenly frozen up by cold charity, as suddenly thawed back into
+fluidity at the first kindly word. "Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here a
+werry nice, good ge'mman wid a weed, and a ge'mman in a gray coat and
+white tie, what knows all about me; and a ge'mman wid a big book, too;
+and a yarb-doctor; and a ge'mman in a yaller west; and a ge'mman wid a
+brass plate; and a ge'mman in a wiolet robe; and a ge'mman as is a
+sodjer; and ever so many good, kind, honest ge'mmen more aboard what
+knows me and will speak for me, God bress 'em; yes, and what knows me as
+well as dis poor old darkie knows hisself, God bress him! Oh, find 'em,
+find 'em," he earnestly added, "and let 'em come quick, and show you
+all, ge'mmen, dat dis poor ole darkie is werry well wordy of all you
+kind ge'mmen's kind confidence."
+
+"But how are we to find all these people in this great crowd?" was the
+question of a bystander, umbrella in hand; a middle-aged person, a
+country merchant apparently, whose natural good-feeling had been made at
+least cautious by the unnatural ill-feeling of the discharged
+custom-house officer.
+
+"Where are we to find them?" half-rebukefully echoed the young Episcopal
+clergymen. "I will go find one to begin with," he quickly added, and,
+with kind haste suiting the action to the word, away he went.
+
+"Wild goose chase!" croaked he with the wooden leg, now again drawing
+nigh. "Don't believe there's a soul of them aboard. Did ever beggar have
+such heaps of fine friends? He can walk fast enough when he tries, a
+good deal faster than I; but he can lie yet faster. He's some white
+operator, betwisted and painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are
+all humbugs."
+
+"Have you no charity, friend?" here in self-subdued tones, singularly
+contrasted with his unsubdued person, said a Methodist minister,
+advancing; a tall, muscular, martial-looking man, a Tennessean by birth,
+who in the Mexican war had been volunteer chaplain to a volunteer
+rifle-regiment.
+
+"Charity is one thing, and truth is another," rejoined he with the
+wooden leg: "he's a rascal, I say."
+
+"But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction as one can upon
+the poor fellow?" said the soldierlike Methodist, with increased
+difficulty maintaining a pacific demeanor towards one whose own asperity
+seemed so little to entitle him to it: "he looks honest, don't he?"
+
+"Looks are one thing, and facts are another," snapped out the other
+perversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction can you put
+upon a rascal, but that a rascal he is?"
+
+"Be not such a Canada thistle," urged the Methodist, with something less
+of patience than before. "Charity, man, charity."
+
+"To where it belongs with your charity! to heaven with it!" again
+snapped out the other, diabolically; "here on earth, true charity dotes,
+and false charity plots. Who betrays a fool with a kiss, the charitable
+fool has the charity to believe is in love with him, and the charitable
+knave on the stand gives charitable testimony for his comrade in the
+box."
+
+"Surely, friend," returned the noble Methodist, with much ado
+restraining his still waxing indignation--"surely, to say the least, you
+forget yourself. Apply it home," he continued, with exterior calmness
+tremulous with inkept emotion. "Suppose, now, I should exercise no
+charity in judging your own character by the words which have fallen
+from you; what sort of vile, pitiless man do you think I would take you
+for?"
+
+"No doubt"--with a grin--"some such pitiless man as has lost his piety
+in much the same way that the jockey loses his honesty."
+
+"And how is that, friend?" still conscientiously holding back the old
+Adam in him, as if it were a mastiff he had by the neck.
+
+"Never you mind how it is"--with a sneer; "but all horses aint virtuous,
+no more than all men kind; and come close to, and much dealt with, some
+things are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I will find you
+a benevolent wise man."
+
+"Some insinuation there."
+
+"More fool you that are puzzled by it."
+
+"Reprobate!" cried the other, his indignation now at last almost boiling
+over; "godless reprobate! if charity did not restrain me, I could call
+you by names you deserve."
+
+"Could you, indeed?" with an insolent sneer.
+
+"Yea, and teach you charity on the spot," cried the goaded Methodist,
+suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar,
+and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a
+nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?--thought, seedy
+coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You
+find your mistake"--with another hearty shake.
+
+"Well said and better done, church militant!" cried a voice.
+
+"The white cravat against the world!" cried another.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" chorused many voices, with like enthusiasm taking sides
+with the resolute champion.
+
+"You fools!" cried he with the wooden leg, writhing himself loose and
+inflamedly turning upon the throng; "you flock of fools, under this
+captain of fools, in this ship of fools!"
+
+With which exclamations, followed by idle threats against his
+admonisher, this condign victim to justice hobbled away, as disdaining
+to hold further argument with such a rabble. But his scorn was more than
+repaid by the hisses that chased him, in which the brave Methodist,
+satisfied with the rebuke already administered, was, to omit still
+better reasons, too magnanimous to join. All he said was, pointing
+towards the departing recusant, "There he shambles off on his one lone
+leg, emblematic of his one-sided view of humanity."
+
+"But trust your painted decoy," retorted the other from a distance,
+pointing back to the black cripple, "and I have my revenge."
+
+"But we aint agoing to trust him!" shouted back a voice.
+
+"So much the better," he jeered back. "Look you," he added, coming to a
+dead halt where he was; "look you, I have been called a Canada thistle.
+Very good. And a seedy one: still better. And the seedy Canada thistle
+has been pretty well shaken among ye: best of all. Dare say some seed
+has been shaken out; and won't it spring though? And when it does
+spring, do you cut down the young thistles, and won't they spring the
+more? It's encouraging and coaxing 'em. Now, when with my thistles your
+farms shall be well stocked, why then--you may abandon 'em!"
+
+"What does all that mean, now?" asked the country merchant, staring.
+
+"Nothing; the foiled wolf's parting howl," said the Methodist. "Spleen,
+much spleen, which is the rickety child of his evil heart of unbelief:
+it has made him mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh,
+friends," raising his arms as in the pulpit, "oh beloved, how are we
+admonished by the melancholy spectacle of this raver. Let us profit by
+the lesson; and is it not this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence,
+there be aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting
+his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses full of tragic mopers, and
+seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness
+muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped
+over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and
+starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot at him."
+
+"What an example," whispered one.
+
+"Might deter Timon," was the response.
+
+"Oh, oh, good ge'mmen, have you no confidence in dis poor ole darkie?"
+now wailed the returning negro, who, during the late scene, had stumped
+apart in alarm.
+
+"Confidence in you?" echoed he who had whispered, with abruptly changed
+air turning short round; "that remains to be seen."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Ebony," in similarly changed tones said he who
+had responded to the whisperer, "yonder churl," pointing toward the
+wooden leg in the distance, "is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough, and
+I would not wish to be like him; but that is no reason why you may not
+be some sort of black Jeremy Diddler."
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie, den?"
+
+"Before giving you our confidence," said a third, "we will wait the
+report of the kind gentleman who went in search of one of your friends
+who was to speak for you."
+
+"Very likely, in that case," said a fourth, "we shall wait here till
+Christmas. Shouldn't wonder, did we not see that kind gentleman again.
+After seeking awhile in vain, he will conclude he has been made a fool
+of, and so not return to us for pure shame. Fact is, I begin to feel a
+little qualmish about the darkie myself. Something queer about this
+darkie, depend upon it."
+
+Once more the negro wailed, and turning in despair from the last
+speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist by the skirt of his coat. But
+a change had come over that before impassioned intercessor. With an
+irresolute and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant; against whom,
+somehow, by what seemed instinctive influences, the distrusts first set
+on foot were now generally reviving, and, if anything, with added
+severity.
+
+"No confidence in dis poor ole darkie," yet again wailed the negro,
+letting go the coat-skirts and turning appealingly all round him.
+
+"Yes, my poor fellow _I_ have confidence in you," now exclaimed the
+country merchant before named, whom the negro's appeal, coming so
+piteously on the heel of pitilessness, seemed at last humanely to have
+decided in his favor. "And here, here is some proof of my trust," with
+which, tucking his umbrella under his arm, and diving down his hand into
+his pocket, he fished forth a purse, and, accidentally, along with it,
+his business card, which, unobserved, dropped to the deck. "Here, here,
+my poor fellow," he continued, extending a half dollar.
+
+Not more grateful for the coin than the kindness, the cripple's face
+glowed like a polished copper saucepan, and shuffling a pace nigher,
+with one upstretched hand he received the alms, while, as unconsciously,
+his one advanced leather stump covered the card.
+
+Done in despite of the general sentiment, the good deed of the merchant
+was not, perhaps, without its unwelcome return from the crowd, since
+that good deed seemed somehow to convey to them a sort of reproach.
+Still again, and more pertinaciously than ever, the cry arose against
+the negro, and still again he wailed forth his lament and appeal among
+other things, repeating that the friends, of whom already he had
+partially run off the list, would freely speak for him, would anybody go
+find them.
+
+"Why don't you go find 'em yourself?" demanded a gruff boatman.
+
+"How can I go find 'em myself? Dis poor ole game-legged darkie's friends
+must come to him. Oh, whar, whar is dat good friend of dis darkie's, dat
+good man wid de weed?"
+
+At this point, a steward ringing a bell came along, summoning all
+persons who had not got their tickets to step to the captain's office;
+an announcement which speedily thinned the throng about the black
+cripple, who himself soon forlornly stumped out of sight, probably on
+much the same errand as the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RENEWAL OF OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Don't you know me?"
+
+"No, certainly."
+
+The crowd about the captain's office, having in good time melted away,
+the above encounter took place in one of the side balconies astern,
+between a man in mourning clean and respectable, but none of the
+glossiest, a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant
+before-mentioned, whom, with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, the
+former had accosted.
+
+"Is it possible, my dear sir," resumed he with the weed, "that you do
+not recall my countenance? why yours I recall distinctly as if but half
+an hour, instead of half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don't you
+recall me, now? Look harder."
+
+"In my conscience--truly--I protest," honestly bewildered, "bless my
+soul, sir, I don't know you--really, really. But stay, stay," he
+hurriedly added, not without gratification, glancing up at the crape on
+the stranger's hat, "stay--yes--seems to me, though I have not the
+pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am pretty sure I have at least
+_heard_ of you, and recently too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard
+here referred to you, among others, for a character, I think."
+
+"Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well. They found me. I have
+said all I could for him. I think I abated their distrust. Would I could
+have been of more substantial service. And apropos, sir," he added, "now
+that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the circumstance of one
+man, however humble, referring for a character to another man, however
+afflicted, does not argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?"
+
+The good merchant looked puzzled.
+
+"Still you don't recall my countenance?"
+
+"Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot, despite my best
+efforts," was the reluctantly-candid reply.
+
+"Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who am mistaken?--Are you
+not, sir, Henry Roberts, forwarding merchant, of Wheeling, Pennsylvania?
+Pray, now, if you use the advertisement of business cards, and happen to
+have one with you, just look at it, and see whether you are not the man
+I take you for."
+
+"Why," a bit chafed, perhaps, "I hope I know myself."
+
+"And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my
+dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else?
+Stranger things have happened."
+
+The good merchant stared.
+
+"To come to particulars, my dear sir, I met you, now some six years
+back, at Brade Brothers & Co's office, I think. I was traveling for a
+Philadelphia house. The senior Brade introduced us, you remember; some
+business-chat followed, then you forced me home with you to a family
+tea, and a family time we had. Have you forgotten about the urn, and
+what I said about Werter's Charlotte, and the bread and butter, and that
+capital story you told of the large loaf. A hundred times since, I have
+laughed over it. At least you must recall my name--Ringman, John
+Ringman."
+
+"Large loaf? Invited you to tea? Ringman? Ringman? Ring? Ring?"
+
+"Ah sir," sadly smiling, "don't ring the changes that way. I see you
+have a faithless memory, Mr. Roberts. But trust in the faithfulness of
+mine."
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, in some things my memory aint of the very
+best," was the honest rejoinder. "But still," he perplexedly added,
+"still I----"
+
+"Oh sir, suffice it that it is as I say. Doubt not that we are all well
+acquainted."
+
+"But--but I don't like this going dead against my own memory; I----"
+
+"But didn't you admit, my dear sir, that in some things this memory of
+yours is a little faithless? Now, those who have faithless memories,
+should they not have some little confidence in the less faithless
+memories of others?"
+
+"But, of this friendly chat and tea, I have not the slightest----"
+
+"I see, I see; quite erased from the tablet. Pray, sir," with a sudden
+illumination, "about six years back, did it happen to you to receive any
+injury on the head? Surprising effects have arisen from such a cause.
+Not alone unconsciousness as to events for a greater or less time
+immediately subsequent to the injury, but likewise--strange to
+add--oblivion, entire and incurable, as to events embracing a longer or
+shorter period immediately preceding it; that is, when the mind at the
+time was perfectly sensible of them, and fully competent also to
+register them in the memory, and did in fact so do; but all in vain, for
+all was afterwards bruised out by the injury."
+
+After the first start, the merchant listened with what appeared more
+than ordinary interest. The other proceeded:
+
+"In my boyhood I was kicked by a horse, and lay insensible for a long
+time. Upon recovering, what a blank! No faintest trace in regard to how
+I had come near the horse, or what horse it was, or where it was, or
+that it was a horse at all that had brought me to that pass. For the
+knowledge of those particulars I am indebted solely to my friends, in
+whose statements, I need not say, I place implicit reliance, since
+particulars of some sort there must have been, and why should they
+deceive me? You see sir, the mind is ductile, very much so: but images,
+ductilely received into it, need a certain time to harden and bake in
+their impressions, otherwise such a casualty as I speak of will in an
+instant obliterate them, as though they had never been. We are but clay,
+sir, potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and
+too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize. Tell me, was it your
+misfortune to receive any concussion upon the brain about the period I
+speak of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your memory by
+more minutely rehearsing the circumstances of our acquaintance."
+
+The growing interest betrayed by the merchant had not relaxed as the
+other proceeded. After some hesitation, indeed, something more than
+hesitation, he confessed that, though he had never received any injury
+of the sort named, yet, about the time in question, he had in fact been
+taken with a brain fever, losing his mind completely for a considerable
+interval. He was continuing, when the stranger with much animation
+exclaimed:
+
+"There now, you see, I was not wholly mistaken. That brain fever
+accounts for it all."
+
+"Nay; but----"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Roberts," respectfully interrupting him, "but time is
+short, and I have something private and particular to say to you. Allow
+me."
+
+Mr. Roberts, good man, could but acquiesce, and the two having silently
+walked to a less public spot, the manner of the man with the weed
+suddenly assumed a seriousness almost painful. What might be called a
+writhing expression stole over him. He seemed struggling with some
+disastrous necessity inkept. He made one or two attempts to speak, but
+words seemed to choke him. His companion stood in humane surprise,
+wondering what was to come. At length, with an effort mastering his
+feelings, in a tolerably composed tone he spoke:
+
+"If I remember, you are a mason, Mr. Roberts?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Averting himself a moment, as to recover from a return of agitation, the
+stranger grasped the other's hand; "and would you not loan a brother a
+shilling if he needed it?"
+
+The merchant started, apparently, almost as if to retreat.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Roberts, I trust you are not one of those business men, who
+make a business of never having to do with unfortunates. For God's sake
+don't leave me. I have something on my heart--on my heart. Under
+deplorable circumstances thrown among strangers, utter strangers. I want
+a friend in whom I may confide. Yours, Mr. Roberts, is almost the first
+known face I've seen for many weeks."
+
+It was so sudden an outburst; the interview offered such a contrast to
+the scene around, that the merchant, though not used to be very
+indiscreet, yet, being not entirely inhumane, remained not entirely
+unmoved.
+
+The other, still tremulous, resumed:
+
+"I need not say, sir, how it cuts me to the soul, to follow up a social
+salutation with such words as have just been mine. I know that I
+jeopardize your good opinion. But I can't help it: necessity knows no
+law, and heeds no risk. Sir, we are masons, one more step aside; I will
+tell you my story."
+
+In a low, half-suppressed tone, he began it. Judging from his auditor's
+expression, it seemed to be a tale of singular interest, involving
+calamities against which no integrity, no forethought, no energy, no
+genius, no piety, could guard.
+
+At every disclosure, the hearer's commiseration increased. No
+sentimental pity. As the story went on, he drew from his wallet a bank
+note, but after a while, at some still more unhappy revelation, changed
+it for another, probably of a somewhat larger amount; which, when the
+story was concluded, with an air studiously disclamatory of alms-giving,
+he put into the stranger's hands; who, on his side, with an air
+studiously disclamatory of alms-taking, put it into his pocket.
+
+Assistance being received, the stranger's manner assumed a kind and
+degree of decorum which, under the circumstances, seemed almost
+coldness. After some words, not over ardent, and yet not exactly
+inappropriate, he took leave, making a bow which had one knows not what
+of a certain chastened independence about it; as if misery, however
+burdensome, could not break down self-respect, nor gratitude, however
+deep, humiliate a gentleman.
+
+He was hardly yet out of sight, when he paused as if thinking; then with
+hastened steps returning to the merchant, "I am just reminded that the
+president, who is also transfer-agent, of the Black Rapids Coal Company,
+happens to be on board here, and, having been subpoenaed as witness in a
+stock case on the docket in Kentucky, has his transfer-book with him. A
+month since, in a panic contrived by artful alarmists, some credulous
+stock-holders sold out; but, to frustrate the aim of the alarmists, the
+Company, previously advised of their scheme, so managed it as to get
+into its own hands those sacrificed shares, resolved that, since a
+spurious panic must be, the panic-makers should be no gainers by it. The
+Company, I hear, is now ready, but not anxious, to redispose of those
+shares; and having obtained them at their depressed value, will now sell
+them at par, though, prior to the panic, they were held at a handsome
+figure above. That the readiness of the Company to do this is not
+generally known, is shown by the fact that the stock still stands on the
+transfer-book in the Company's name, offering to one in funds a rare
+chance for investment. For, the panic subsiding more and more every day,
+it will daily be seen how it originated; confidence will be more than
+restored; there will be a reaction; from the stock's descent its rise
+will be higher than from no fall, the holders trusting themselves to
+fear no second fate."
+
+Having listened at first with curiosity, at last with interest, the
+merchant replied to the effect, that some time since, through friends
+concerned with it, he had heard of the company, and heard well of it,
+but was ignorant that there had latterly been fluctuations. He added
+that he was no speculator; that hitherto he had avoided having to do
+with stocks of any sort, but in the present case he really felt
+something like being tempted. "Pray," in conclusion, "do you think that
+upon a pinch anything could be transacted on board here with the
+transfer-agent? Are you acquainted with him?"
+
+"Not personally. I but happened to hear that he was a passenger. For the
+rest, though it might be somewhat informal, the gentleman might not
+object to doing a little business on board. Along the Mississippi, you
+know, business is not so ceremonious as at the East."
+
+"True," returned the merchant, and looked down a moment in thought,
+then, raising his head quickly, said, in a tone not so benign as his
+wonted one, "This would seem a rare chance, indeed; why, upon first
+hearing it, did you not snatch at it? I mean for yourself!"
+
+"I?--would it had been possible!"
+
+Not without some emotion was this said, and not without some
+embarrassment was the reply. "Ah, yes, I had forgotten."
+
+Upon this, the stranger regarded him with mild gravity, not a little
+disconcerting; the more so, as there was in it what seemed the aspect
+not alone of the superior, but, as it were, the rebuker; which sort of
+bearing, in a beneficiary towards his benefactor, looked strangely
+enough; none the less, that, somehow, it sat not altogether unbecomingly
+upon the beneficiary, being free from anything like the appearance of
+assumption, and mixed with a kind of painful conscientiousness, as
+though nothing but a proper sense of what he owed to himself swayed him.
+At length he spoke:
+
+"To reproach a penniless man with remissness in not availing himself of
+an opportunity for pecuniary investment--but, no, no; it was
+forgetfulness; and this, charity will impute to some lingering effect of
+that unfortunate brain-fever, which, as to occurrences dating yet
+further back, disturbed Mr. Roberts's memory still more seriously."
+
+"As to that," said the merchant, rallying, "I am not----"
+
+"Pardon me, but you must admit, that just now, an unpleasant distrust,
+however vague, was yours. Ah, shallow as it is, yet, how subtle a thing
+is suspicion, which at times can invade the humanest of hearts and
+wisest of heads. But, enough. My object, sir, in calling your attention
+to this stock, is by way of acknowledgment of your goodness. I but seek
+to be grateful; if my information leads to nothing, you must remember
+the motive."
+
+He bowed, and finally retired, leaving Mr. Roberts not wholly without
+self-reproach, for having momentarily indulged injurious thoughts
+against one who, it was evident, was possessed of a self-respect which
+forbade his indulging them himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN WITH THE WEED MAKES IT AN EVEN QUESTION WHETHER HE BE A GREAT
+SAGE OR A GREAT SIMPLETON.
+
+
+"Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that
+is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. Dear good man. Poor
+beating heart!"
+
+It was the man with the weed, not very long after quitting the merchant,
+murmuring to himself with his hand to his side like one with the
+heart-disease.
+
+Meditation over kindness received seemed to have softened him something,
+too, it may be, beyond what might, perhaps, have been looked for from
+one whose unwonted self-respect in the hour of need, and in the act of
+being aided, might have appeared to some not wholly unlike pride out of
+place; and pride, in any place, is seldom very feeling. But the truth,
+perhaps, is, that those who are least touched with that vice, besides
+being not unsusceptible to goodness, are sometimes the ones whom a
+ruling sense of propriety makes appear cold, if not thankless, under a
+favor. For, at such a time, to be full of warm, earnest words, and
+heart-felt protestations, is to create a scene; and well-bred people
+dislike few things more than that; which would seem to look as if the
+world did not relish earnestness; but, not so; because the world, being
+earnest itself, likes an earnest scene, and an earnest man, very well,
+but only in their place--the stage. See what sad work they make of it,
+who, ignorant of this, flame out in Irish enthusiasm and with Irish
+sincerity, to a benefactor, who, if a man of sense and respectability,
+as well as kindliness, can but be more or less annoyed by it; and, if of
+a nervously fastidious nature, as some are, may be led to think almost
+as much less favorably of the beneficiary paining him by his gratitude,
+as if he had been guilty of its contrary, instead only of an
+indiscretion. But, beneficiaries who know better, though they may feel
+as much, if not more, neither inflict such pain, nor are inclined to run
+any risk of so doing. And these, being wise, are the majority. By which
+one sees how inconsiderate those persons are, who, from the absence of
+its officious manifestations in the world, complain that there is not
+much gratitude extant; when the truth is, that there is as much of it as
+there is of modesty; but, both being for the most part votarists of the
+shade, for the most part keep out of sight.
+
+What started this was, to account, if necessary, for the changed air of
+the man with the weed, who, throwing off in private the cold garb of
+decorum, and so giving warmly loose to his genuine heart, seemed almost
+transformed into another being. This subdued air of softness, too, was
+toned with melancholy, melancholy unreserved; a thing which, however at
+variance with propriety, still the more attested his earnestness; for
+one knows not how it is, but it sometimes happens that, where
+earnestness is, there, also, is melancholy.
+
+At the time, he was leaning over the rail at the boat's side, in his
+pensiveness, unmindful of another pensive figure near--a young gentleman
+with a swan-neck, wearing a lady-like open shirt collar, thrown back,
+and tied with a black ribbon. From a square, tableted-broach, curiously
+engraved with Greek characters, he seemed a collegian--not improbably, a
+sophomore--on his travels; possibly, his first. A small book bound in
+Roman vellum was in his hand.
+
+Overhearing his murmuring neighbor, the youth regarded him with some
+surprise, not to say interest. But, singularly for a collegian, being
+apparently of a retiring nature, he did not speak; when the other still
+more increased his diffidence by changing from soliloquy to colloquy, in
+a manner strangely mixed of familiarity and pathos.
+
+"Ah, who is this? You did not hear me, my young friend, did you? Why,
+you, too, look sad. My melancholy is not catching!"
+
+"Sir, sir," stammered the other.
+
+"Pray, now," with a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along
+the rail, "Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give
+me leave," gently drawing it from him. "Tacitus!" Then opening it at
+random, read: "In general a black and shameful period lies before me."
+"Dear young sir," touching his arm alarmedly, "don't read this book. It
+is poison, moral poison. Even were there truth in Tacitus, such truth
+would have the operation of falsity, and so still be poison, moral
+poison. Too well I know this Tacitus. In my college-days he came near
+souring me into cynicism. Yes, I began to turn down my collar, and go
+about with a disdainfully joyless expression."
+
+"Sir, sir, I--I--"
+
+"Trust me. Now, young friend, perhaps you think that Tacitus, like me,
+is only melancholy; but he's more--he's ugly. A vast difference, young
+sir, between the melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the
+world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be compatible with
+benevolence, the other not. The one may deepen insight, the other
+shallows it. Drop Tacitus. Phrenologically, my young friend, you would
+seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but cribbed within the
+ugly view, the Tacitus view, your large brain, like your large ox in the
+contracted field, will but starve the more. And don't dream, as some of
+you students may, that, by taking this same ugly view, the deeper
+meanings of the deeper books will so alone become revealed to you. Drop
+Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy
+of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying--'There is a
+subtle man, and the same is deceived.' Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me
+throw the book overboard."
+
+"Sir, I--I--"
+
+"Not a word; I know just what is in your mind, and that is just what I
+am speaking to. Yes, learn from me that, though the sorrows of the world
+are great, its wickedness--that is, its ugliness--is small. Much cause
+to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known adversity, and
+know it still. But for that, do I turn cynic? No, no: it is small beer
+that sours. To my fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I
+may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in my kind. Now, then"
+(winningly), "this book--will you let me drown it for you?"
+
+"Really, sir--I--"
+
+"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in
+understanding human nature--as if truth was ever got at by libel. My
+young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and
+go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."
+
+"Upon my word, I--I--"
+
+"Nay, I foresee all that. But you carry Tacitus, that shallow Tacitus.
+What do _I_ carry? See"--producing a pocket-volume--"Akenside--his
+'Pleasures of Imagination.' One of these days you will know it. Whatever
+our lot, we should read serene and cheery books, fitted to inspire love
+and trust. But Tacitus! I have long been of opinion that these classics
+are the bane of colleges; for--not to hint of the immorality of Ovid,
+Horace, Anacreon, and the rest, and the dangerous theology of Eschylus
+and others--where will one find views so injurious to human nature as in
+Thucydides, Juvenal, Lucian, but more particularly Tacitus? When I
+consider that, ever since the revival of learning, these classics have
+been the favorites of successive generations of students and studious
+men, I tremble to think of that mass of unsuspected heresy on every
+vital topic which for centuries must have simmered unsurmised in the
+heart of Christendom. But Tacitus--he is the most extraordinary example
+of a heretic; not one iota of confidence in his kind. What a mockery
+that such an one should be reputed wise, and Thucydides be esteemed the
+statesman's manual! But Tacitus--I hate Tacitus; not, though, I trust,
+with the hate that sins, but a righteous hate. Without confidence
+himself, Tacitus destroys it in all his readers. Destroys confidence,
+paternal confidence, of which God knows that there is in this world none
+to spare. For, comparatively inexperienced as you are, my dear young
+friend, did you never observe how little, very little, confidence, there
+is? I mean between man and man--more particularly between stranger and
+stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence! I have
+sometimes almost thought that confidence is fled; that confidence is the
+New Astrea--emigrated--vanished--gone." Then softly sliding nearer, with
+the softest air, quivering down and looking up, "could you now, my dear
+young sir, under such circumstances, by way of experiment, simply have
+confidence in _me_?"
+
+From the outset, the sophomore, as has been seen, had struggled with an
+ever-increasing embarrassment, arising, perhaps, from such strange
+remarks coming from a stranger--such persistent and prolonged remarks,
+too. In vain had he more than once sought to break the spell by
+venturing a deprecatory or leave-taking word. In vain. Somehow, the
+stranger fascinated him. Little wonder, then, that, when the appeal
+came, he could hardly speak, but, as before intimated, being apparently
+of a retiring nature, abruptly retired from the spot, leaving the
+chagrined stranger to wander away in the opposite direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+AT THE OUTSET OF WHICH CERTAIN PASSENGERS PROVE DEAF TO THE CALL OF
+CHARITY.
+
+
+----"You--pish! Why will the captain suffer these begging fellows on
+board?";
+
+These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do gentleman in a
+ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored cheek, a ruby-headed
+cane in his hand, to a man in a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly
+after the interview last described, had accosted him for contributions
+to a Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles. Upon
+a cursory view, this last person might have seemed, like the man with
+the weed, one of the less unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a
+closer observation, his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though
+much of sanctity.
+
+With added words of touchy disgust, the well-to-do gentleman hurried
+away. But, though repulsed, and rudely, the man in gray did not
+reproach, for a time patiently remaining in the chilly loneliness to
+which he had been left, his countenance, however, not without token of
+latent though chastened reliance.
+
+At length an old gentleman, somewhat bulky, drew nigh, and from him also
+a contribution was sought.
+
+"Look, you," coming to a dead halt, and scowling upon him. "Look, you,"
+swelling his bulk out before him like a swaying balloon, "look, you, you
+on others' behalf ask for money; you, a fellow with a face as long as my
+arm. Hark ye, now: there is such a thing as gravity, and in condemned
+felons it may be genuine; but of long faces there are three sorts; that
+of grief's drudge, that of the lantern-jawed man, and that of the
+impostor. You know best which yours is."
+
+"Heaven give you more charity, sir."
+
+"And you less hypocrisy, sir."
+
+With which words, the hard-hearted old gentleman marched off.
+
+While the other still stood forlorn, the young clergyman, before
+introduced, passing that way, catching a chance sight of him, seemed
+suddenly struck by some recollection; and, after a moment's pause,
+hurried up with: "Your pardon, but shortly since I was all over looking
+for you."
+
+"For me?" as marveling that one of so little account should be sought
+for.
+
+"Yes, for you; do you know anything about the negro, apparently a
+cripple, aboard here? Is he, or is he not, what he seems to be?"
+
+"Ah, poor Guinea! have you, too, been distrusted? you, upon whom nature
+has placarded the evidence of your claims?"
+
+"Then you do really know him, and he is quite worthy? It relieves me to
+hear it--much relieves me. Come, let us go find him, and see what can be
+done."
+
+"Another instance that confidence may come too late. I am sorry to say
+that at the last landing I myself--just happening to catch sight of him
+on the gangway-plank--assisted the cripple ashore. No time to talk, only
+to help. He may not have told you, but he has a brother in that
+vicinity.
+
+"Really, I regret his going without my seeing him again; regret it,
+more, perhaps, than you can readily think. You see, shortly after
+leaving St. Louis, he was on the forecastle, and there, with many
+others, I saw him, and put trust in him; so much so, that, to convince
+those who did not, I, at his entreaty, went in search of you, you being
+one of several individuals he mentioned, and whose personal appearance
+he more or less described, individuals who he said would willingly speak
+for him. But, after diligent search, not finding you, and catching no
+glimpse of any of the others he had enumerated, doubts were at last
+suggested; but doubts indirectly originating, as I can but think, from
+prior distrust unfeelingly proclaimed by another. Still, certain it is,
+I began to suspect."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+A sort of laugh more like a groan than a laugh; and yet, somehow, it
+seemed intended for a laugh.
+
+Both turned, and the young clergyman started at seeing the wooden-legged
+man close behind him, morosely grave as a criminal judge with a
+mustard-plaster on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster
+might have been the memory of certain recent biting rebuffs and
+mortifications.
+
+"Wouldn't think it was I who laughed would you?"
+
+"But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to laugh at?" demanded
+the young clergyman, flushing, "me?"
+
+"Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles of you. But perhaps you
+don't believe it."
+
+"If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in
+gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to
+fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
+smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly
+making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street,
+as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic
+jeer at him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with his own
+foot."
+
+"Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other folks' sole-leather,"
+said the wooden-legged man with a crusty attempt at humor. But with
+augmented grin and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
+"you still think it was _you_ I was laughing at, just now. To prove your
+mistake, I will tell you what I _was_ laughing at; a story I happened to
+call to mind just then."
+
+Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic details, unpleasant
+to repeat, he related a story, which might, perhaps, in a good-natured
+version, be rendered as follows:
+
+A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man, less slender in purse
+than limb, happening to attend the theatre one evening, was so charmed
+with the character of a faithful wife, as there represented to the life,
+that nothing would do but he must marry upon it. So, marry he did, a
+beautiful girl from Tennessee, who had first attracted his attention by
+her liberal mould, and was subsequently recommended to him through her
+kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition. Though large,
+the praise proved not too much. For, ere long, rumor more than
+corroborated it, by whispering that the lady was liberal to a fault. But
+though various circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have been
+deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the old Frenchman by his
+friends, yet such was his confidence that not a syllable would he
+credit, till, chancing one night to return unexpectedly from a journey,
+upon entering his apartment, a stranger burst from the alcove: "Begar!"
+cried he, "now I _begin_ to suspec."
+
+His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent
+to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of
+a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent
+satisfaction hobbled away.
+
+"Who is that scoffer," said the man in gray, not without warmth. "Who is
+he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make
+truth almost offensive as falsehood. Who is he?"
+
+"He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his suspicion of the
+negro," replied the young clergyman, recovering from disturbance, "in
+short, the person to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
+maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted and painted
+up for a decoy. Yes, these were his very words, I think."
+
+"Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed. Pray, will you call him
+back, and let me ask him if he were really in earnest?"
+
+The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly objections,
+prevailed upon the one-legged individual to return for a moment. Upon
+which, the man in gray thus addressed him: "This reverend gentleman
+tells me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
+considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware that there are
+some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being
+wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have
+sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. I hope
+you are not one of these. In short, would you tell me now, whether you
+were not merely joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
+Would you be so kind?"
+
+"No, I won't be so kind, I'll be so cruel."
+
+"As you please about that."
+
+"Well, he's just what I said he was."
+
+"A white masquerading as a black?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a moment, then quietly
+whispered to him, "I thought you represented your friend here as a very
+distrustful sort of person, but he appears endued with a singular
+credulity.--Tell me, sir, do you really think that a white could look
+the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good acting."
+
+"Not much better than any other man acts."
+
+"How? Does all the world act? Am _I_, for instance, an actor? Is my
+reverend friend here, too, a performer?"
+
+"Yes, don't you both perform acts? To do, is to act; so all doers are
+actors."
+
+"You trifle.--I ask again, if a white, how could he look the negro so?"
+
+"Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying the old saying,
+not more just than charitable, that 'the devil is never so black as he
+is painted.' But his limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his
+limbs so?"
+
+"How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs? Easy enough to see how
+they are hoisted up."
+
+"The sham is evident, then?"
+
+"To the discerning eye," with a horrible screw of his gimlet one.
+
+"Well, where is Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at
+once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis."
+
+"Do so," cried the one-eyed man, "I'm just in the humor now for having
+him found, and leaving the streaks of these fingers on his paint, as the
+lion leaves the streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn't let me
+touch him before. Yes, find him, I'll make wool fly, and him after."
+
+"You forget," here said the young clergyman to the man in gray, "that
+yourself helped poor Guinea ashore."
+
+"So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look now," to the other, "I
+think that without personal proof I can convince you of your mistake.
+For I put it to you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
+sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all that trouble,
+and run all that hazard, for the mere sake of those few paltry coppers,
+which, I hear, was all he got for his pains, if pains they were?"
+
+"That puts the case irrefutably," said the young clergyman, with a
+challenging glance towards the one-legged man.
+
+"You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and
+hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the
+devil make by gulling Eve?"
+
+Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of his intolerable
+jeer.
+
+The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a while, and then,
+turning to his companion, said: "A bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be
+put down in any Christian community.--And this was he who was the means
+of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should shut our ears to distrust, and
+keep them open only for its opposite."
+
+"You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon it this morning, I
+should have spared myself what I now feel.--That but one man, and he
+with one leg, should have such ill power given him; his one sour word
+leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge, it did) the
+dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous company. But, as I
+hinted, with me at the time his ill words went for nothing; the same as
+now; only afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles me."
+
+"It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of distrust works
+something as certain potions do; it is a spirit which may enter such
+minds, and yet, for a time, longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent;
+but only the more deplorable its ultimate activity."
+
+"An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful man did but just now
+anew drop on me his bane, how shall I be sure that my present exemption
+from its effects will be lasting?"
+
+"You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any sort, which
+hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may arise in you."
+
+"I will do so." Then added as in soliloquy, "Indeed, indeed, I was to
+blame in standing passive under such influences as that one-legged
+man's. My conscience upbraids me.--The poor negro: You see him
+occasionally, perhaps?"
+
+"No, not often; though in a few days, as it happens, my engagements will
+call me to the neighborhood of his present retreat; and, no doubt,
+honest Guinea, who is a grateful soul, will come to see me there."
+
+"Then you have been his benefactor?"
+
+"His benefactor? I did not say that. I have known him."
+
+"Take this mite. Hand it to Guinea when you see him; say it comes from
+one who has full belief in his honesty, and is sincerely sorry for
+having indulged, however transiently, in a contrary thought."
+
+"I accept the trust. And, by-the-way, since you are of this truly
+charitable nature, you will not turn away an appeal in behalf of the
+Seminole Widow and Orphan Asylum?"
+
+"I have not heard of that charity."
+
+"But recently founded."
+
+After a pause, the clergyman was irresolutely putting his hand in his
+pocket, when, caught by something in his companion's expression, he eyed
+him inquisitively, almost uneasily.
+
+"Ah, well," smiled the other wanly, "if that subtle bane, we were
+speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning to work, in vain my
+appeal to you. Good-by."
+
+"Nay," not untouched, "you do me injustice; instead of indulging present
+suspicions, I had rather make amends for previous ones. Here is
+something for your asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course you
+have papers?"
+
+"Of course," producing a memorandum book and pencil. "Let me take down
+name and amount. We publish these names. And now let me give you a
+little history of our asylum, and the providential way in which it was
+started."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.
+
+
+At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with
+much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly
+questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted
+both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman
+who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it
+seemed, without being observed by him.
+
+"Pardon me," said he, rising, "but yonder is one who I know will
+contribute, and largely. Don't take it amiss if I quit you."
+
+"Go: duty before all things," was the conscientious reply.
+
+The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect. There he stood apart
+and in repose, and yet, by his mere look, lured the man in gray from his
+story, much as, by its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm,
+alone in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down his sheaves,
+and come and apply for the alms of its shade.
+
+But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing among men--the
+world familiarly know the noun; a common one in every language--it was
+curious that what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like a
+kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it make him appear more
+or less unreal in this portraiture), was but the expression of so
+prevalent a quality. Such goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune,
+that, so far as his own personal experience could have gone, scarcely
+could he have known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or
+suspecting the latter in any serious degree (supposing such degree of it
+to be), by observation or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
+its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly exempted. For
+the rest, he might have been five and fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall,
+rosy, between plump and portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the
+time and place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
+festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts was of
+white satin, which might have looked especially inappropriate, had it
+not seemed less a bit of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as
+it were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what seemed so good
+about him was not all outside; no, the fine covering had a still finer
+lining. Upon one hand he wore a white kid glove, but the other hand,
+which was ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidele, like
+most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked here and there,
+especially about the railings, it was marvel how, under such
+circumstances, these hands retained their spotlessness. But, if you
+watched them a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
+you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant, whose hands
+nature had dyed black, perhaps with the same purpose that millers wear
+white, this negro servant's hands did most of his master's handling for
+him; having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his prejudices.
+But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences to himself, a
+gentleman could also sin by deputy, how shocking would that be! But it
+is not permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist would
+make proclamation of it.
+
+This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm, was one who, like
+the Hebrew governor, knew how to keep his hands clean, and who never in
+his life happened to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
+or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was to be a very good
+man.
+
+Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce at all; that
+superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing in his manner bespoke him
+righteous, but only good, and though to be good is much below being
+righteous, and though there is a difference between the two, yet not, it
+is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a righteous man can not be a
+good man; though, conversely, in the pulpit it has been with much
+cogency urged, that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
+nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that nothing short of a
+total change and conversion can make him so; which is something which no
+honest mind, well read in the history of righteousness, will care to
+deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a sense with the
+pulpit distinction, though not altogether in the pulpit deduction, and
+also pretty plainly intimating which of the two qualities in question
+enjoys his apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
+said, that, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure
+for a good man some would even dare to die;" therefore, when we repeat
+of this gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever else by severe
+censors may be objected to him, it is still to be hoped that his
+goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him. At all events,
+no man, not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to commit
+this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary as he might deem
+it; more especially, as, until everything could be known, there would be
+some chance that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent of
+it as he himself.
+
+It was pleasant to mark the good man's reception of the salute of the
+righteous man, that is, the man in gray; his inferior, apparently, not
+more in the social scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
+good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness over that suitor, not
+in conceited condescension, but with that even amenity of true majesty,
+which can be kind to any one without stooping to it.
+
+To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and orphans, the gentleman,
+after a question or two duly answered, responded by producing an ample
+pocket-book in the good old capacious style, of fine green French
+morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of the same color, not to omit
+bills crisp with newness, fresh from the bank, no muckworms' grime upon
+them. Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept unspotted
+from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing now three of those
+virgin bills in the applicant's hands, he hoped that the smallness of
+the contribution would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
+accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run down the river,
+to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon wedding of his niece: so
+did not carry much money with him.
+
+The other was about expressing his thanks when the gentleman in his
+pleasant way checked him: the gratitude was on the other side. To him,
+he said, charity was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against
+too great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had sometimes
+admonished him.
+
+In some general talk which followed, relative to organized modes of
+doing good, the gentleman expressed his regrets that so many benevolent
+societies as there were, here and there isolated in the land, should not
+act in concert by coming together, in the way that already in each
+society the individuals composing it had done, which would result, he
+thought, in like advantages upon a larger scale. Indeed, such a
+confederation might, perhaps, be attended with as happy results as
+politically attended that of the states.
+
+Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this suggestion had an
+effect illustrative in a sort of that notion of Socrates, that the soul
+is a harmony; for as the sound of a flute, in any particular key, will,
+it is said, audibly affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
+tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him respond, and
+with animation.
+
+Which animation, by the way, might seem more or less out of character in
+the man in gray, considering his unsprightly manner when first
+introduced, had he not already, in certain after colloquies, given
+proof, in some degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a
+soberly continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of stuff,
+is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because unwasted, and may
+be used the more effectively, too, when opportunity offers. What now
+follows on the part of the man in gray will still further exemplify,
+perhaps somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears to be such, of
+this remark.
+
+"Sir," said he eagerly, "I am before you. A project, not dissimilar to
+yours, was by me thrown out at the World's Fair in London."
+
+"World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?"
+
+"First, let me----"
+
+"Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?"
+
+"I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented."
+
+"Then you have not always been in the charity business?"
+
+"Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am, and always have been,
+as I always will be, I trust, in the charity business, as you call it;
+but charity is not like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
+point; charity is a work to which a good workman may be competent in all
+its branches. I invented my Protean easy-chair in odd intervals stolen
+from meals and sleep."
+
+"You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe it."
+
+"My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and
+bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch,
+that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
+seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,
+nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and
+somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to
+make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little
+means and off to the World's Fair with it."
+
+"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"
+
+"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and
+placed, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt
+upon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and
+reflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass
+house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed
+me. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot
+supply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
+world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired
+by the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my
+prospectus of the World's Charity."
+
+"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it."
+
+"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise
+deputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the
+society to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which
+end, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be
+done away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to
+levy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in
+Augustus Caesar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax
+which, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in
+England, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all
+possible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the
+county-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors
+rolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,
+would result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
+hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and
+in such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general
+congress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I
+estimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven
+thousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of
+the society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen
+could remain the round world over."
+
+"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,
+as it were."
+
+"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a
+philanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a
+finance which are practicable."
+
+"Practicable?"
+
+"Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a
+retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of
+fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions--what is that, to average it,
+but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? And who
+will refuse, what Turk or Dyak even, his own little dollar for sweet
+charity's sake? Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
+expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries. Consider that
+bloody spendthrift, War. And are mankind so stupid, so wicked, that,
+upon the demonstration of these things they will not, amending their
+ways, devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead of
+cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have not to make it, it is
+theirs already; they have but to direct it from ill to good. And to
+this, scarce a self-denial is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
+mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would they be all
+the better and happier. Don't you see? But admit, as you must, that
+mankind is not mad, and my project is practicable. For, what creature
+but a madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is plain that,
+good or ill, it must return upon himself?"
+
+"Your sort of reasoning," said the good gentleman, adjusting his gold
+sleeve-buttons, "seems all reasonable enough, but with mankind it wont
+do."
+
+"Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason wont do with them."
+
+"That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the manner in which you
+alluded to the world's census, it would appear that, according to your
+world-wide scheme, the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute
+to the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than the Christian
+to the conversion of heathenism. How is that?"
+
+"Why, that--pardon me--is quibbling. Now, no philanthropist likes to be
+opposed with quibbling."
+
+"Well, I won't quibble any more. But, after all, if I understand your
+project, there is little specially new in it, further than the
+magnifying of means now in operation."
+
+"Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions I would thoroughly
+reform. Missions I would quicken with the Wall street spirit."
+
+"The Wall street spirit?"
+
+"Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but
+through the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer
+gaining of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly
+projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
+conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human
+effort, would, by the world's charity, be let out on contract. So much
+by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa.
+Competition allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
+lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house or tract-house of
+which slanderers could, with any plausibility, say that it had
+degenerated in its clerkships into a sort of custom-house. But the main
+point is the Archimedean money-power that would be brought to bear."
+
+"You mean the eight hundred million power?"
+
+"Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by driblets amounts to just
+nothing. I am for doing good to the world with a will. I am for doing
+good to the world once for all and having done with it. Do but think, my
+dear sir, of the eddies and maelstroms of pagans in China. People here
+have no conception of it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper
+pagans are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin
+of peas. To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to
+be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of
+missionaries to such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am for
+sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and converting the Chinese
+_en masse_ within six months of the debarkation. The thing is then done,
+and turn to something else."
+
+"I fear you are too enthusiastic."
+
+"A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for without enthusiasm
+what was ever achieved but commonplace? But again: consider the poor in
+London. To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf there? I
+am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks and one hundred thousand
+barrels of flour to begin with. They are then comforted, and no more
+hunger for one while among the poor of London. And so all round."
+
+"Sharing the character of your general project, these things, I take it,
+are rather examples of wonders that were to be wished, than wonders that
+will happen."
+
+"And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world too old? Is it barren?
+Think of Sarah."
+
+"Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a smile). But still, as to
+your design at large, there seems a certain audacity."
+
+"But if to the audacity of the design there be brought a commensurate
+circumspectness of execution, how then?"
+
+"Why, do you really believe that your world's charity will ever go into
+operation?"
+
+"I have confidence that it will."
+
+"But may you not be over-confident?"
+
+"For a Christian to talk so!"
+
+"But think of the obstacles!"
+
+"Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles, though mountains.
+Yes, confidence in the world's charity to that degree, that, as no
+better person offers to supply the place, I have nominated myself
+provisional treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
+the present to be devoted to striking off a million more of my
+prospectuses."
+
+The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit of benevolence
+which, mindful of the millennial promise, had gone abroad over all the
+countries of the globe, much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman,
+stirred by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in March
+reveries at his fireside, over every field of his farm. The master chord
+of the man in gray had been touched, and it seemed as if it would never
+cease vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with gestures
+that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness before which
+granite hearts might crumble into gravel.
+
+Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly good-hearted as he
+seemed, remained proof to such eloquence; though not, as it turned out,
+to such pleadings. For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
+incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of destination,
+the gentleman, with a look half humor, half pity, put another bank-note
+into his hands; charitable to the last, if only to the dreams of
+enthusiasm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A CHARITABLE LADY.
+
+
+If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in
+a reason-fit is not the most lively. And this, without prejudice to his
+greatly improved understanding; for, if his elation was the height of
+his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity. Something
+thus now, to all appearance, with the man in gray. Society his stimulus,
+loneliness was his lethargy. Loneliness, like the sea breeze, blowing
+off from a thousand leagues of blankness, he did not find, as veteran
+solitaires do, if anything, too bracing. In short, left to himself, with
+none to charm forth his latent lymphatic, he insensibly resumes his
+original air, a quiescent one, blended of sad humility and demureness.
+
+Ere long he goes laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless
+quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats
+himself upon a sofa with an air of melancholy exhaustion and depression.
+
+At the sofa's further end sits a plump and pleasant person, whose aspect
+seems to hint that, if she have any weak point, it must be anything
+rather than her excellent heart. From her twilight dress, neither dawn
+nor dark, apparently she is a widow just breaking the chrysalis of her
+mourning. A small gilt testament is in her hand, which she has just been
+reading. Half-relinquished, she holds the book in reverie, her finger
+inserted at the xiii. of 1st Corinthians, to which chapter possibly her
+attention might have recently been turned, by witnessing the scene of
+the monitory mute and his slate.
+
+The sacred page no longer meets her eye; but, as at evening, when for a
+time the western hills shine on though the sun be set, her thoughtful
+face retains its tenderness though the teacher is forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the expression of the stranger is such as ere long to attract
+her glance. But no responsive one. Presently, in her somewhat
+inquisitive survey, her volume drops. It is restored. No encroaching
+politeness in the act, but kindness, unadorned. The eyes of the lady
+sparkle. Evidently, she is not now unprepossessed. Soon, bending over,
+in a low, sad tone, full of deference, the stranger breathes, "Madam,
+pardon my freedom, but there is something in that face which strangely
+draws me. May I ask, are you a sister of the Church?"
+
+"Why--really--you--"
+
+In concern for her embarrassment, he hastens to relieve it, but, without
+seeming so to do. "It is very solitary for a brother here," eying the
+showy ladies brocaded in the background, "I find none to mingle souls
+with. It may be wrong--I _know_ it is--but I cannot force myself to be
+easy with the people of the world. I prefer the company, however
+silent, of a brother or sister in good standing. By the way, madam, may
+I ask if you have confidence?"
+
+"Really, sir--why, sir--really--I--"
+
+"Could you put confidence in _me_ for instance?"
+
+"Really, sir--as much--I mean, as one may wisely put in a--a--stranger,
+an entire stranger, I had almost said," rejoined the lady, hardly yet at
+ease in her affability, drawing aside a little in body, while at the
+same time her heart might have been drawn as far the other way. A
+natural struggle between charity and prudence.
+
+"Entire stranger!" with a sigh. "Ah, who would be a stranger? In vain, I
+wander; no one will have confidence in me."
+
+"You interest me," said the good lady, in mild surprise. "Can I any way
+befriend you?"
+
+"No one can befriend me, who has not confidence."
+
+"But I--I have--at least to that degree--I mean that----"
+
+"Nay, nay, you have none--none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence.
+Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"
+
+"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest;
+"but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly
+biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I--yes,
+yes--I may say--that--that----"
+
+"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
+
+"Twenty dollars!"
+
+"There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence."
+
+The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of
+restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty
+different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At
+last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want
+the twenty dollars?"
+
+"And did I not----" then glancing at her half-mourning, "for the widow
+and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum,
+recently founded among the Seminoles."
+
+"And why did you not tell me your object before?" As not a little
+relieved. "Poor souls--Indians, too--those cruelly-used Indians. Here,
+here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more."
+
+"Grieve not for that, madam," rising and folding up the bank-notes.
+"This is an inconsiderable sum, I admit, but," taking out his pencil and
+book, "though I here but register the amount, there is another register,
+where is set down the motive. Good-bye; you have confidence. Yea, you
+can say to me as the apostle said to the Corinthians, 'I rejoice that I
+have confidence in you in all things.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.
+
+
+----"Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed hereabouts, rather
+a saddish gentleman? Strange where he can have gone to. I was talking
+with him not twenty minutes since."
+
+By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap, carrying
+under his arm a ledger-like volume, the above words were addressed to
+the collegian before introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which
+not long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted, he had
+returned, and there remained.
+
+"Have you seen him, sir?"
+
+Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial jauntiness of the
+stranger, the youth answered with unwonted promptitude: "Yes, a person
+with a weed was here not very long ago."
+
+"Saddish?"
+
+"Yes, and a little cracked, too, I should say."
+
+"It was he. Misfortune, I fear, has disturbed his brain. Now quick,
+which way did he go?"
+
+"Why just in the direction from which you came, the gangway yonder."
+
+"Did he? Then the man in the gray coat, whom I just met, said right: he
+must have gone ashore. How unlucky!"
+
+He stood vexedly twitching at his cap-tassel, which fell over by his
+whisker, and continued: "Well, I am very sorry. In fact, I had something
+for him here."--Then drawing nearer, "you see, he applied to me for
+relief, no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate, you
+understand. Well, being very busy just then, I declined; quite rudely,
+too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling way, I fear. At all events, not three
+minutes afterwards I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very
+peremptory, to deliver over into that unfortunate man's hands a
+ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be superstition, but I can't
+help it; I have my weak side, thank God. Then again," he rapidly went
+on, "we have been so very prosperous lately in our affairs--by we, I
+mean the Black Rapids Coal Company--that, really, out of my abundance,
+associative and individual, it is but fair that a charitable investment
+or two should be made, don't you think so?"
+
+"Sir," said the collegian without the least embarrassment, "do I
+understand that you are officially connected with the Black Rapids Coal
+Company?"
+
+"Yes, I happen to be president and transfer-agent."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Yes, but what is it to you? You don't want to invest?"
+
+"Why, do you sell the stock?"
+
+"Some might be bought, perhaps; but why do you ask? you don't want to
+invest?"
+
+"But supposing I did," with cool self-collectedness, "could you do up
+the thing for me, and here?"
+
+"Bless my soul," gazing at him in amaze, "really, you are quite a
+business man. Positively, I feel afraid of you."
+
+"Oh, no need of that.--You could sell me some of that stock, then?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know. To be sure, there are a few shares under
+peculiar circumstances bought in by the Company; but it would hardly be
+the thing to convert this boat into the Company's office. I think you
+had better defer investing. So," with an indifferent air, "you have seen
+the unfortunate man I spoke of?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man go his ways.--What is that large book you have
+with you?"
+
+"My transfer-book. I am subpoenaed with it to court."
+
+"Black Rapids Coal Company," obliquely reading the gilt inscription on
+the back; "I have heard much of it. Pray do you happen to have with you
+any statement of the condition of your company."
+
+"A statement has lately been printed."
+
+"Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have you a copy with you?"
+
+"I tell you again, I do not think that it would be suitable to convert
+this boat into the Company's office.--That unfortunate man, did you
+relieve him at all?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.--Hand me the statement."
+
+"Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly deny you. Here,"
+handing a small, printed pamphlet.
+
+The youth turned it over sagely.
+
+"I hate a suspicious man," said the other, observing him; "but I must
+say I like to see a cautious one."
+
+"I can gratify you there," languidly returning the pamphlet; "for, as I
+said before, I am naturally inquisitive; I am also circumspect. No
+appearances can deceive me. Your statement," he added "tells a very fine
+story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy awhile ago? downward
+tendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that
+stock?"
+
+"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The
+'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the
+growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears."
+
+"How, hypocritical?"
+
+"Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites
+by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of
+bright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of
+depression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;
+spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done,
+return, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the
+gains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!"
+
+"You are warm against these bears?"
+
+"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our
+stock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of
+confidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in
+themselves, are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence and
+gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks,
+politics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it
+may--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness,
+solely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of
+calamity which the gloomy philosopher parades, is but his
+Good-Enough-Morgan."
+
+"I rather like that," knowingly drawled the youth. "I fancy these gloomy
+souls as little as the next one. Sitting on my sofa after a champagne
+dinner, smoking my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me--what
+a bore!"
+
+"You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?"
+
+"I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are happy enough, and
+you know it; and everybody else is as happy as you, and you know that,
+too; and we shall all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
+too; but no, still you must have your sulk."
+
+"And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets his sulk? not from
+life; for he's often too much of a recluse, or else too young to have
+seen anything of it. No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees
+on the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to
+one, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about
+stuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it
+looks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way
+above his kind."
+
+"Just so," assented the youth. "I've lived some, and seen a good many
+such ravens at second hand. By the way, strange how that man with the
+weed, you were inquiring for, seemed to take me for some soft
+sentimentalist, only because I kept quiet, and thought, because I had a
+copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him for his gloom, instead
+of his gossip. But I let him talk. And, indeed, by my manner humored
+him."
+
+"You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate man, you must have made
+quite a fool of him."
+
+"His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable
+fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such
+fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
+superfluity in my pocket, and I'll just----"
+
+"----Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate man?"
+
+"Let the unfortunate man be his own brother. What are you dragging him
+in for all the time? One would think you didn't care to register any
+transfers, or dispose of any stock--mind running on something else. I
+say I will invest."
+
+"Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows--this way, this way."
+
+And with off-handed politeness the man with the book escorted his
+companion into a private little haven removed from the brawling swells
+without.
+
+Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked the deck.
+
+"Now tell me, sir," said he with the book, "how comes it that a young
+gentleman like you, a sedate student at the first appearance, should
+dabble in stocks and that sort of thing?"
+
+"There are certain sophomorean errors in the world," drawled the
+sophomore, deliberately adjusting his shirt-collar, "not the least of
+which is the popular notion touching the nature of the modern scholar,
+and the nature of the modern scholastic sedateness."
+
+"So it seems, so it seems. Really, this is quite a new leaf in my
+experience."
+
+"Experience, sir," originally observed the sophomore, "is the only
+teacher."
+
+"Hence am I your pupil; for it's only when experience speaks, that I can
+endure to listen to speculation."
+
+"My speculations, sir," dryly drawing himself up, "have been chiefly
+governed by the maxim of Lord Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies
+which come home to my business and bosom--pray, do you know of any other
+good stocks?"
+
+"You wouldn't like to be concerned in the New Jerusalem, would you?"
+
+"New Jerusalem?"
+
+"Yes, the new and thriving city, so called, in northern Minnesota. It
+was originally founded by certain fugitive Mormons. Hence the name. It
+stands on the Mississippi. Here, here is the map," producing a roll.
+"There--there, you see are the public buildings--here the landing--there
+the park--yonder the botanic gardens--and this, this little dot here, is
+a perpetual fountain, you understand. You observe there are twenty
+asterisks. Those are for the lyceums. They have lignum-vitae rostrums."
+
+"And are all these buildings now standing?"
+
+"All standing--bona fide."
+
+"These marginal squares here, are they the water-lots?"
+
+"Water-lots in the city of New Jerusalem? All terra firma--you don't
+seem to care about investing, though?"
+
+"Hardly think I should read my title clear, as the law students say,"
+yawned the collegian.
+
+"Prudent--you are prudent. Don't know that you are wholly out, either.
+At any rate, I would rather have one of your shares of coal stock than
+two of this other. Still, considering that the first settlement was by
+two fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite shore--it's a
+surprising place. It is, _bona fide_.--But dear me, I must go. Oh, if by
+possibility you should come across that unfortunate man----"
+
+"--In that case," with drawling impatience, "I will send for the
+steward, and have him and his misfortunes consigned overboard."
+
+"Ha ha!--now were some gloomy philosopher here, some theological bear,
+forever taking occasion to growl down the stock of human nature (with
+ulterior views, d'ye see, to a fat benefice in the gift of the
+worshipers of Ariamius), he would pronounce that the sign of a hardening
+heart and a softening brain. Yes, that would be his sinister
+construction. But it's nothing more than the oddity of a genial
+humor--genial but dry. Confess it. Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+IN THE CABIN.
+
+
+Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying them are clusters of
+men, old and young, wise and simple; in their hands are cards spotted
+with diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist,
+cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering among the
+marble-topped tables, amused with the scene, are the comparatively few,
+who, instead of having hands in the games, for the most part keep their
+hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes. But here and
+there, with a curious expression, one is reading a small sort of
+handbill of anonymous poetry, rather wordily entitled:--
+
+  "ODE
+  ON THE INTIMATIONS
+  OF
+  DISTRUST IN MAN,
+  UNWILLINGLY INFERRED FROM REPEATED REPULSES,
+  IN DISINTERESTED ENDEAVORS
+  TO PROCURE HIS
+  CONFIDENCE."
+
+On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered down from a
+balloon. The way they came there was this: A somewhat elderly person, in
+the quaker dress, had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in
+the manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede their proffers of
+sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or indirect, of the volumes to
+follow, had, without speaking, handed about the odes, which, for the
+most part, after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed
+aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some wandering
+rhapsodist.
+
+In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man with the
+traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro, looks animatedly about
+him, with a yearning sort of gratulatory affinity and longing,
+expressive of the very soul of sociality; as much as to say, "Oh, boys,
+would that I were personally acquainted with each mother's son of you,
+since what a sweet world, to make sweet acquaintance in, is ours, my
+brothers; yea, and what dear, happy dogs are we all!"
+
+And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes fraternally up
+to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging with him some pleasant
+remark.
+
+"Pray, what have you there?" he asked of one newly accosted, a little,
+dried-up man, who looked as if he never dined.
+
+"A little ode, rather queer, too," was the reply, "of the same sort you
+see strewn on the floor here."
+
+"I did not observe them. Let me see;" picking one up and looking it
+over. "Well now, this is pretty; plaintive, especially the opening:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+--If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir.
+Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?"
+
+"As to that," said the little dried-up man, "I think it a kind of queer
+thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set
+me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were
+trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I
+am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works
+on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying
+dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in
+well-doing."
+
+"Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who
+snowed the odes about here?"
+
+"I cannot say; I have not been here long."
+
+"Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as
+the rest, and have cards."
+
+"Thank you, I never play cards."
+
+"A bottle of wine?"
+
+"Thank you, I never drink wine."
+
+"Cigars?"
+
+"Thank you, I never smoke cigars."
+
+"Tell stories?"
+
+"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling."
+
+"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as
+water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial
+hand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you
+please; just enough to make it interesting."
+
+"Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards."
+
+"What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad
+Philomel here:--
+
+    'Alas for man, he hath small sense
+    Of genial trust and confidence.'
+
+Good-bye!"
+
+Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at
+length seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a
+partly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon,
+like his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming
+not a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a
+party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a
+red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome,
+self-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of
+professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil
+law.
+
+By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the
+good merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of
+the Ode which he holds: "Sir, I don't like the looks of those two, do
+you?"
+
+"Hardly," was the whispered reply; "those colored cravats are not in the
+best taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all."
+
+"You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't refer to dress, but
+countenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further
+than reading about them in the papers--but those two are--are sharpers,
+aint they?"
+
+"Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit, my dear sir."
+
+"Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given that way: but
+certainly, to say the least, these two youths can hardly be adepts,
+while the opposed couple may be even more."
+
+"You would not hint that the colored cravats would be so bungling as to
+lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous as to cheat?--Sour imaginations,
+my dear sir. Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the Ode you
+have there. Years and experience, I trust, have not sophisticated you. A
+fresh and liberal construction would teach us to regard those four
+players--indeed, this whole cabin-full of players--as playing at games
+in which every player plays fair, and not a player but shall win."
+
+"Now, you hardly mean that; because games in which all may win, such
+games remain as yet in this world uninvented, I think."
+
+"Come, come," luxuriously laying himself back, and casting a free glance
+upon the players, "fares all paid; digestion sound; care, toil, penury,
+grief, unknown; lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
+be cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick holes in the
+blessed fate of the world?"
+
+Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and hard, and then
+rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation, at first uneasy, but at last
+composed, and in the end, once more addressed his companion: "Well, I
+see it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and then. Somehow,
+I don't know why, a certain misty suspiciousness seems inseparable from
+most of one's private notions about some men and some things; but once
+out with these misty notions, and their mere contact with other men's
+soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies them."
+
+"You think I have done you good, then? may be, I have. But don't
+thank me, don't thank me. If by words, casually delivered in the
+social hour, I do any good to right or left, it is but involuntary
+influence--locust-tree sweetening the herbage under it; no merit at
+all; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.--Don't you see?"
+
+Another stare from the good merchant, and both were silent again.
+
+Finding his book, hitherto resting on his lap, rather irksome there, the
+owner now places it edgewise on the settee, between himself and
+neighbor; in so doing, chancing to expose the lettering on the
+back--"_Black Rapids Coal Company_"--which the good merchant,
+scrupulously honorable, had much ado to avoid reading, so directly would
+it have fallen under his eye, had he not conscientiously averted it. On
+a sudden, as if just reminded of something, the stranger starts up, and
+moves away, in his haste leaving his book; which the merchant observing,
+without delay takes it up, and, hurrying after, civilly returns it; in
+which act he could not avoid catching sight by an involuntary glance of
+part of the lettering.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, my good sir," said the other, receiving the
+volume, and was resuming his retreat, when the merchant spoke: "Excuse
+me, but are you not in some way connected with the--the Coal Company I
+have heard of?"
+
+"There is more than one Coal Company that may be heard of, my good sir,"
+smiled the other, pausing with an expression of painful impatience,
+disinterestedly mastered.
+
+"But you are connected with one in particular.--The 'Black Rapids,' are
+you not?"
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+"Well, sir, I have heard rather tempting information of your Company."
+
+"Who is your informant, pray," somewhat coldly.
+
+"A--a person by the name of Ringman."
+
+"Don't know him. But, doubtless, there are plenty who know our Company,
+whom our Company does not know; in the same way that one may know an
+individual, yet be unknown to him.--Known this Ringman long? Old friend,
+I suppose.--But pardon, I must leave you."
+
+"Stay, sir, that--that stock."
+
+"Stock?"
+
+"Yes, it's a little irregular, perhaps, but----"
+
+"Dear me, you don't think of doing any business with me, do you? In my
+official capacity I have not been authenticated to you. This
+transfer-book, now," holding it up so as to bring the lettering in
+sight, "how do you know that it may not be a bogus one? And I, being
+personally a stranger to you, how can you have confidence in me?"
+
+"Because," knowingly smiled the good merchant, "if you were other than I
+have confidence that you are, hardly would you challenge distrust that
+way."
+
+"But you have not examined my book."
+
+"What need to, if already I believe that it is what it is lettered to
+be?"
+
+"But you had better. It might suggest doubts."
+
+"Doubts, may be, it might suggest, but not knowledge; for how, by
+examining the book, should I think I knew any more than I now think I
+do; since, if it be the true book, I think it so already; and since if
+it be otherwise, then I have never seen the true one, and don't know
+what that ought to look like."
+
+"Your logic I will not criticize, but your confidence I admire, and
+earnestly, too, jocose as was the method I took to draw it out. Enough,
+we will go to yonder table, and if there be any business which, either
+in my private or official capacity, I can help you do, pray command
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ONLY A PAGE OR SO.
+
+
+The transaction concluded, the two still remained seated, falling into
+familiar conversation, by degrees verging into that confidential sort of
+sympathetic silence, the last refinement and luxury of unaffected good
+feeling. A kind of social superstition, to suppose that to be truly
+friendly one must be saying friendly words all the time, any more than
+be doing friendly deeds continually. True friendliness, like true
+religion, being in a sort independent of works.
+
+At length, the good merchant, whose eyes were pensively resting upon the
+gay tables in the distance, broke the spell by saying that, from the
+spectacle before them, one would little divine what other quarters of
+the boat might reveal. He cited the case, accidentally encountered but
+an hour or two previous, of a shrunken old miser, clad in shrunken old
+moleskin, stretched out, an invalid, on a bare plank in the emigrants'
+quarters, eagerly clinging to life and lucre, though the one was gasping
+for outlet, and about the other he was in torment lest death, or some
+other unprincipled cut-purse, should be the means of his losing it; by
+like feeble tenure holding lungs and pouch, and yet knowing and
+desiring nothing beyond them; for his mind, never raised above mould,
+was now all but mouldered away. To such a degree, indeed, that he had no
+trust in anything, not even in his parchment bonds, which, the better to
+preserve from the tooth of time, he had packed down and sealed up, like
+brandy peaches, in a tin case of spirits.
+
+The worthy man proceeded at some length with these dispiriting
+particulars. Nor would his cheery companion wholly deny that there might
+be a point of view from which such a case of extreme want of confidence
+might, to the humane mind, present features not altogether welcome as
+wine and olives after dinner. Still, he was not without compensatory
+considerations, and, upon the whole, took his companion to task for
+evincing what, in a good-natured, round-about way, he hinted to be a
+somewhat jaundiced sentimentality. Nature, he added, in Shakespeare's
+words, had meal and bran; and, rightly regarded, the bran in its way was
+not to be condemned.
+
+The other was not disposed to question the justice of Shakespeare's
+thought, but would hardly admit the propriety of the application in this
+instance, much less of the comment. So, after some further temperate
+discussion of the pitiable miser, finding that they could not entirely
+harmonize, the merchant cited another case, that of the negro cripple.
+But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that
+alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer
+than the experience of the observed. He knew nothing about the cripple,
+nor had seen him, but ventured to surmise that, could one but get at the
+real state of his heart, he would be found about as happy as most men,
+if not, in fact, full as happy as the speaker himself. He added that
+negroes were by nature a singularly cheerful race; no one ever heard of
+a native-born African Zimmermann or Torquemada; that even from religion
+they dismissed all gloom; in their hilarious rituals they danced, so to
+speak, and, as it were, cut pigeon-wings. It was improbable, therefore,
+that a negro, however reduced to his stumps by fortune, could be ever
+thrown off the legs of a laughing philosophy.
+
+Foiled again, the good merchant would not desist, but ventured still a
+third case, that of the man with the weed, whose story, as narrated by
+himself, and confirmed and filled out by the testimony of a certain man
+in a gray coat, whom the merchant had afterwards met, he now proceeded
+to give; and that, without holding back those particulars disclosed by
+the second informant, but which delicacy had prevented the unfortunate
+man himself from touching upon.
+
+But as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better justice to the man
+than the story, we shall venture to tell it in other words than his,
+though not to any other effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+STORY OF THE UNFORTUNATE MAN, FROM WHICH MAY BE GATHERED WHETHER OR NO
+HE HAS BEEN JUSTLY SO ENTITLED.
+
+
+It appeared that the unfortunate man had had for a wife one of those
+natures, anomalously vicious, which would almost tempt a metaphysical
+lover of our species to doubt whether the human form be, in all cases,
+conclusive evidence of humanity, whether, sometimes, it may not be a
+kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle, and whether, once for all
+to crush the saying of Thrasea, (an unaccountable one, considering that
+he himself was so good a man) that "he who hates vice, hates humanity,"
+it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable maxim, that
+none but the good are human.
+
+Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too straight, indeed,
+for a woman, a complexion naturally rosy, and which would have been
+charmingly so, but for a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of
+the glazed colors on stone-ware. Her hair was of a deep, rich chestnut,
+but worn in close, short curls all round her head. Her Indian figure was
+not without its impairing effect on her bust, while her mouth would have
+been pretty but for a trace of moustache. Upon the whole, aided by the
+resources of the toilet, her appearance at distance was such, that some
+might have thought her, if anything, rather beautiful, though of a style
+of beauty rather peculiar and cactus-like.
+
+It was happy for Goneril that her more striking peculiarities were less
+of the person than of temper and taste. One hardly knows how to reveal,
+that, while having a natural antipathy to such things as the breast of
+chicken, or custard, or peach, or grape, Goneril could yet in private
+make a satisfactory lunch on hard crackers and brawn of ham. She liked
+lemons, and the only kind of candy she loved were little dried sticks of
+blue clay, secretly carried in her pocket. Withal she had hard, steady
+health like a squaw's, with as firm a spirit and resolution. Some other
+points about her were likewise such as pertain to the women of savage
+life. Lithe though she was, she loved supineness, but upon occasion
+could endure like a stoic. She was taciturn, too. From early morning
+till about three o'clock in the afternoon she would seldom speak--it
+taking that time to thaw her, by all accounts, into but talking terms
+with humanity. During the interval she did little but look, and keep
+looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her enemies called cold
+as a cuttle-fish's, but which by her were esteemed gazelle-like; for
+Goneril was not without vanity. Those who thought they best knew her,
+often wondered what happiness such a being could take in life, not
+considering the happiness which is to be had by some natures in the very
+easy way of simply causing pain to those around them. Those who suffered
+from Goneril's strange nature, might, with one of those hyberboles to
+which the resentful incline, have pronounced her some kind of toad; but
+her worst slanderers could never, with any show of justice, have accused
+her of being a toady. In a large sense she possessed the virtue of
+independence of mind. Goneril held it flattery to hint praise even of
+the absent, and even if merited; but honesty, to fling people's imputed
+faults into their faces. This was thought malice, but it certainly was
+not passion. Passion is human. Like an icicle-dagger, Goneril at once
+stabbed and froze; so at least they said; and when she saw frankness and
+innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to
+the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark
+that she chuckled. These peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but
+another was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company she had a
+strange way of touching, as by accident, the arm or hand of comely young
+men, and seemed to reap a secret delight from it, but whether from the
+humane satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called, or
+whether it was something else in her, not equally wonderful, but quite
+as deplorable, remained an enigma.
+
+Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's, when, engaged
+in conversation with company, he would suddenly perceive his Goneril
+bestowing her mysterious touches, especially in such cases where the
+strangeness of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
+notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing the mystery, on the
+spot, as a subject of discussion for the company. In these cases, too,
+the unfortunate man could never endure so much as to look upon the
+touched young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification of
+meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less quizzingly-knowing
+expression. He would shudderingly shun the young gentleman. So that
+here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the
+heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times,
+he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private
+interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable
+propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was
+witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the
+unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such
+chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad--a
+touching case--but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
+unfortunate man--conscientiously mindful of his vow--for better or for
+worse--to love and cherish his dear Goneril so long as kind heaven might
+spare her to him--but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
+jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for none other could
+possess her, and the object of that deranged jealousy, her own child, a
+little girl of seven, her father's consolation and pet; when he saw
+Goneril artfully torment the little innocent, and then play the maternal
+hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient long-suffering gave
+way. Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might,
+possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
+father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he
+could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself.
+Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female
+neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
+out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause,
+could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting
+to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring.
+To all this, self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
+kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been had he continued so;
+for when, driven to desperation, he hinted something of the truth of the
+case, not a soul would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
+he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the suggestion of some
+woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
+counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
+only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
+awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
+he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
+a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
+lamentable was, that the unfortunate man, thinking that, before the
+court, his wisest plan, as well as the most Christian besides, being, as
+he deemed, not at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to put
+forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril, which done, he
+could, with less of mortification to himself, and odium to her, reveal
+in self-defense those eccentricities which had led to his retirement
+from the joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this charge
+of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself--especially, when,
+among other things, he alleged her mysterious teachings. In vain did his
+counsel, striving to make out the derangement to be where, in fact, if
+anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise, to hold that such a
+being as Goneril was sane, this was constructively a libel upon
+womankind. Libel be it. And all ended by the unfortunate man's
+subsequently getting wind of Goneril's intention to procure him to be
+permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which he fled, and was now an
+innocent outcast, wandering forlorn in the great valley of the
+Mississippi, with a weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he
+had lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought it but
+proper to comply with the prescribed form of mourning in such cases. For
+some days past he had been trying to get money enough to return to his
+child, and was but now started with inadequate funds.
+
+Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant could not but
+consider rather hard for the unfortunate man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE TRAVELING-CAP EVINCES MUCH HUMANITY, AND IN A WAY WHICH
+WOULD SEEM TO SHOW HIM TO BE ONE OF THE MOST LOGICAL OF OPTIMISTS.
+
+
+Years ago, a grave American savant, being in London, observed at an
+evening party there, a certain coxcombical fellow, as he thought, an
+absurd ribbon in his lapel, and full of smart persiflage, whisking about
+to the admiration of as many as were disposed to admire. Great was the
+savan's disdain; but, chancing ere long to find himself in a corner with
+the jackanapes, got into conversation with him, when he was somewhat
+ill-prepared for the good sense of the jackanapes, but was altogether
+thrown aback, upon subsequently being whispered by a friend that the
+jackanapes was almost as great a savan as himself, being no less a
+personage than Sir Humphrey Davy.
+
+The above anecdote is given just here by way of an anticipative reminder
+to such readers as, from the kind of jaunty levity, or what may have
+passed for such, hitherto for the most part appearing in the man with
+the traveling-cap, may have been tempted into a more or less hasty
+estimate of him; that such readers, when they find the same person, as
+they presently will, capable of philosophic and humanitarian
+discourse--no mere casual sentence or two as heretofore at times, but
+solidly sustained throughout an almost entire sitting; that they may
+not, like the American savan, be thereupon betrayed into any surprise
+incompatible with their own good opinion of their previous penetration.
+
+The merchant's narration being ended, the other would not deny but that
+it did in some degree affect him. He hoped he was not without proper
+feeling for the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what spirit he
+bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond or have confidence?
+
+The merchant did not, perhaps, take the exact import of the last member
+of the question; but answered, that, if whether the unfortunate man was
+becomingly resigned under his affliction or no, was the point, he could
+say for him that resigned he was, and to an exemplary degree: for not
+only, so far as known, did he refrain from any one-sided reflections
+upon human goodness and human justice, but there was observable in him
+an air of chastened reliance, and at times tempered cheerfulness.
+
+Upon which the other observed, that since the unfortunate man's alleged
+experience could not be deemed very conciliatory towards a view of human
+nature better than human nature was, it largely redounded to his
+fair-mindedness, as well as piety, that under the alleged dissuasives,
+apparently so, from philanthropy, he had not, in a moment of excitement,
+been warped over to the ranks of the misanthropes. He doubted not,
+also, that with such a man his experience would, in the end, act by a
+complete and beneficent inversion, and so far from shaking his
+confidence in his kind, confirm it, and rivet it. Which would the more
+surely be the case, did he (the unfortunate man) at last become
+satisfied (as sooner or later he probably would be) that in the
+distraction of his mind his Goneril had not in all respects had fair
+play. At all events, the description of the lady, charity could not but
+regard as more or less exaggerated, and so far unjust. The truth
+probably was that she was a wife with some blemishes mixed with some
+beauties. But when the blemishes were displayed, her husband, no adept
+in the female nature, had tried to use reason with her, instead of
+something far more persuasive. Hence his failure to convince and
+convert. The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the
+circumstances, abrupt. In brief, there were probably small faults on
+both sides, more than balanced by large virtues; and one should not be
+hasty in judging.
+
+When the merchant, strange to say, opposed views so calm and impartial,
+and again, with some warmth, deplored the case of the unfortunate man,
+his companion, not without seriousness, checked him, saying, that this
+would never do; that, though but in the most exceptional case, to admit
+the existence of unmerited misery, more particularly if alleged to have
+been brought about by unhindered arts of the wicked, such an admission
+was, to say the least, not prudent; since, with some, it might
+unfavorably bias their most important persuasions. Not that those
+persuasions were legitimately servile to such influences. Because,
+since the common occurrences of life could never, in the nature of
+things, steadily look one way and tell one story, as flags in the
+trade-wind; hence, if the conviction of a Providence, for instance, were
+in any way made dependent upon such variabilities as everyday events,
+the degree of that conviction would, in thinking minds, be subject to
+fluctuations akin to those of the stock-exchange during a long and
+uncertain war. Here he glanced aside at his transfer-book, and after a
+moment's pause continued. It was of the essence of a right conviction of
+the divine nature, as with a right conviction of the human, that, based
+less on experience than intuition, it rose above the zones of weather.
+
+When now the merchant, with all his heart, coincided with this (as being
+a sensible, as well as religious person, he could not but do), his
+companion expressed satisfaction, that, in an age of some distrust on
+such subjects, he could yet meet with one who shared with him, almost to
+the full, so sound and sublime a confidence.
+
+Still, he was far from the illiberality of denying that philosophy duly
+bounded was not permissible. Only he deemed it at least desirable that,
+when such a case as that alleged of the unfortunate man was made the
+subject of philosophic discussion, it should be so philosophized upon,
+as not to afford handles to those unblessed with the true light. For,
+but to grant that there was so much as a mystery about such a case,
+might by those persons be held for a tacit surrender of the question.
+And as for the apparent license temporarily permitted sometimes, to the
+bad over the good (as was by implication alleged with regard to Goneril
+and the unfortunate man), it might be injudicious there to lay too much
+polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the
+vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded
+that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse
+the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though
+mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one
+which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In
+short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and
+everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the
+secure Malakoff of confidence, nor be tempted forth to hazardous
+skirmishes on the open ground of reason. Therefore, he deemed it
+unadvisable in the good man, even in the privacy of his own mind, or in
+communion with a congenial one, to indulge in too much latitude of
+philosophizing, or, indeed, of compassionating, since this might, beget
+an indiscreet habit of thinking and feeling which might unexpectedly
+betray him upon unsuitable occasions. Indeed, whether in private or
+public, there was nothing which a good man was more bound to guard
+himself against than, on some topics, the emotional unreserve of his
+natural heart; for, that the natural heart, in certain points, was not
+what it might be, men had been authoritatively admonished.
+
+But he thought he might be getting dry.
+
+The merchant, in his good-nature, thought otherwise, and said that he
+would be glad to refresh himself with such fruit all day. It was sitting
+under a ripe pulpit, and better such a seat than under a ripe
+peach-tree.
+
+The other was pleased to find that he had not, as he feared, been
+prosing; but would rather not be considered in the formal light of a
+preacher; he preferred being still received in that of the equal and
+genial companion. To which end, throwing still more of sociability into
+his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate man. Take the very
+worst view of that case; admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril;
+how fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by nature and by
+law? If he were acquainted with the unfortunate man, instead of
+condoling with him, he would congratulate him. Great good fortune had
+this unfortunate man. Lucky dog, he dared say, after all.
+
+To which the merchant replied, that he earnestly hoped it might be so,
+and at any rate he tried his best to comfort himself with the persuasion
+that, if the unfortunate man was not happy in this world, he would, at
+least, be so in another.
+
+His companion made no question of the unfortunate man's happiness in
+both worlds; and, presently calling for some champagne, invited the
+merchant to partake, upon the playful plea that, whatever notions other
+than felicitous ones he might associate with the unfortunate man, a
+little champagne would readily bubble away.
+
+At intervals they slowly quaffed several glasses in silence and
+thoughtfulness. At last the merchant's expressive face flushed, his eye
+moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative and feminine
+sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed
+to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. "Ah," he cried,
+pushing his glass from him, "Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good;
+but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata
+of hard considerations, and drop warmly and ruddily into the cold cave
+of truth? Truth will _not_ be comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by
+sweet hope, fond fancy essays this feat; but in vain; mere dreams and
+ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving naught but the scorching
+behind!"
+
+"Why, why, why!" in amaze, at the burst: "bless me, if _In vino veritas_
+be a true saying, then, for all the fine confidence you professed with
+me, just now, distrust, deep distrust, underlies it; and ten thousand
+strong, like the Irish Rebellion, breaks out in you now. That wine, good
+wine, should do it! Upon my soul," half seriously, half humorously,
+securing the bottle, "you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to
+gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence, not depress
+it."
+
+Sobered, shamed, all but confounded, by this raillery, the most telling
+rebuke under such circumstances, the merchant stared about him, and
+then, with altered mien, stammeringly confessed, that he was almost as
+much surprised as his companion, at what had escaped him. He did not
+understand it; was quite at a loss to account for such a rhapsody
+popping out of him unbidden. It could hardly be the champagne; he felt
+his brain unaffected; in fact, if anything, the wine had acted upon it
+something like white of egg in coffee, clarifying and brightening.
+
+"Brightening? brightening it may be, but less like the white of egg in
+coffee, than like stove-lustre on a stove--black, brightening seriously,
+I repent calling for the champagne. To a temperament like yours,
+champagne is not to be recommended. Pray, my dear sir, do you feel quite
+yourself again? Confidence restored?"
+
+"I hope so; I think I may say it is so. But we have had a long talk, and
+I think I must retire now."
+
+So saying, the merchant rose, and making his adieus, left the table with
+the air of one, mortified at having been tempted by his own honest
+goodness, accidentally stimulated into making mad disclosures--to
+himself as to another--of the queer, unaccountable caprices of his
+natural heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE WORTH CONSIDERING.
+
+
+As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the
+present must consist of one glancing backwards.
+
+To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of
+confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the
+moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have
+betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and
+even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be
+urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully
+see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look
+for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
+should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable
+enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it
+couple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that,
+while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction
+based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact,
+that, in real life, a consistent character is a _rara avis_? Which
+being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can
+hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from
+perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at
+his wits' ends to understand living character, shall those who are not
+sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit
+along a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every
+character can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a
+glance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear
+for wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand,
+that author who draws a character, even though to common view
+incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different
+periods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the
+caterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false
+but faithful to facts.
+
+If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters
+as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader
+unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of
+conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide
+here; but as no one man can be coextensive with _what is_, it may be
+unwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of
+Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists,
+appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
+reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in
+some way, artificially stuck on.
+
+But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her
+duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no
+business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always,
+they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency,
+which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in
+certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to
+their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted,
+considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen
+through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon
+the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its
+inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its
+contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out,
+thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always
+representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he
+clearly knows all about it.
+
+But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in
+books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first
+their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out
+to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as
+in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web
+of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their
+satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to
+the understanding even of school misses, the last complications of that
+spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
+made.
+
+At least, something like this is claimed for certain psychological
+novelists; nor will the claim be here disputed. Yet, as touching this
+point, it may prove suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity,
+having for their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
+have, by the best judges, been excluded with contempt from the ranks of
+the sciences--palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise,
+the fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the most
+eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as with other topics, seem
+some presumption of a pretty general and pretty thorough ignorance of
+it. Which may appear the less improbable if it be considered that, after
+poring over the best novels professing to portray human nature, the
+studious youth will still run risk of being too often at fault upon
+actually entering the world; whereas, had he been furnished with a true
+delineation, it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
+entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be very crooked, he
+may often pause; but, thanks to his true map, he does not hopelessly
+lose his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection,
+that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human
+nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the
+same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them
+is in expression, not in feature.
+
+But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some mathematicians are yet
+in hopes of hitting upon an exact method of determining the longitude,
+the more earnest psychologists may, in the face of previous failures,
+still cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
+discovering the heart of man.
+
+But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed
+amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains
+but to turn to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
+thought to that of action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+AN OLD MISER, UPON SUITABLE REPRESENTATIONS, IS PREVAILED UPON TO
+VENTURE AN INVESTMENT.
+
+
+The merchant having withdrawn, the other remained seated alone for a
+time, with the air of one who, after having conversed with some
+excellent man, carefully ponders what fell from him, however
+intellectually inferior it may be, that none of the profit may be lost;
+happy if from any honest word he has heard he can derive some hint,
+which, besides confirming him in the theory of virtue, may, likewise,
+serve for a finger-post to virtuous action.
+
+Ere long his eye brightened, as if some such hint was now caught. He
+rises, book in hand, quits the cabin, and enters upon a sort of
+corridor, narrow and dim, a by-way to a retreat less ornate and cheery
+than the former; in short, the emigrants' quarters; but which, owing to
+the present trip being a down-river one, will doubtless be found
+comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side
+windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most
+part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious
+sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for
+light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day;
+in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without
+bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical towns of the associate
+penguin and pelican, these bunks were disposed with Philadelphian
+regularity, but, like the cradle of the oriole, they were pendulous,
+and, moreover, were, so to speak, three-story cradles; the description
+of one of which will suffice for all.
+
+Four ropes, secured to the ceiling, passed downwards through auger-holes
+bored in the corners of three rough planks, which at equal distances
+rested on knots vertically tied in the ropes, the lowermost plank but an
+inch or two from the floor, the whole affair resembling, on a large
+scale, rope book-shelves; only, instead of hanging firmly against a
+wall, they swayed to and fro at the least suggestion of motion, but were
+more especially lively upon the provocation of a green emigrant
+sprawling into one, and trying to lay himself out there, when the
+cradling would be such as almost to toss him back whence he came. In
+consequence, one less inexperienced, essaying repose on the uppermost
+shelf, was liable to serious disturbance, should a raw beginner select a
+shelf beneath. Sometimes a throng of poor emigrants, coming at night in
+a sudden rain to occupy these oriole nests, would--through ignorance of
+their peculiarity--bring about such a rocking uproar of carpentry,
+joining to it such an uproar of exclamations, that it seemed as if some
+luckless ship, with all its crew, was being dashed to pieces among the
+rocks. They were beds devised by some sardonic foe of poor travelers,
+to deprive them of that tranquility which should precede, as well as
+accompany, slumber.--Procrustean beds, on whose hard grain humble worth
+and honesty writhed, still invoking repose, while but torment responded.
+Ah, did any one make such a bunk for himself, instead of having it made
+for him, it might be just, but how cruel, to say, You must lie on it!
+
+But, purgatory as the place would appear, the stranger advances into it:
+and, like Orpheus in his gay descent to Tartarus, lightly hums to
+himself an opera snatch.
+
+Suddenly there is a rustling, then a creaking, one of the cradles swings
+out from a murky nook, a sort of wasted penguin-flipper is
+supplicatingly put forth, while a wail like that of Dives is
+heard:--"Water, water!"
+
+It was the miser of whom the merchant had spoken.
+
+Swift as a sister-of-charity, the stranger hovers over him:--
+
+"My poor, poor sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh--water!"
+
+Darting out, he procures a glass, returns, and, holding it to the
+sufferer's lips, supports his head while he drinks: "And did they let
+you lie here, my poor sir, racked with this parching thirst?"
+
+The miser, a lean old man, whose flesh seemed salted cod-fish, dry as
+combustibles; head, like one whittled by an idiot out of a knot; flat,
+bony mouth, nipped between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting
+between hunks and imbecile--now one, now the other--he made no response.
+His eyes were closed, his cheek lay upon an old white moleskin coat,
+rolled under his head like a wizened apple upon a grimy snow-bank.
+
+Revived at last, he inclined towards his ministrant, and, in a voice
+disastrous with a cough, said:--"I am old and miserable, a poor beggar,
+not worth a shoestring--how can I repay you?"
+
+"By giving me your confidence."
+
+"Confidence!" he squeaked, with changed manner, while the pallet swung,
+"little left at my age, but take the stale remains, and welcome."
+
+"Such as it is, though, you give it. Very good. Now give me a hundred
+dollars."
+
+Upon this the miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his
+waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and
+there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he
+incoherently mumbled:--"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum,
+bubble!--Confidence? fetch, gouge!--Hundred dollars?--hundred devils!"
+
+Half spent, he lay mute awhile, then feebly raising himself, in a voice
+for the moment made strong by the sarcasm, said, "A hundred dollars?
+rather high price to put upon confidence. But don't you see I am a poor,
+old rat here, dying in the wainscot? You have served me; but, wretch
+that I am, I can but cough you my thanks,--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+This time his cough was so violent that its convulsions were imparted to
+the plank, which swung him about like a stone in a sling preparatory to
+its being hurled.
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"What a shocking cough. I wish, my friend, the herb-doctor was here now;
+a box of his Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would do you good."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I've a good mind to go find him. He's aboard somewhere. I saw his long,
+snuff-colored surtout. Trust me, his medicines are the best in the
+world."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, how sorry I am."
+
+"No doubt of it," squeaked the other again, "but go, get your charity
+out on deck. There parade the pursy peacocks; they don't cough down here
+in desertion and darkness, like poor old me. Look how scaly a pauper I
+am, clove with this churchyard cough. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Again, how sorry I feel, not only for your cough, but your poverty.
+Such a rare chance made unavailable. Did you have but the sum named, how
+I could invest it for you. Treble profits. But confidence--I fear that,
+even had you the precious cash, you would not have the more precious
+confidence I speak of."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!" flightily raising himself. "What's that? How, how? Then
+you don't want the money for yourself?"
+
+"My dear, _dear_ sir, how could you impute to me such preposterous
+self-seeking? To solicit out of hand, for my private behoof, an hundred
+dollars from a perfect stranger? I am not mad, my dear sir."
+
+"How, how?" still more bewildered, "do you, then, go about the world,
+gratis, seeking to invest people's money for them?"
+
+"My humble profession, sir. I live not for myself; but the world will
+not have confidence in me, and yet confidence in me were great gain."
+
+"But, but," in a kind of vertigo, "what do--do you do--do with people's
+money? Ugh, ugh! How is the gain made?"
+
+"To tell that would ruin me. That known, every one would be going into
+the business, and it would be overdone. A secret, a mystery--all I have
+to do with you is to receive your confidence, and all you have to do
+with me is, in due time, to receive it back, thrice paid in trebling
+profits."
+
+"What, what?" imbecility in the ascendant once more; "but the vouchers,
+the vouchers," suddenly hunkish again.
+
+"Honesty's best voucher is honesty's face."
+
+"Can't see yours, though," peering through the obscurity.
+
+From this last alternating flicker of rationality, the miser fell back,
+sputtering, into his previous gibberish, but it took now an arithmetical
+turn. Eyes closed, he lay muttering to himself--
+
+"One hundred, one hundred--two hundred, two hundred--three hundred,
+three hundred."
+
+He opened his eyes, feebly stared, and still more feebly said--
+
+"It's a little dim here, ain't it? Ugh, ugh! But, as well as my poor old
+eyes can see, you look honest."
+
+"I am glad to hear that."
+
+"If--if, now, I should put"--trying to raise himself, but vainly,
+excitement having all but exhausted him--"if, if now, I should put,
+put----"
+
+"No ifs. Downright confidence, or none. So help me heaven, I will have
+no half-confidences."
+
+He said it with an indifferent and superior air, and seemed moving to
+go.
+
+"Don't, don't leave me, friend; bear with me; age can't help some
+distrust; it can't, friend, it can't. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and
+miserable. I ought to have a guardian. Tell me, if----"
+
+"If? No more!"
+
+"Stay! how soon--ugh, ugh!--would my money be trebled? How soon,
+friend?"
+
+"You won't confide. Good-bye!"
+
+"Stay, stay," falling back now like an infant, "I confide, I confide;
+help, friend, my distrust!"
+
+From an old buckskin pouch, tremulously dragged forth, ten hoarded
+eagles, tarnished into the appearance of ten old horn-buttons, were
+taken, and half-eagerly, half-reluctantly, offered.
+
+"I know not whether I should accept this slack confidence," said the
+other coldly, receiving the gold, "but an eleventh-hour confidence, a
+sick-bed confidence, a distempered, death-bed confidence, after all.
+Give me the healthy confidence of healthy men, with their healthy wits
+about them. But let that pass. All right. Good-bye!"
+
+"Nay, back, back--receipt, my receipt! Ugh, ugh, ugh! Who are you? What
+have I done? Where go you? My gold, my gold! Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+But, unluckily for this final flicker of reason, the stranger was now
+beyond ear-shot, nor was any one else within hearing of so feeble a
+call.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A SICK MAN, AFTER SOME IMPATIENCE, IS INDUCED TO BECOME A PATIENT
+
+
+The sky slides into blue, the bluffs into bloom; the rapid Mississippi
+expands; runs sparkling and gurgling, all over in eddies; one magnified
+wake of a seventy-four. The sun comes out, a golden huzzar, from his
+tent, flashing his helm on the world. All things, warmed in the
+landscape, leap. Speeds the daedal boat as a dream.
+
+But, withdrawn in a corner, wrapped about in a shawl, sits an
+unparticipating man, visited, but not warmed, by the sun--a plant whose
+hour seems over, while buds are blowing and seeds are astir. On a stool
+at his left sits a stranger in a snuff-colored surtout, the collar
+thrown back; his hand waving in persuasive gesture, his eye beaming with
+hope. But not easily may hope be awakened in one long tranced into
+hopelessness by a chronic complaint.
+
+To some remark the sick man, by word or look, seemed to have just made
+an impatiently querulous answer, when, with a deprecatory air, the other
+resumed:
+
+"Nay, think not I seek to cry up my treatment by crying down that of
+others. And yet, when one is confident he has truth on his side, and
+that is not on the other, it is no very easy thing to be charitable; not
+that temper is the bar, but conscience; for charity would beget
+toleration, you know, which is a kind of implied permitting, and in
+effect a kind of countenancing; and that which is countenanced is so far
+furthered. But should untruth be furthered? Still, while for the world's
+good I refuse to further the cause of these mineral doctors, I would
+fain regard them, not as willful wrong-doers, but good Samaritans
+erring. And is this--I put it to you, sir--is this the view of an
+arrogant rival and pretender?"
+
+His physical power all dribbled and gone, the sick man replied not by
+voice or by gesture; but, with feeble dumb-show of his face, seemed to
+be saying "Pray leave me; who was ever cured by talk?"
+
+But the other, as if not unused to make allowances for such despondency,
+proceeded; and kindly, yet firmly:
+
+"You tell me, that by advice of an eminent physiologist in Louisville,
+you took tincture of iron. For what? To restore your lost energy. And
+how? Why, in healthy subjects iron is naturally found in the blood, and
+iron in the bar is strong; ergo, iron is the source of animal
+invigoration. But you being deficient in vigor, it follows that the
+cause is deficiency of iron. Iron, then, must be put into you; and so
+your tincture. Now as to the theory here, I am mute. But in modesty
+assuming its truth, and then, as a plain man viewing that theory in
+practice, I would respectfully question your eminent physiologist:
+'Sir,' I would say, 'though by natural processes, lifeless natures taken
+as nutriment become vitalized, yet is a lifeless nature, under any
+circumstances, capable of a living transmission, with all its qualities
+as a lifeless nature unchanged? If, sir, nothing can be incorporated
+with the living body but by assimilation, and if that implies the
+conversion of one thing to a different thing (as, in a lamp, oil is
+assimilated into flame), is it, in this view, likely, that by banqueting
+on fat, Calvin Edson will fatten? That is, will what is fat on the board
+prove fat on the bones? If it will, then, sir, what is iron in the vial
+will prove iron in the vein.' Seems that conclusion too confident?"
+
+But the sick man again turned his dumb-show look, as much as to say,
+"Pray leave me. Why, with painful words, hint the vanity of that which
+the pains of this body have too painfully proved?"
+
+But the other, as if unobservant of that querulous look, went on:
+
+"But this notion, that science can play farmer to the flesh, making
+there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other
+conceit--that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive
+cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain
+vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but
+lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir,
+that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you
+were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of
+every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring vapors
+generated by the burning of drugs? as if this concocted atmosphere of
+man were an antidote to the poison of God's natural air. Oh, who can
+wonder at that old reproach against science, that it is atheistical? And
+here is my prime reason for opposing these chemical practitioners, who
+have sought out so many inventions. For what do their inventions
+indicate, unless it be that kind and degree of pride in human skill,
+which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power
+above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical
+practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult
+incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat
+down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for
+them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked to anger
+with their inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A
+thousand pities that you should ever have been in the hands of these
+Egyptians."
+
+But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as much as to say, "Pray
+leave me; quacks, and indignation against quacks, both are vain."
+
+But, once more, the other went on: "How different we herb-doctors! who
+claim nothing, invent nothing; but staff in hand, in glades, and upon
+hillsides, go about in nature, humbly seeking her cures. True Indian
+doctors, though not learned in names, we are not unfamiliar with
+essences--successors of Solomon the Wise, who knew all vegetables, from
+the cedar of Lebanon, to the hyssop on the wall. Yes, Solomon was the
+first of herb-doctors. Nor were the virtues of herbs unhonored by yet
+older ages. Is it not writ, that on a moonlight night,
+
+    "Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
+    That did renew old AEson?"
+
+Ah, would you but have confidence, you should be the new AEson, and
+I your Medea. A few vials of my Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator would, I am
+certain, give you some strength."
+
+Upon this, indignation and abhorrence seemed to work by their excess the
+effect promised of the balsam. Roused from that long apathy of
+impotence, the cadaverous man started, and, in a voice that was as the
+sound of obstructed air gurgling through a maze of broken honey-combs,
+cried: "Begone! You are all alike. The name of doctor, the dream of
+helper, condemns you. For years I have been but a gallipot for you
+experimentizers to rinse your experiments into, and now, in this livid
+skin, partake of the nature of my contents. Begone! I hate ye."
+
+"I were inhuman, could I take affront at a want of confidence, born of
+too bitter an experience of betrayers. Yet, permit one who is not
+without feeling----"
+
+"Begone! Just in that voice talked to me, not six months ago, the German
+doctor at the water cure, from which I now return, six months and sixty
+pangs nigher my grave."
+
+"The water-cure? Oh, fatal delusion of the well-meaning Preisnitz!--Sir,
+trust me----"
+
+"Begone!"
+
+"Nay, an invalid should not always have his own way. Ah, sir, reflect
+how untimely this distrust in one like you. How weak you are; and
+weakness, is it not the time for confidence? Yes, when through weakness
+everything bids despair, then is the time to get strength by
+confidence."
+
+Relenting in his air, the sick man cast upon him a long glance of
+beseeching, as if saying, "With confidence must come hope; and how can
+hope be?"
+
+The herb-doctor took a sealed paper box from his surtout pocket, and
+holding it towards him, said solemnly, "Turn not away. This may be the
+last time of health's asking. Work upon yourself; invoke confidence,
+though from ashes; rouse it; for your life, rouse it, and invoke it, I
+say."
+
+The other trembled, was silent; and then, a little commanding himself,
+asked the ingredients of the medicine.
+
+"Herbs."
+
+"What herbs? And the nature of them? And the reason for giving them?"
+
+"It cannot be made known."
+
+"Then I will none of you."
+
+Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before him, the
+herb-doctor was mute a moment, then said:--"I give up."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You are sick, and a philosopher."
+
+"No, no;--not the last."
+
+"But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for giving, is the mark
+of a philosopher; just as the consequence is the penalty of a fool. A
+sick philosopher is incurable?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he has no confidence."
+
+"How does that make him incurable?"
+
+"Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a
+blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity,
+would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon
+the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other."
+
+Again, the sick man appeared not unmoved. He seemed to be thinking what
+in candid truth could be said to all this. At length, "You talk of
+confidence. How comes it that when brought low himself, the herb-doctor,
+who was most confident to prescribe in other cases, proves least
+confident to prescribe in his own; having small confidence in himself
+for himself?"
+
+"But he has confidence in the brother he calls in. And that he does so,
+is no reproach to him, since he knows that when the body is prostrated,
+the mind is not erect. Yes, in this hour the herb-doctor does distrust
+himself, but not his art."
+
+The sick man's knowledge did not warrant him to gainsay this. But he
+seemed not grieved at it; glad to be confuted in a way tending towards
+his wish.
+
+"Then you give me hope?" his sunken eye turned up.
+
+"Hope is proportioned to confidence. How much confidence you give me, so
+much hope do I give you. For this," lifting the box, "if all depended
+upon this, I should rest. It is nature's own."
+
+"Nature!"
+
+"Why do you start?"
+
+"I know not," with a sort of shudder, "but I have heard of a book
+entitled 'Nature in Disease.'"
+
+"A title I cannot approve; it is suspiciously scientific. 'Nature in
+Disease?' As if nature, divine nature, were aught but health; as if
+through nature disease is decreed! But did I not before hint of the
+tendency of science, that forbidden tree? Sir, if despondency is yours
+from recalling that title, dismiss it. Trust me, nature is health; for
+health is good, and nature cannot work ill. As little can she work
+error. Get nature, and you get well. Now, I repeat, this medicine is
+nature's own."
+
+Again the sick man could not, according to his light, conscientiously
+disprove what was said. Neither, as before, did he seem over-anxious to
+do so; the less, as in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly
+could he offer so to do without something like the appearance of a kind
+of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he ungrateful, that since a
+spirit opposite to that pervaded all the herb-doctor's hopeful words,
+therefore, for hopefulness, he (the sick man) had not alone medical
+warrant, but also doctrinal.
+
+"Then you do really think," hectically, "that if I take this medicine,"
+mechanically reaching out for it, "I shall regain my health?"
+
+"I will not encourage false hopes," relinquishing to him the box, "I
+will be frank with you. Though frankness is not always the weakness of
+the mineral practitioner, yet the herb doctor must be frank, or nothing.
+Now then, sir, in your case, a radical cure--such a cure, understand, as
+should make you robust--such a cure, sir, I do not and cannot promise."
+
+"Oh, you need not! only restore me the power of being something else to
+others than a burdensome care, and to myself a droning grief. Only cure
+me of this misery of weakness; only make me so that I can walk about in
+the sun and not draw the flies to me, as lured by the coming of decay.
+Only do that--but that."
+
+"You ask not much; you are wise; not in vain have you suffered. That
+little you ask, I think, can be granted. But remember, not in a day, nor
+a week, nor perhaps a month, but sooner or later; I say not exactly
+when, for I am neither prophet nor charlatan. Still, if, according to
+the directions in your box there, you take my medicine steadily, without
+assigning an especial day, near or remote, to discontinue it, then may
+you calmly look for some eventual result of good. But again I say, you
+must have confidence."
+
+Feverishly he replied that he now trusted he had, and hourly should pray
+for its increase. When suddenly relapsing into one of those strange
+caprices peculiar to some invalids, he added: "But to one like me, it is
+so hard, so hard. The most confident hopes so often have failed me, and
+as often have I vowed never, no, never, to trust them again. Oh," feebly
+wringing his hands, "you do not know, you do not know."
+
+"I know this, that never did a right confidence, come to naught. But
+time is short; you hold your cure, to retain or reject."
+
+"I retain," with a clinch, "and now how much?"
+
+"As much as you can evoke from your heart and heaven."
+
+"How?--the price of this medicine?"
+
+"I thought it was confidence you meant; how much confidence you should
+have. The medicine,--that is half a dollar a vial. Your box holds six."
+
+The money was paid.
+
+"Now, sir," said the herb-doctor, "my business calls me away, and it may
+so be that I shall never see you again; if then----"
+
+He paused, for the sick man's countenance fell blank.
+
+"Forgive me," cried the other, "forgive that imprudent phrase 'never see
+you again.' Though I solely intended it with reference to myself, yet I
+had forgotten what your sensitiveness might be. I repeat, then, that it
+may be that we shall not soon have a second interview, so that
+hereafter, should another of my boxes be needed, you may not be able to
+replace it except by purchase at the shops; and, in so doing, you may
+run more or less risk of taking some not salutary mixture. For such is
+the popularity of the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator--thriving not by the
+credulity of the simple, but the trust of the wise--that certain
+contrivers have not been idle, though I would not, indeed, hastily
+affirm of them that they are aware of the sad consequences to the
+public. Homicides and murderers, some call those contrivers; but I do
+not; for murder (if such a crime be possible) comes from the heart, and
+these men's motives come from the purse. Were they not in poverty, I
+think they would hardly do what they do. Still, the public interests
+forbid that I should let their needy device for a living succeed. In
+short, I have adopted precautions. Take the wrapper from any of my vials
+and hold it to the light, you will see water-marked in capitals the word
+'_confidence_,' which is the countersign of the medicine, as I wish it
+was of the world. The wrapper bears that mark or else the medicine is
+counterfeit. But if still any lurking doubt should remain, pray enclose
+the wrapper to this address," handing a card, "and by return mail I will
+answer."
+
+At first the sick man listened, with the air of vivid interest, but
+gradually, while the other was still talking, another strange caprice
+came over him, and he presented the aspect of the most calamitous
+dejection.
+
+"How now?" said the herb-doctor.
+
+"You told me to have confidence, said that confidence was indispensable,
+and here you preach to me distrust. Ah, truth will out!"
+
+"I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant
+confidence in the genuine medicine, and the genuine _me_."
+
+"But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be yours, it seems I
+cannot have unquestioning confidence."
+
+"Prove all the vials; trust those which are true."
+
+"But to doubt, to suspect, to prove--to have all this wearing work to
+be doing continually--how opposed to confidence. It is evil!"
+
+"From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to confidence. How has it
+proved in our interview? But your voice is husky; I have let you talk
+too much. You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay--when I hear
+that health is yours, I will not, like some I know, vainly make boasts;
+but, giving glory where all glory is due, say, with the devout
+herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil, when, in the unseen but efficacious
+presence of Venus, he with simples healed the wound of AEneas:--
+
+    'This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,
+    Nor art's effect, but done by power divine.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+TOWARDS THE END OF WHICH THE HERB-DOCTOR PROVES HIMSELF A FORGIVER OF
+INJURIES.
+
+
+In a kind of ante-cabin, a number of respectable looking people, male
+and female, way-passengers, recently come on board, are listlessly
+sitting in a mutually shy sort of silence.
+
+Holding up a small, square bottle, ovally labeled with the engraving of
+a countenance full of soft pity as that of the Romish-painted Madonna,
+the herb-doctor passes slowly among them, benignly urbane, turning this
+way and that, saying:--
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I hold in my hand here the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader, thrice-blessed discovery of that disinterested friend of
+humanity whose portrait you see. Pure vegetable extract. Warranted to
+remove the acutest pain within less than ten minutes. Five hundred
+dollars to be forfeited on failure. Especially efficacious in heart
+disease and tic-douloureux. Observe the expression of this pledged
+friend of humanity.--Price only fifty cents."
+
+In vain. After the first idle stare, his auditors--in pretty good
+health, it seemed--instead of encouraging his politeness, appeared, if
+anything, impatient of it; and, perhaps, only diffidence, or some small
+regard for his feelings, prevented them from telling him so. But,
+insensible to their coldness, or charitably overlooking it, he more
+wooingly than ever resumed: "May I venture upon a small supposition?
+Have I your kind leave, ladies and gentlemen?"
+
+To which modest appeal, no one had the kindness to answer a syllable.
+
+"Well," said he, resignedly, "silence is at least not denial, and may be
+consent. My supposition is this: possibly some lady, here present, has a
+dear friend at home, a bed-ridden sufferer from spinal complaint. If so,
+what gift more appropriate to that sufferer than this tasteful little
+bottle of Pain Dissuader?"
+
+Again he glanced about him, but met much the same reception as before.
+Those faces, alien alike to sympathy or surprise, seemed patiently to
+say, "We are travelers; and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly
+put up with, many antic fools, and more antic quacks."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," (deferentially fixing his eyes upon their now
+self-complacent faces) "ladies and gentlemen, might I, by your kind
+leave, venture upon one other small supposition? It is this: that there
+is scarce a sufferer, this noonday, writhing on his bed, but in his hour
+he sat satisfactorily healthy and happy; that the Samaritan Pain
+Dissuader is the one only balm for that to which each living
+creature--who knows?--may be a draughted victim, present or prospective.
+In short:--Oh, Happiness on my right hand, and oh, Security on my left,
+can ye wisely adore a Providence, and not think it wisdom to
+provide?--Provide!" (Uplifting the bottle.)
+
+What immediate effect, if any, this appeal might have had, is uncertain.
+For just then the boat touched at a houseless landing, scooped, as by a
+land-slide, out of sombre forests; back through which led a road, the
+sole one, which, from its narrowness, and its being walled up with story
+on story of dusk, matted foliage, presented the vista of some cavernous
+old gorge in a city, like haunted Cock Lane in London. Issuing from that
+road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the
+door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that
+shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his
+beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress
+dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a
+clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak;
+with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably
+his child, but evidently of alien maternity, perhaps Creole, or even
+Camanche. Her eye would have been large for a woman, and was inky as the
+pools of falls among mountain-pines. An Indian blanket, orange-hued, and
+fringed with lead tassel-work, appeared that morning to have shielded
+the child from heavy showers. Her limbs were tremulous; she seemed a
+little Cassandra, in nervousness.
+
+No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful
+air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the
+child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my
+little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance
+in." Then with a half caper sang--
+
+    "'Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
+      The cow jumped over the moon.'
+
+Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
+
+Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor
+appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything,
+to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile
+hypochondriacally scornful.
+
+Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the stranger in a manly,
+business-like way--a transition which, though it might seem a little
+abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his
+recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic
+condescension of a kindly heart.
+
+"Excuse me," said he, "but, if I err not, I was speaking to you the
+other day;--on a Kentucky boat, wasn't it?"
+
+"Never to me," was the reply; the voice deep and lonesome enough to have
+come from the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft.
+
+"Ah!--But am I again mistaken, (his eye falling on the swamp-oak stick,)
+or don't you go a little lame, sir?"
+
+"Never was lame in my life."
+
+"Indeed? I fancied I had perceived not a limp, but a hitch, a slight
+hitch;--some experience in these things--divined some hidden cause of
+the hitch--buried bullet, may be--some dragoons in the Mexican war
+discharged with such, you know.--Hard fate!" he sighed, "little pity for
+it, for who sees it?--have you dropped anything?"
+
+Why, there is no telling, but the stranger was bowed over, and might
+have seemed bowing for the purpose of picking up something, were it not
+that, as arrested in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so
+remained; slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding to the
+gale, or Adam to the thunder.
+
+The little child pulled him. With a kind of a surge he righted himself,
+for an instant looked toward the herb-doctor; but, either from emotion
+or aversion, or both together, withdrew his eyes, saying nothing.
+Presently, still stooping, he seated himself, drawing his child between
+his knees, his massy hands tremulous, and still averting his face, while
+up into the compassionate one of the herb-doctor the child turned a
+fixed, melancholy glance of repugnance.
+
+The herb-doctor stood observant a moment, then said:
+
+"Surely you have pain, strong pain, somewhere; in strong frames pain is
+strongest. Try, now, my specific," (holding it up). "Do but look at the
+expression of this friend of humanity. Trust me, certain cure for any
+pain in the world. Won't you look?"
+
+"No," choked the other.
+
+"Very good. Merry time to you, little May Queen."
+
+And so, as if he would intrude his cure upon no one, moved pleasantly
+off, again crying his wares, nor now at last without result. A
+new-comer, not from the shore, but another part of the boat, a sickly
+young man, after some questions, purchased a bottle. Upon this, others
+of the company began a little to wake up as it were; the scales of
+indifference or prejudice fell from their eyes; now, at last, they
+seemed to have an inkling that here was something not undesirable which
+might be had for the buying.
+
+But while, ten times more briskly bland than ever, the herb-doctor was
+driving his benevolent trade, accompanying each sale with added praises
+of the thing traded, all at once the dusk giant, seated at some
+distance, unexpectedly raised his voice with--
+
+"What was that you last said?"
+
+The question was put distinctly, yet resonantly, as when a great
+clock-bell--stunning admonisher--strikes one; and the stroke, though
+single, comes bedded in the belfry clamor.
+
+All proceedings were suspended. Hands held forth for the specific were
+withdrawn, while every eye turned towards the direction whence the
+question came. But, no way abashed, the herb-doctor, elevating his voice
+with even more than wonted self-possession, replied--
+
+"I was saying what, since you wish it, I cheerfully repeat, that the
+Samaritan Pain Dissuader, which I here hold in my hand, will either cure
+or ease any pain you please, within ten minutes after its application."
+
+"Does it produce insensibility?"
+
+"By no means. Not the least of its merits is, that it is not an opiate.
+It kills pain without killing feeling."
+
+"You lie! Some pains cannot be eased but by producing insensibility, and
+cannot be cured but by producing death."
+
+Beyond this the dusk giant said nothing; neither, for impairing the
+other's market, did there appear much need to. After eying the rude
+speaker a moment with an expression of mingled admiration and
+consternation, the company silently exchanged glances of mutual sympathy
+under unwelcome conviction. Those who had purchased looked sheepish or
+ashamed; and a cynical-looking little man, with a thin flaggy beard, and
+a countenance ever wearing the rudiments of a grin, seated alone in a
+corner commanding a good view of the scene, held a rusty hat before his
+face.
+
+But, again, the herb-doctor, without noticing the retort, overbearing
+though it was, began his panegyrics anew, and in a tone more assured
+than before, going so far now as to say that his specific was sometimes
+almost as effective in cases of mental suffering as in cases of
+physical; or rather, to be more precise, in cases when, through
+sympathy, the two sorts of pain cooeperated into a climax of both--in
+such cases, he said, the specific had done very well. He cited an
+example: Only three bottles, faithfully taken, cured a Louisiana widow
+(for three weeks sleepless in a darkened chamber) of neuralgic sorrow
+for the loss of husband and child, swept off in one night by the last
+epidemic. For the truth of this, a printed voucher was produced, duly
+signed.
+
+While he was reading it aloud, a sudden side-blow all but felled him.
+
+It was the giant, who, with a countenance lividly epileptic with
+hypochondriac mania, exclaimed--
+
+"Profane fiddler on heart-strings! Snake!"
+
+More he would have added, but, convulsed, could not; so, without another
+word, taking up the child, who had followed him, went with a rocking
+pace out of the cabin.
+
+"Regardless of decency, and lost to humanity!" exclaimed the
+herb-doctor, with much ado recovering himself. Then, after a pause,
+during which he examined his bruise, not omitting to apply externally a
+little of his specific, and with some success, as it would seem, plained
+to himself:
+
+"No, no, I won't seek redress; innocence is my redress. But," turning
+upon them all, "if that man's wrathful blow provokes me to no wrath,
+should his evil distrust arouse you to distrust? I do devoutly hope,"
+proudly raising voice and arm, "for the honor of humanity--hope that,
+despite this coward assault, the Samaritan Pain Dissuader stands
+unshaken in the confidence of all who hear me!"
+
+But, injured as he was, and patient under it, too, somehow his case
+excited as little compassion as his oratory now did enthusiasm. Still,
+pathetic to the last, he continued his appeals, notwithstanding the
+frigid regard of the company, till, suddenly interrupting himself, as
+if in reply to a quick summons from without, he said hurriedly, "I come,
+I come," and so, with every token of precipitate dispatch, out of the
+cabin the herb-doctor went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+INQUEST INTO THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE HERB-DOCTOR.
+
+
+"Sha'n't see that fellow again in a hurry," remarked an auburn-haired
+gentleman, to his neighbor with a hook-nose. "Never knew an operator so
+completely unmasked."
+
+"But do you think it the fair thing to unmask an operator that way?"
+
+"Fair? It is right."
+
+"Supposing that at high 'change on the Paris Bourse, Asmodeus should
+lounge in, distributing hand-bills, revealing the true thoughts and
+designs of all the operators present--would that be the fair thing in
+Asmodeus? Or, as Hamlet says, were it 'to consider the thing too
+curiously?'"
+
+"We won't go into that. But since you admit the fellow to be a
+knave----"
+
+"I don't admit it. Or, if I did, I take it back. Shouldn't wonder if,
+after all, he is no knave at all, or, but little of one. What can you
+prove against him?"
+
+"I can prove that he makes dupes."
+
+"Many held in honor do the same; and many, not wholly knaves, do it
+too."
+
+"How about that last?"
+
+"He is not wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among whose dupes is
+himself. Did you not see our quack friend apply to himself his own
+quackery? A fanatic quack; essentially a fool, though effectively a
+knave."
+
+Bending over, and looking down between his knees on the floor, the
+auburn-haired gentleman meditatively scribbled there awhile with his
+cane, then, glancing up, said:
+
+"I can't conceive how you, in anyway, can hold him a fool. How he
+talked--so glib, so pat, so well."
+
+"A smart fool always talks well; takes a smart fool to be tonguey."
+
+In much the same strain the discussion continued--the hook-nosed
+gentleman talking at large and excellently, with a view of demonstrating
+that a smart fool always talks just so. Ere long he talked to such
+purpose as almost to convince.
+
+Presently, back came the person of whom the auburn-haired gentleman had
+predicted that he would not return. Conspicuous in the door-way he
+stood, saying, in a clear voice, "Is the agent of the Seminole Widow and
+Orphan Asylum within here?"
+
+No one replied.
+
+"Is there within here any agent or any member of any charitable
+institution whatever?"
+
+No one seemed competent to answer, or, no one thought it worth while
+to.
+
+"If there be within here any such person, I have in my hand two dollars
+for him."
+
+Some interest was manifested.
+
+"I was called away so hurriedly, I forgot this part of my duty. With the
+proprietor of the Samaritan Pain Dissuader it is a rule, to devote, on
+the spot, to some benevolent purpose, the half of the proceeds of sales.
+Eight bottles were disposed of among this company. Hence, four
+half-dollars remain to charity. Who, as steward, takes the money?"
+
+One or two pair of feet moved upon the floor, as with a sort of itching;
+but nobody rose.
+
+"Does diffidence prevail over duty? If, I say, there be any gentleman,
+or any lady, either, here present, who is in any connection with any
+charitable institution whatever, let him or her come forward. He or she
+happening to have at hand no certificate of such connection, makes no
+difference. Not of a suspicious temper, thank God, I shall have
+confidence in whoever offers to take the money."
+
+A demure-looking woman, in a dress rather tawdry and rumpled, here drew
+her veil well down and rose; but, marking every eye upon her, thought it
+advisable, upon the whole, to sit down again.
+
+"Is it to be believed that, in this Christian company, there is no one
+charitable person? I mean, no one connected with any charity? Well,
+then, is there no object of charity here?"
+
+Upon this, an unhappy-looking woman, in a sort of mourning, neat, but
+sadly worn, hid her face behind a meagre bundle, and was heard to sob.
+Meantime, as not seeing or hearing her, the herb-doctor again spoke, and
+this time not unpathetically:
+
+"Are there none here who feel in need of help, and who, in accepting
+such help, would feel that they, in their time, have given or done more
+than may ever be given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none such
+here?"
+
+The sobs of the woman were more audible, though she strove to repress
+them. While nearly every one's attention was bent upon her, a man of the
+appearance of a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face,
+concealing the side of the nose, and who, for coolness' sake, had been
+sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat thrown across one
+shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping behind--this man shufflingly rose,
+and, with a pace that seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of
+convicts, went up for a duly-qualified claimant.
+
+"Poor wounded huzzar!" sighed the herb-doctor, and dropping the money
+into the man's clam-shell of a hand turned and departed.
+
+The recipient of the alms was about moving after, when the auburn-haired
+gentleman staid him: "Don't be frightened, you; but I want to see those
+coins. Yes, yes; good silver, good silver. There, take them again, and
+while you are about it, go bandage the rest of yourself behind
+something. D'ye hear? Consider yourself, wholly, the scar of a nose, and
+be off with yourself."
+
+Being of a forgiving nature, or else from emotion not daring to trust
+his voice, the man silently, but not without some precipitancy,
+withdrew.
+
+"Strange," said the auburn-haired gentleman, returning to his friend,
+"the money was good money."
+
+"Aye, and where your fine knavery now? Knavery to devote the half of
+one's receipts to charity? He's a fool I say again."
+
+"Others might call him an original genius."
+
+"Yes, being original in his folly. Genius? His genius is a cracked pate,
+and, as this age goes, not much originality about that."
+
+"May he not be knave, fool, and genius altogether?"
+
+"I beg pardon," here said a third person with a gossiping expression who
+had been listening, "but you are somewhat puzzled by this man, and well
+you may be."
+
+"Do you know anything about him?" asked the hooked-nosed gentleman.
+
+"No, but I suspect him for something."
+
+"Suspicion. We want knowledge."
+
+"Well, suspect first and know next. True knowledge comes but by
+suspicion or revelation. That's my maxim."
+
+"And yet," said the auburn-haired gentleman, "since a wise man will keep
+even some certainties to himself, much more some suspicions, at least he
+will at all events so do till they ripen into knowledge."
+
+"Do you hear that about the wise man?" said the hook-nosed gentleman,
+turning upon the new comer. "Now what is it you suspect of this fellow?"
+
+"I shrewdly suspect him," was the eager response, "for one of those
+Jesuit emissaries prowling all over our country. The better to
+accomplish their secret designs, they assume, at times, I am told, the
+most singular masques; sometimes, in appearance, the absurdest."
+
+This, though indeed for some reason causing a droll smile upon the face
+of the hook-nosed gentleman, added a third angle to the discussion,
+which now became a sort of triangular duel, and ended, at last, with but
+a triangular result.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
+
+
+"Mexico? Molino del Rey? Resaca de la Palma?"
+
+"Resaca de la _Tomba_!"
+
+Leaving his reputation to take care of itself, since, as is not seldom
+the case, he knew nothing of its being in debate, the herb-doctor,
+wandering towards the forward part of the boat, had there espied a
+singular character in a grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once
+grim and wizened, interwoven paralyzed legs, stiff as icicles, suspended
+between rude crutches, while the whole rigid body, like a ship's long
+barometer on gimbals, swung to and fro, mechanically faithful to the
+motion of the boat. Looking downward while he swung, the cripple seemed
+in a brown study.
+
+As moved by the sight, and conjecturing that here was some battered hero
+from the Mexican battle-fields, the herb-doctor had sympathetically
+accosted him as above, and received the above rather dubious reply. As,
+with a half moody, half surly sort of air that reply was given, the
+cripple, by a voluntary jerk, nervously increased his swing (his custom
+when seized by emotion), so that one would have thought some squall had
+suddenly rolled the boat and with it the barometer.
+
+"Tombs? my friend," exclaimed the herb-doctor in mild surprise. "You
+have not descended to the dead, have you? I had imagined you a scarred
+campaigner, one of the noble children of war, for your dear country a
+glorious sufferer. But you are Lazarus, it seems."
+
+"Yes, he who had sores."
+
+"Ah, the _other_ Lazarus. But I never knew that either of them was in
+the army," glancing at the dilapidated regimentals.
+
+"That will do now. Jokes enough."
+
+"Friend," said the other reproachfully, "you think amiss. On principle,
+I greet unfortunates with some pleasant remark, the better to call off
+their thoughts from their troubles. The physician who is at once wise
+and humane seldom unreservedly sympathizes with his patient. But come, I
+am a herb-doctor, and also a natural bone-setter. I may be sanguine, but
+I think I can do something for you. You look up now. Give me your story.
+Ere I undertake a cure, I require a full account of the case."
+
+"You can't help me," returned the cripple gruffly. "Go away."
+
+"You seem sadly destitute of----"
+
+"No I ain't destitute; to-day, at least, I can pay my way."
+
+"The Natural Bone-setter is happy, indeed, to hear that. But you were
+premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of
+confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well,
+suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You,
+my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then,
+for my private good, how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus,
+you have arrived at his heroic sang-froid in misfortune."
+
+At these words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the hard ironic eye of
+one toughened and defiant in misery, and, in the end, grinned upon him
+with his unshaven face like an ogre.
+
+"Come, come, be sociable--be human, my friend. Don't make that face; it
+distresses me."
+
+"I suppose," with a sneer, "you are the man I've long heard of--The
+Happy Man."
+
+"Happy? my friend. Yes, at least I ought to be. My conscience is
+peaceful. I have confidence in everybody. I have confidence that, in my
+humble profession, I do some little good to the world. Yes, I think
+that, without presumption, I may venture to assent to the proposition
+that I am the Happy Man--the Happy Bone-setter."
+
+"Then, you shall hear my story. Many a month I have longed to get hold
+of the Happy Man, drill him, drop the powder, and leave him to explode
+at his leisure.".
+
+"What a demoniac unfortunate" exclaimed the herb-doctor retreating.
+"Regular infernal machine!"
+
+"Look ye," cried the other, stumping after him, and with his horny hand
+catching him by a horn button, "my name is Thomas Fry. Until my----"
+
+--"Any relation of Mrs. Fry?" interrupted the other. "I still correspond
+with that excellent lady on the subject of prisons. Tell me, are you
+anyway connected with _my_ Mrs. Fry?"
+
+"Blister Mrs. Fry! What do them sentimental souls know of prisons or any
+other black fact? I'll tell ye a story of prisons. Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor shrank, and with reason, the laugh being strangely
+startling.
+
+"Positively, my friend," said he, "you must stop that; I can't stand
+that; no more of that. I hope I have the milk of kindness, but your
+thunder will soon turn it."
+
+"Hold, I haven't come to the milk-turning part yet. My name is Thomas
+Fry. Until my twenty-third year I went by the nickname of Happy
+Tom--happy--ha, ha! They called me Happy Tom, d'ye see? because I was so
+good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am now--ha, ha!"
+
+Upon this the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run, but once more the
+hyaena clawed him. Presently, sobering down, he continued:
+
+"Well, I was born in New York, and there I lived a steady, hard-working
+man, a cooper by trade. One evening I went to a political meeting in the
+Park--for you must know, I was in those days a great patriot. As bad
+luck would have it, there was trouble near, between a gentleman who had
+been drinking wine, and a pavior who was sober. The pavior chewed
+tobacco, and the gentleman said it was beastly in him, and pushed him,
+wanting to have his place. The pavior chewed on and pushed back. Well,
+the gentleman carried a sword-cane, and presently the pavior was
+down--skewered."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Why you see the pavior undertook something above his strength."
+
+"The other must have been a Samson then. 'Strong as a pavior,' is a
+proverb."
+
+"So it is, and the gentleman was in body a rather weakly man, but, for
+all that, I say again, the pavior undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"What are you talking about? He tried to maintain his rights, didn't
+he?"
+
+"Yes; but, for all that, I say again, he undertook something above his
+strength."
+
+"I don't understand you. But go on."
+
+"Along with the gentleman, I, with other witnesses, was taken to the
+Tombs. There was an examination, and, to appear at the trial, the
+gentleman and witnesses all gave bail--I mean all but me."
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+"Couldn't get it."
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper like you; what was the reason you couldn't
+get bail?"
+
+"Steady, hard-working cooper hadn't no friends. Well, souse I went into
+a wet cell, like a canal-boat splashing into the lock; locked up in
+pickle, d'ye see? against the time of the trial."
+
+"But what had you done?"
+
+"Why, I hadn't got any friends, I tell ye. A worse crime than murder, as
+ye'll see afore long."
+
+"Murder? Did the wounded man die?"
+
+"Died the third night."
+
+"Then the gentleman's bail didn't help him. Imprisoned now, wasn't he?"
+
+"Had too many friends. No, it was _I_ that was imprisoned.--But I was
+going on: They let me walk about the corridor by day; but at night I
+must into lock. There the wet and the damp struck into my bones. They
+doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was boosted up and said
+my say."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it sticking in."
+
+"And that hung the gentleman."
+
+"Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park,
+and presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal."
+
+"Acquittal?"
+
+"Didn't I say he had friends?"
+
+There was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor's saying: "Well,
+there is a bright side to everything. If this speak prosaically for
+justice, it speaks romantically for friendship! But go on, my fine
+fellow."
+
+"My say being said, they told me I might go. I said I could not without
+help. So the constables helped me, asking _where_ would I go? I told
+them back to the 'Tombs.' I knew no other place. 'But where are your
+friends?' said they. 'I have none.' So they put me into a hand-barrow
+with an awning to it, and wheeled me down to the dock and on board a
+boat, and away to Blackwell's Island to the Corporation Hospital. There
+I got worse--got pretty much as you see me now. Couldn't cure me. After
+three years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of
+groaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver
+dollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother
+who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go
+to him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It
+was on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump fence, the old
+gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the
+grave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green
+twigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the
+mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soils for
+grave-yards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and
+rest myself on the bier and think about my brother in heaven, but the
+bier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs
+out of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make
+too long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other
+bit of wreck."
+
+The herb-doctor was silent for a time, buried in thought. At last,
+raising his head, he said: "I have considered your whole story, my
+friend, and strove to consider it in the light of a commentary on what I
+believe to be the system of things; but it so jars with all, is so
+incompatible with all, that you must pardon me, if I honestly tell you,
+I cannot believe it."
+
+"That don't surprise me."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Hardly anybody believes my story, and so to most I tell a different
+one."
+
+"How, again?"
+
+"Wait here a bit and I'll show ye."
+
+With that, taking off his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered
+regimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers
+in an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air:
+"Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady,
+something for General Scott's soldier, crippled in both pins at glorious
+Contreras."
+
+Now, it so chanced that, unbeknown to the cripple, a prim-looking
+stranger had overheard part of his story. Beholding him, then, on his
+present begging adventure, this person, turning to the herb-doctor,
+indignantly said: "Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder rascal should lie
+so?"
+
+"Charity never faileth, my good sir," was the reply. "The vice of this
+unfortunate is pardonable. Consider, he lies not out of wantonness."
+
+"Not out of wantonness. I never heard more wanton lies. In one breath to
+tell you what would appear to be his true story, and, in the next, away
+and falsify it."
+
+"For all that, I repeat he lies not out of wantonness. A ripe
+philosopher, turned out of the great Sorbonne of hard times, he thinks
+that woes, when told to strangers for money, are best sugared. Though
+the inglorious lock-jaw of his knee-pans in a wet dungeon is a far more
+pitiable ill than to have been crippled at glorious Contreras, yet he is
+of opinion that this lighter and false ill shall attract, while the
+heavier and real one might repel."
+
+"Nonsense; he belongs to the Devil's regiment; and I have a great mind
+to expose him."
+
+"Shame upon you. Dare to expose that poor unfortunate, and by
+heaven--don't you do it, sir."
+
+Noting something in his manner, the other thought it more prudent to
+retire than retort. By-and-by, the cripple came back, and with glee,
+having reaped a pretty good harvest.
+
+"There," he laughed, "you know now what sort of soldier I am."
+
+"Aye, one that fights not the stupid Mexican, but a foe worthy your
+tactics--Fortune!"
+
+"Hi, hi!" clamored the cripple, like a fellow in the pit of a sixpenny
+theatre, then said, "don't know much what you meant, but it went off
+well."
+
+This over, his countenance capriciously put on a morose ogreness. To
+kindly questions he gave no kindly answers. Unhandsome notions were
+thrown out about "free Ameriky," as he sarcastically called his country.
+These seemed to disturb and pain the herb-doctor, who, after an interval
+of thoughtfulness, gravely addressed him in these words:
+
+"You, my Worthy friend, to my concern, have reflected upon the
+government under which you live and suffer. Where is your patriotism?
+Where your gratitude? True, the charitable may find something in your
+case, as you put it, partly to account for such reflections as coming
+from you. Still, be the facts how they may, your reflections are none
+the less unwarrantable. Grant, for the moment, that your experiences are
+as you give them; in which case I would admit that government might be
+thought to have more or less to do with what seems undesirable in them.
+But it is never to be forgotten that human government, being subordinate
+to the divine, must needs, therefore, in its degree, partake of the
+characteristics of the divine. That is, while in general efficacious to
+happiness, the world's law may yet, in some cases, have, to the eye of
+reason, an unequal operation, just as, in the same imperfect view, some
+inequalities may appear in the operations of heaven's law; nevertheless,
+to one who has a right confidence, final benignity is, in every
+instance, as sure with the one law as the other. I expound the point at
+some length, because these are the considerations, my poor fellow,
+which, weighed as they merit, will enable you to sustain with unimpaired
+trust the apparent calamities which are yours."
+
+"What do you talk your hog-latin to me for?" cried the cripple, who,
+throughout the address, betrayed the most illiterate obduracy; and, with
+an incensed look, anew he swung himself.
+
+Glancing another way till the spasm passed, the other continued:
+
+"Charity marvels not that you should be somewhat hard of conviction, my
+friend, since you, doubtless, believe yourself hardly dealt by; but
+forget not that those who are loved are chastened."
+
+"Mustn't chasten them too much, though, and too long, because their skin
+and heart get hard, and feel neither pain nor tickle."
+
+"To mere reason, your case looks something piteous, I grant. But never
+despond; many things--the choicest--yet remain. You breathe this
+bounteous air, are warmed by this gracious sun, and, though poor and
+friendless, indeed, nor so agile as in your youth, yet, how sweet to
+roam, day by day, through the groves, plucking the bright mosses and
+flowers, till forlornness itself becomes a hilarity, and, in your
+innocent independence, you skip for joy."
+
+"Fine skipping with these 'ere horse-posts--ha ha!"
+
+"Pardon; I forgot the crutches. My mind, figuring you after receiving
+the benefit of my art, overlooked you as you stand before me."
+
+"Your art? You call yourself a bone-setter--a natural bone-setter, do
+ye? Go, bone-set the crooked world, and then come bone-set crooked me."
+
+"Truly, my honest friend, I thank you for again recalling me to my
+original object. Let me examine you," bending down; "ah, I see, I see;
+much such a case as the negro's. Did you see him? Oh no, you came aboard
+since. Well, his case was a little something like yours. I prescribed
+for him, and I shouldn't wonder at all if, in a very short time, he were
+able to walk almost as well as myself. Now, have you no confidence in my
+art?"
+
+"Ha, ha!"
+
+The herb-doctor averted himself; but, the wild laugh dying away,
+resumed:
+
+"I will not force confidence on you. Still, I would fain do the friendly
+thing by you. Here, take this box; just rub that liniment on the joints
+night and morning. Take it. Nothing to pay. God bless you. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay," pausing in his swing, not untouched by so unexpected an act;
+"stay--thank'ee--but will this really do me good? Honor bright, now;
+will it? Don't deceive a poor fellow," with changed mien and glistening
+eye.
+
+"Try it. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay! _Sure_ it will do me good?"
+
+"Possibly, possibly; no harm in trying. Good-bye."
+
+"Stay, stay; give me three more boxes, and here's the money."
+
+"My friend," returning towards him with a sadly pleased sort of air, "I
+rejoice in the birth of your confidence and hopefulness. Believe me
+that, like your crutches, confidence and hopefulness will long support a
+man when his own legs will not. Stick to confidence and hopefulness,
+then, since how mad for the cripple to throw his crutches away. You ask
+for three more boxes of my liniment. Luckily, I have just that number
+remaining. Here they are. I sell them at half-a-dollar apiece. But I
+shall take nothing from you. There; God bless you again; good-bye."
+
+"Stay," in a convulsed voice, and rocking himself, "stay, stay! You have
+made a better man of me. You have borne with me like a good Christian,
+and talked to me like one, and all that is enough without making me a
+present of these boxes. Here is the money. I won't take nay. There,
+there; and may Almighty goodness go with you."
+
+As the herb-doctor withdrew, the cripple gradually subsided from his
+hard rocking into a gentle oscillation. It expressed, perhaps, the
+soothed mood of his reverie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+REAPPEARANCE OF ONE WHO MAY BE REMEMBERED.
+
+
+The herb-doctor had not moved far away, when, in advance of him, this
+spectacle met his eye. A dried-up old man, with the stature of a boy of
+twelve, was tottering about like one out of his mind, in rumpled clothes
+of old moleskin, showing recent contact with bedding, his ferret eyes,
+blinking in the sunlight of the snowy boat, as imbecilely eager, and, at
+intervals, coughing, he peered hither and thither as if in alarmed
+search for his nurse. He presented the aspect of one who, bed-rid, has,
+through overruling excitement, like that of a fire, been stimulated to
+his feet.
+
+"You seek some one," said the herb-doctor, accosting him. "Can I assist
+you?"
+
+"Do, do; I am so old and miserable," coughed the old man. "Where is he?
+This long time I've been trying to get up and find him. But I haven't
+any friends, and couldn't get up till now. Where is he?"
+
+"Who do you mean?" drawing closer, to stay the further wanderings of one
+so weakly.
+
+"Why, why, why," now marking the other's dress, "why you, yes you--you,
+you--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--you are the man he spoke of. Who is he?"
+
+"Faith, that is just what I want to know."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" coughed the old man, bewildered, "ever since seeing him,
+my head spins round so. I ought to have a guard_ee_an. Is this a
+snuff-colored surtout of yours, or ain't it? Somehow, can't trust my
+senses any more, since trusting him--ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you have trusted somebody? Glad to hear it. Glad to hear of any
+instance, of that sort. Reflects well upon all men. But you inquire
+whether this is a snuff-colored surtout. I answer it is; and will add
+that a herb-doctor wears it."
+
+Upon this the old man, in his broken way, replied that then he (the
+herb-doctor) was the person he sought--the person spoken of by the other
+person as yet unknown. He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted to know
+who this last person was, and where he was, and whether he could be
+trusted with money to treble it.
+
+"Aye, now, I begin to understand; ten to one you mean my worthy friend,
+who, in pure goodness of heart, makes people's fortunes for them--their
+everlasting fortunes, as the phrase goes--only charging his one small
+commission of confidence. Aye, aye; before intrusting funds with my
+friend, you want to know about him. Very proper--and, I am glad to
+assure you, you need have no hesitation; none, none, just none in the
+world; bona fide, none. Turned me in a trice a hundred dollars the other
+day into as many eagles."
+
+"Did he? did he? But where is he? Take me to him."
+
+"Pray, take my arm! The boat is large! We may have something of a hunt!
+Come on! Ah, is that he?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"O, no; I took yonder coat-skirts for his. But no, my honest friend
+would never turn tail that way. Ah!----"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Another mistake. Surprising resemblance. I took yonder clergyman for
+him. Come on!"
+
+Having searched that part of the boat without success, they went to
+another part, and, while exploring that, the boat sided up to a landing,
+when, as the two were passing by the open guard, the herb-doctor
+suddenly rushed towards the disembarking throng, crying out: "Mr.
+Truman, Mr. Truman! There he goes--that's he. Mr. Truman, Mr.
+Truman!--Confound that steam-pipe., Mr. Truman! for God's sake, Mr.
+Truman!--No, no.--There, the plank's in--too late--we're off."
+
+With that, the huge boat, with a mighty, walrus wallow, rolled away from
+the shore, resuming her course.
+
+"How vexatious!" exclaimed the herb-doctor, returning. "Had we been but
+one single moment sooner.--There he goes, now, towards yon hotel, his
+portmanteau following. You see him, don't you?"
+
+"Where? where?"
+
+"Can't see him any more. Wheel-house shot between. I am very sorry. I
+should have so liked you to have let him have a hundred or so of your
+money. You would have been pleased with the investment, believe me."
+
+"Oh, I _have_ let him have some of my money," groaned the old man.
+
+"You have? My dear sir," seizing both the miser's hands in both his own
+and heartily shaking them. "My dear sir, how I congratulate you. You
+don't know."
+
+"Ugh, ugh! I fear I don't," with another groan. "His name is Truman, is
+it?"
+
+"John Truman."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"In St. Louis."
+
+"Where's his office?"
+
+"Let me see. Jones street, number one hundred and--no, no--anyway, it's
+somewhere or other up-stairs in Jones street."
+
+"Can't you remember the number? Try, now."
+
+"One hundred--two hundred--three hundred--"
+
+"Oh, my hundred dollars! I wonder whether it will be one hundred, two
+hundred, three hundred, with them! Ugh, ugh! Can't remember the number?"
+
+"Positively, though I once knew, I have forgotten, quite forgotten it.
+Strange. But never mind. You will easily learn in St. Louis. He is well
+known there."
+
+"But I have no receipt--ugh, ugh! Nothing to show--don't know where I
+stand--ought to have a guard_ee_an--ugh, ugh! Don't know anything. Ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Why, you know that you gave him your confidence, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But what, what--how, how--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Why, didn't he tell you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What! Didn't he tell you that it was a secret, a mystery?"
+
+"Oh--yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But I have no bond."
+
+"Don't need any with Mr. Truman. Mr. Truman's word is his bond."
+
+"But how am I to get my profits--ugh, ugh!--and my money back? Don't
+know anything. Ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Oh, you must have confidence."
+
+"Don't say that word again. Makes my head spin so. Oh, I'm so old and
+miserable, nobody caring for me, everybody fleecing me, and my head
+spins so--ugh, ugh!--and this cough racks me so. I say again, I ought to
+have a guard_ee_an."
+
+"So you ought; and Mr. Truman is your guardian to the extent you
+invested with him. Sorry we missed him just now. But you'll hear from
+him. All right. It's imprudent, though, to expose yourself this way. Let
+me take you to your berth."
+
+Forlornly enough the old miser moved slowly away with him. But, while
+descending a stairway, he was seized with such coughing that he was fain
+to pause.
+
+"That is a very bad cough."
+
+"Church-yard--ugh, ugh!--church-yard cough.--Ugh!"
+
+"Have you tried anything for it?"
+
+"Tired of trying. Nothing does me any good--ugh! ugh! Not even the
+Mammoth Cave. Ugh! ugh! Denned there six months, but coughed so bad the
+rest of the coughers--ugh! ugh!--black-balled me out. Ugh, ugh! Nothing
+does me good."
+
+"But have you tried the Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator, sir?"
+
+"That's what that Truman--ugh, ugh!--said I ought to take.
+Yarb-medicine; you are that yarb-doctor, too?"
+
+"The same. Suppose you try one of my boxes now. Trust me, from what I
+know of Mr. Truman, he is not the gentleman to recommend, even in behalf
+of a friend, anything of whose excellence he is not conscientiously
+satisfied."
+
+"Ugh!--how much?"
+
+"Only two dollars a box."
+
+"Two dollars? Why don't you say two millions? ugh, ugh! Two dollars,
+that's two hundred cents; that's eight hundred farthings; that's two
+thousand mills; and all for one little box of yarb-medicine. My head, my
+head!--oh, I ought to have a guard_ee_an for; my head. Ugh, ugh, ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, if two dollars a box seems too much, take a dozen boxes at twenty
+dollars; and that will be getting four boxes for nothing, and you need
+use none but those four, the rest you can retail out at a premium, and
+so cure your cough, and make money by it. Come, you had better do it.
+Cash down. Can fill an order in a day or two. Here now," producing a
+box; "pure herbs."
+
+At that moment, seized with another spasm, the miser snatched each
+interval to fix his half distrustful, half hopeful eye upon the
+medicine, held alluringly up. "Sure--ugh! Sure it's all nat'ral? Nothing
+but yarbs? If I only thought it was a purely nat'ral medicine now--all
+yarbs--ugh, ugh!--oh this cough, this cough--ugh, ugh!--shatters my
+whole body. Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"For heaven's sake try my medicine, if but a single box. That it is pure
+nature you may be confident, Refer you to Mr. Truman."
+
+"Don't know his number--ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh this cough. He did speak
+well of this medicine though; said solemnly it would cure me--ugh, ugh,
+ugh, ugh!--take off a dollar and I'll have a box."
+
+"Can't sir, can't."
+
+"Say a dollar-and-half. Ugh!"
+
+"Can't. Am pledged to the one-price system, only honorable one."
+
+"Take off a shilling--ugh, ugh!"
+
+"Can't."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh--I'll take it.--There."
+
+Grudgingly he handed eight silver coins, but while still in his hand,
+his cough took him and they were shaken upon the deck.
+
+One by one, the herb-doctor picked them up, and, examining them, said:
+"These are not quarters, these are pistareens; and clipped, and sweated,
+at that."
+
+"Oh don't be so miserly--ugh, ugh!--better a beast than a miser--ugh,
+ugh!"
+
+"Well, let it go. Anything rather than the idea of your not being cured
+of such a cough. And I hope, for the credit of humanity, you have not
+made it appear worse than it is, merely with a view to working upon the
+weak point of my pity, and so getting my medicine the cheaper. Now,
+mind, don't take it till night. Just before retiring is the time. There,
+you can get along now, can't you? I would attend you further, but I land
+presently, and must go hunt up my luggage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A HARD CASE.
+
+
+"Yarbs, yarbs; natur, natur; you foolish old file you! He diddled you
+with that hocus-pocus, did he? Yarbs and natur will cure your incurable
+cough, you think."
+
+It was a rather eccentric-looking person who spoke; somewhat ursine in
+aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bear's-skin; a
+high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin, the long bushy tail switching over
+behind; raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a
+double-barreled gun in hand--a Missouri bachelor, a Hoosier gentleman,
+of Spartan leisure and fortune, and equally Spartan manners and
+sentiments; and, as the sequel may show, not less acquainted, in a
+Spartan way of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
+and rifles.
+
+He must have overheard some of the talk between the miser and the
+herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal of the one, he made up to
+the other--now at the foot of the stairs leaning against the baluster
+there--with the greeting above.
+
+"Think it will cure me?" coughed the miser in echo; "why shouldn't it?
+The medicine is nat'ral yarbs, pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me."
+
+"Because a thing is nat'ral, as you call it, you think it must be good.
+But who gave you that cough? Was it, or was it not, nature?"
+
+"Sure, you don't think that natur, Dame Natur, will hurt a body, do
+you?"
+
+"Natur is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?"
+
+"But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?"
+
+"What's deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur and yarbs--ugh, ugh,
+ugh!--ain't sick men sent out into the country; sent out to natur and
+grass?"
+
+"Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame
+horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of
+yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for
+sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster
+on the prairie? And who made an idiot of Peter the Wild Boy?"
+
+"Then you don't believe in these 'ere yarb-doctors?"
+
+"Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor I saw once on a
+hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the faculty passing round and seeing who
+lay there, said with professional triumph, 'Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
+don't help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and the mercury now,
+Dr. Green.--Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!'"
+
+"Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?" here said a
+flute-like voice, advancing.
+
+It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in hand, he happened to be
+strolling back that way.
+
+"Pardon me," addressing the Missourian, "but if I caught your words
+aright, you would seem to have little confidence in nature; which,
+really, in my way of thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of
+distrust pretty far."
+
+"And who of my sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon
+him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half
+cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the
+expression, which made its sincerity appear more or less dubious.
+
+"One who has confidence in nature, and confidence in man, with some
+little modest confidence in himself."
+
+"That's your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence in man, eh? Pray,
+which do you think are most, knaves or fools?"
+
+"Having met with few or none of either, I hardly think I am competent to
+answer."
+
+"I will answer for you. Fools are most."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses.
+Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"
+
+"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"But I'm in earnest."
+
+"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest
+air--knaves munching up fools as horses oats.--Faith, very droll,
+indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I
+was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about
+having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much as I
+have."
+
+"_I_ have confidence in nature? _I?_ I say again there is nothing I am
+more suspicious of. I once lost ten thousand dollars by nature. Nature
+embezzled that amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars'
+worth of my property; a plantation on this stream, swept clean away by
+one of those sudden shiftings of the banks in a freshet; ten thousand
+dollars' worth of alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters."
+
+"But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting that soil will
+come back after many days?--ah, here is my venerable friend," observing
+the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you _will_ keep afoot,
+don't lean against that baluster; take my arm."
+
+It was taken; and the two stood together; the old miser leaning against
+the herb-doctor with something of that air of trustful fraternity with
+which, when standing, the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually
+leans against the other.
+
+The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was broken by the
+herb-doctor.
+
+"You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly take under my
+protection a figure like this? But I am never ashamed of honesty,
+whatever his coat."
+
+"Look you," said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing pause, "you are a
+queer sort of chap. Don't know exactly what to make of you. Upon the
+whole though, you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my place."
+
+"Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?"
+
+"Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some kind of machine to do
+the sort of work which boys are supposed to be fitted for."
+
+"Then you have passed a veto upon boys?"
+
+"And men, too."
+
+"But, my dear sir, does not that again imply more or less lack of
+confidence?--(Stand up a little, just a very little, my venerable
+friend; you lean rather hard.)--No confidence in boys, no confidence in
+men, no confidence in nature. Pray, sir, who or what may you have
+confidence in?"
+
+"I have confidence in distrust; more particularly as applied to you and
+your herbs."
+
+"Well," with a forbearing smile, "that is frank. But pray, don't forget
+that when you suspect my herbs you suspect nature."
+
+"Didn't I say that before?"
+
+"Very good. For the argument's sake I will suppose you are in earnest.
+Now, can you, who suspect nature, deny, that this same nature not only
+kindly brought you into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your
+present vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature that you
+are indebted for that robustness of mind which you so unhandsomely use
+to her scandal? Pray, is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by
+which you criticise her?"
+
+"No! for the privilege of vision I am indebted to an oculist, who in my
+tenth year operated upon me in Philadelphia. Nature made me blind and
+would have kept me so. My oculist counterplotted her."
+
+"And yet, sir, by your complexion, I judge you live an out-of-door life;
+without knowing it, you are partial to nature; you fly to nature, the
+universal mother."
+
+"Very motherly! Sir, in the passion-fits of nature, I've known birds fly
+from nature to me, rough as I look; yes, sir, in a tempest, refuge
+here," smiting the folds of his bearskin. "Fact, sir, fact. Come, come,
+Mr. Palaverer, for all your palavering, did you yourself never shut out
+nature of a cold, wet night? Bar her out? Bolt her out? Lint her out?"
+
+"As to that," said the herb-doctor calmly, "much may be said."
+
+"Say it, then," ruffling all his hairs. "You can't, sir, can't." Then,
+as in apostrophe: "Look you, nature! I don't deny but your clover is
+sweet, and your dandelions don't roar; but whose hailstones smashed my
+windows?"
+
+"Sir," with unimpaired affability, producing one of his boxes, "I am
+pained to meet with one who holds nature a dangerous character. Though
+your manner is refined your voice is rough; in short, you seem to have a
+sore throat. In the calumniated name of nature, I present you with this
+box; my venerable friend here has a similar one; but to you, a free
+gift, sir. Through her regularly-authorized agents, of whom I happen to
+be one, Nature delights in benefiting those who most abuse her. Pray,
+take it."
+
+"Away with it! Don't hold it so near. Ten to one there is a torpedo in
+it. Such things have been. Editors been killed that way. Take it further
+off, I say."
+
+"Good heavens! my dear sir----"
+
+"I tell you I want none of your boxes," snapping his rifle.
+
+"Oh, take it--ugh, ugh! do take it," chimed in the old miser; "I wish he
+would give me one for nothing."
+
+"You find it lonely, eh," turning short round; "gulled yourself, you
+would have a companion."
+
+"How can he find it lonely," returned the herb-doctor, "or how desire a
+companion, when here I stand by him; I, even I, in whom he has trust.
+For the gulling, tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man?
+Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain, is it kind to
+deprive him of what, in mere imagination, if nothing more, may help eke
+out, with hope, his disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and,
+thanks to your native health, can get along without it, so far, at
+least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet, how cruel an argument to
+use, with this afflicted one here. Is it not for all the world as if
+some brawny pugilist, aglow in December, should rush in and put out a
+hospital-fire, because, forsooth, he feeling no need of artificial heat,
+the shivering patients shall have none? Put it to your conscience, sir,
+and you will admit, that, whatever be the nature of this afflicted one's
+trust, you, in opposing it, evince either an erring head or a heart
+amiss. Come, own, are you not pitiless?"
+
+"Yes, poor soul," said the Missourian, gravely eying the old man--"yes,
+it _is_ pitiless in one like me to speak too honestly to one like you.
+You are a late sitter-up in this life; past man's usual bed-time; and
+truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast, proves to all a
+supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives bad dreams."
+
+"What, in wonder's name--ugh, ugh!--is he talking about?" asked the old
+miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.
+
+"Heaven be praised for that!" cried the Missourian.
+
+"Out of his mind, ain't he?" again appealed the old miser.
+
+"Pray, sir," said the herb-doctor to the Missourian, "for what were you
+giving thanks just now?"
+
+"For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a
+thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded pistol found by poor devils
+of savages, it raises more wonder than terror--its peculiar virtue being
+unguessed, unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should happen to
+go off of itself."
+
+"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor,
+after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of
+pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his
+state of mind, and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him to
+it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your
+thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them,
+but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet
+recant."
+
+"Recant?"
+
+"Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when
+a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the
+dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence
+begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it
+return to you in age."
+
+"Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood, indeed. You are soft."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" cried the old miser, "what is all this!--ugh, ugh! Do
+talk sense, my good friends. Ain't you," to the Missourian, "going to
+buy some of that medicine?"
+
+"Pray, my venerable friend," said the herb-doctor, now trying to
+straighten himself, "don't lean _quite_ so hard; my arm grows numb;
+abate a little, just a very little."
+
+"Go," said the Missourian, "go lay down in your grave, old man, if you
+can't stand of yourself. It's a hard world for a leaner."
+
+"As to his grave," said the herb-doctor, "that is far enough off, so he
+but faithfully take my medicine."
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--He says true. No, I ain't--ugh! a going to die
+yet--ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!"
+
+"I approve your confidence," said the herb-doctor; "but your coughing
+distresses me, besides being injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you
+to your berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait till my
+return, I know."
+
+With which he led the old miser away, and then, coming back, the talk
+with the Missourian was resumed.
+
+"Sir," said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and more feeling, "now
+that our infirm friend is withdrawn, allow me, to the full, to express
+my concern at the words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
+of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to beget
+deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to convey unpleasant
+imputations against me, his physician."
+
+"Suppose they did?" with a menacing air.
+
+"Why, then--then, indeed," respectfully retreating, "I fall back upon my
+previous theory of your general facetiousness. I have the fortune to be
+in company with a humorist--a wag."
+
+"Fall back you had better, and wag it is," cried the Missourian,
+following him up, and wagging his raccoon tail almost into the
+herb-doctor's face, "look you!"
+
+"At what?"
+
+"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
+
+"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I
+flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or
+pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer
+that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the
+kind."
+
+"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
+
+"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me.
+The innocence in me heals me."
+
+"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man--a very queer
+and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met."
+
+The scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome to the diffidence of the
+herb-doctor. As if at once to attest the absence of resentment, as well
+as to change the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into
+his air, and said: "So you are going to get some machine made to do your
+work? Philanthropic scruples, doubtless, forbid your going as far as New
+Orleans for slaves?"
+
+"Slaves?" morose again in a twinkling, "won't have 'em! Bad enough to
+see whites ducking and grinning round for a favor, without having those
+poor devils of niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,
+the niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist, ain't
+you?" he added, squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for
+a staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence
+than if it were a target. "You are an abolitionist, ain't you?"
+
+"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a
+zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for
+all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's
+interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly
+abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among
+mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say."
+
+"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable
+understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for
+wrong, but are useless for right."
+
+"From all this," said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly, "I infer, that
+you, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state, are without slave
+sentiments."
+
+"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring
+and yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are
+you owned by a company?"
+
+"_My_ master?"
+
+"Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come from a slave-state, and a
+slave-pen, where the best breeds are to be bought up at any price from a
+livelihood to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but expresses the
+fellow-feeling of slave for slave."
+
+"The back-woods would seem to have given you rather eccentric notions,"
+now with polite superiority smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly
+intrepidity forbearing each unmanly thrust, "but to return; since, for
+your purpose, you will have neither man nor boy, bond nor free, truly,
+then some sort of machine for you is all there is left. My desires for
+your success attend you, sir.--Ah!" glancing shoreward, "here is Cape
+Giradeau; I must leave you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
+
+
+--"'Philosophical Intelligence Office'--novel idea! But how did you come
+to dream that I wanted anything in your absurd line, eh?"
+
+About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Giradeau, the above was growled
+out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had
+just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean
+five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate,
+inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk
+obliquely behind.
+
+"How did you come to dream that I wanted anything in your line, eh?"
+
+"Oh, respected sir," whined the other, crouching a pace nearer, and, in
+his obsequiousness, seeming to wag his very coat-tails behind him,
+shabby though they were, "oh, sir, from long experience, one glance
+tells me the gentleman who is in need of our humble services."
+
+"But suppose I did want a boy--what they jocosely call a good boy--how
+could your absurd office help me?--Philosophical Intelligence Office?"
+
+"Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical and
+physio----"
+
+"Look you--come up here--how, by philosophy or physiology either, make
+good boys to order? Come up here. Don't give me a crick in the neck.
+Come up here, come, sir, come," calling as if to his pointer. "Tell me,
+how put the requisite assortment of good qualities into a boy, as the
+assorted mince into the pie?"
+
+"Respected sir, our office----"
+
+"You talk much of that office. Where is it? On board this boat?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office----"
+
+"Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do you know a herb-doctor
+there? Smooth scamp in a snuff-colored surtout?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Giradeau. Though, now that you
+mention a snuff-colored surtout, I think I met such a man as you speak
+of stepping ashore as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
+somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian sort of person, I
+should say. Do you know him, respected sir?"
+
+"Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed with your business."
+
+With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission, the other began:
+"Our office----"
+
+"Look you," broke in the bachelor with ire, "have you the spinal
+complaint? What are you ducking and groveling about? Keep still. Where's
+your office?"
+
+"The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir, in the free state
+we now pass," (pointing somewhat proudly ashore).
+
+"Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself? With those coat-tails
+and that spinal complaint of servility? Free? Just cast up in your
+private mind who is your master, will you?"
+
+"Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand--indeed--indeed. But, respected sir, as
+before said, our office, founded on principles wholly new----"
+
+"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk
+of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I
+tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old
+home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels,
+chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and
+waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of
+your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've
+lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born
+cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
+mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your boys would be to me. A
+rot on your boys!"
+
+"But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might we not, in our
+small way, accommodate you with a man?"
+
+"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a
+bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate:
+there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a
+loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a
+chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be
+accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours,
+the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine
+to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill--does that ever steal my
+cider? My mowing-machine--does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My
+corn-husker--does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill,
+mowing-machine, corn-husker--all faithfully attend to their business.
+Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives
+long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward--the only practical
+Christians I know."
+
+"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!"
+
+"Yes, sir:--boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference, in a moral
+point of view, between a corn-husker and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for
+its patient continuance in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven.
+Do you suppose a boy will?"
+
+"A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites of his eyes). Respected
+sir, this way of talking as if heaven were a kind of Washington
+patent-office museum--oh, oh, oh!--as if mere machine-work and
+puppet-work went to heaven--oh, oh, oh! Things incapable of free agency,
+to receive the eternal reward of well-doing--oh, oh, oh!"
+
+"You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning about? Did I say
+anything of that sort? Seems to me, though you talk so good, you are
+mighty quick at a hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
+quarrel with me."
+
+"It may be so or not, respected sir," was now the demure reply; "but if
+it be, it is only because as a soldier out of honor is quick in taking
+affront, so a Christian out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a
+little too much so, in spying heresy."
+
+"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
+the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."
+
+So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
+brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
+that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
+further on the subject of servants.
+
+"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
+at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
+coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
+experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
+servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
+human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
+trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
+dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
+horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
+apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
+machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
+Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
+refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
+by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
+doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
+knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
+on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
+to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."
+
+"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
+as I ventured to observe----"
+
+"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
+"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
+now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
+boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."
+
+"Save us, save us!"
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
+fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
+English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
+me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
+Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
+my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
+Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
+juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
+twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
+viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
+myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
+exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
+those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
+virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
+boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
+offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
+the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
+request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
+nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
+island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
+deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
+why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
+too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
+always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
+combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
+singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
+family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
+would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
+out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
+he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
+so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
+there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
+please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
+scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
+didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
+to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
+polite he grew."
+
+"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
+exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
+for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
+After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
+slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
+Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
+strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
+settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
+thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
+dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
+Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
+less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
+fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
+afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
+across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
+rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
+black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
+are rascals."
+
+"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
+sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
+hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
+confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
+are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
+respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
+and wholly?"
+
+Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
+whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
+summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
+was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
+continued as follows:
+
+"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
+'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
+all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
+keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
+peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
+confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
+that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
+
+"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
+up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
+praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
+thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
+office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
+concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
+Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
+must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
+mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
+the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
+various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
+educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
+random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
+that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
+they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
+imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
+could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."
+
+"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
+sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
+your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
+for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
+wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
+into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
+put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
+insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--
+
+    'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--
+
+and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
+but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
+offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."
+
+"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
+less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
+are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
+enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
+have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
+me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
+man, I may have my small share of feelings."
+
+"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
+are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
+is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
+way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
+I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
+rascals."
+
+"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
+badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
+mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
+me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
+of the subject in hand?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
+other way. "Oh, yes; go on."
+
+"Well, then, respected sir," continued the other, now assuming as
+genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar
+suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the
+strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in
+dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office is
+founded, has led me and my associates, in our small, quiet way, to a
+careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory, and
+with an unobtrusive aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
+large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting from it, I will,
+by your permission, very briefly mention; such of them, I mean, as refer
+to the state of boyhood scientifically viewed."
+
+"Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied boys, eh? Why didn't
+you out with that before?"
+
+"Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed with so many
+masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing. I have been taught that in this
+world there is a precedence of opinions as well as of persons. You have
+kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty, about to give you
+mine."
+
+"Stop flunkying--go on."
+
+"In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed by analogy
+from the physical to the moral. Are we right there, sir? Now, sir, take
+a young boy, a young male infant rather, a man-child in short--what sir,
+I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?"
+
+"A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!"
+
+"Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. May I
+proceed? Well, then, what, in the first place, in a general view, do you
+remark, respected sir, in that male baby or man-child?"
+
+The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the whole, better
+governed himself than before, though not, indeed, to the degree of
+thinking it prudent to risk an articulate response.
+
+"What do you remark? I respectfully repeat." But, as no answer came,
+only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the
+questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small
+way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation;
+loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or
+careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected
+sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir,
+the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to
+deny it; but, then, he _promises_ well, does he not? Yes, promises very
+well indeed, I may say. (So, too, we say to our patrons in reference to
+some noble little youngster objected to for being a _dwarf_.) But, to
+advance one step further," extending his thread-bare leg, as he drew a
+pace nearer, "we must now drop the figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and
+borrow one--to use presently, when wanted--from the horticultural
+kingdom. Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such points as the
+new-born man-child has--as yet not all that could be desired, I am free
+to confess--still, such as they are, there they are, and palpable as
+those of an adult. But we stop not here," taking another step. "The
+man-child not only possesses these present points, small though they
+are, but, likewise--now our horticultural image comes into play--like
+the bud of the lily, he contains concealed rudiments of others; that
+is, points at present invisible, with beauties at present dormant."
+
+"Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural and beautiful
+altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!"
+
+"Respected sir," with a rustily martial sort of gesture, like a decayed
+corporal's, "when deploying into the field of discourse the vanguard of
+an important argument, much more in evolving the grand central forces of
+a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you will kindly allow
+scope adequate to the movement in hand, small and humble in its way as
+that movement may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected sir?"
+
+"Yes, stop flunkying and go on."
+
+Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate proceeded:
+
+"Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such terms, to an applicant
+for service, we allude to some patron we chance to have in our eye),
+supposing, respected sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
+dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture; supposing that,
+sir--then how could even the learned serpent himself have foreknown that
+such a downy-chinned little innocent would eventually rival the goat in
+a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality would have been
+entirely hidden from his wisdom."
+
+"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the
+event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who
+made him."
+
+"For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point. Can it now with
+fairness be denied that, in his beard, the man-child prospectively
+possesses an appendix, not less imposing than patriarchal; and for this
+goodly beard, should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
+even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now, sir? respectfully I put
+it."
+
+"Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it shoots," porcinely
+rubbing his stubble-chin against his coon-skins.
+
+"I have hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful
+of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble
+quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't
+you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon
+us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may be) has this boy a
+beard?' 'No.' 'Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
+quality?' 'No, indeed.' 'Then, madam, or sir, take him back, we humbly
+beseech; and keep him till that same noble quality sprouts; for, have
+confidence, it, like the beard, is in him.'"
+
+"Very fine theory," scornfully exclaimed the bachelor, yet in secret,
+perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by these strange new views of the
+matter; "but what trust is to be placed in it?"
+
+"The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed. Once more, if you
+please, regard the man-child."
+
+"Hold!" paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm, "don't intrude that
+man-child upon me too often. He who loves not bread, dotes not on
+dough. As little of your man-child as your logical arrangements will
+admit."
+
+"Anew regard the man-child," with inspired intrepidity repeated he with
+the brass-plate, "in the perspective of his developments, I mean. At
+first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month--am I right,
+sir?"
+
+"Don't know anything about it."
+
+"To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth, about the sixth
+month the man-child begins to put forth in that particular. And sweet
+those tender little puttings-forth are."
+
+"Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless enough."
+
+"Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning with a boy
+alleged not only to be deficient in goodness, but redundant in ill: 'The
+lad, madam or sir, evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
+them.' 'But, have confidence, there will be; for pray, madam, in this
+lad's early childhood, were not those frail first teeth, then his,
+followed by his present sound, even, beautiful and permanent set. And
+the more objectionable those first teeth became, was not that, madam, we
+respectfully submit, so much the more reason to look for their speedy
+substitution by the present sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.'
+'True, true, can't deny that.' 'Then, madam, take him back, we
+respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift course of nature,
+dropping those transient moral blemishes you complain of, he
+replacingly buds forth in the sound, even, beautiful and permanent
+virtues.'"
+
+"Very philosophical again," was the contemptuous reply--the outward
+contempt, perhaps, proportioned to the inward misgiving. "Vastly
+philosophical, indeed, but tell me--to continue your analogy--since the
+second teeth followed--in fact, came from--the first, is there no chance
+the blemish may be transmitted?"
+
+"Not at all." Abating in humility as he gained in the argument. "The
+second teeth follow, but do not come from, the first; successors, not
+sons. The first teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
+once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it foreruns; but
+they are thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the
+succeeding set--an illustration, by the way, which shows more for me
+than I meant, though not more than I wish."
+
+"What does it show?" Surly-looking as a thundercloud with the inkept
+unrest of unacknowledged conviction.
+
+"It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any boy, especially
+an ill one, to apply unconditionally the saying, that the 'child is
+father of the man', is, besides implying an uncharitable aspersion of
+the race, affirming a thing very wide of----"
+
+"--Your analogy," like a snapping turtle.
+
+"Yes, respected sir."
+
+"But is analogy argument? You are a punster."
+
+"Punster, respected sir?" with a look of being aggrieved.
+
+"Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with words."
+
+"Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever has no confidence
+in human reason, whoever despises human reason, in vain to reason with
+him. Still, respected sir," altering his air, "permit me to hint that,
+had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you would hardly have
+offered to contemn it."
+
+"Talk away," disdainfully; "but pray tell me what has that last analogy
+of yours to do with your intelligence office business?"
+
+"Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that analogy we derive
+the reply made to such a patron as, shortly after being supplied by us
+with an adult servant, proposes to return him upon our hands; not that,
+while with the patron, said adult has given any cause of
+dissatisfaction, but the patron has just chanced to hear something
+unfavorable concerning him from some gentleman who employed said adult,
+long before, while a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking
+said adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to the patron,
+say: 'Far be it from you, madam, or sir, to proceed in your censure
+against this adult, in anything of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law.
+Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In
+the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over
+and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better? Madam,
+or sir, take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar, but is now
+a butterfly."
+
+"Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount
+to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The
+butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
+lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped as
+before."
+
+"You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You deny that a youth of one
+character can be transformed into a man of an opposite character. Now
+then--yes, I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
+Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care
+bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish
+self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as
+would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or
+sir--patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you
+discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles
+more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
+him is working.' 'But he is a sad rake.' 'Therein is his promise; the
+rake being crude material for the saint.'"
+
+"Ah, you are a talking man--what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."
+
+"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or
+prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation
+of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best
+wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
+literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?"
+
+"You, you, you!" rattling down his rifle.
+
+"To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray, what is your
+opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?"
+
+"St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know of him? Seems to me,
+for one in such a business, to say nothing of such a coat, that though
+you don't know a great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
+you ought to know, or than you have a right to know, or than it is safe
+or expedient for you to know, or than, in the fair course of life, you
+could have honestly come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
+like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
+which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
+it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."
+
+"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
+suppose."
+
+"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
+where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
+speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
+altogether unexampled and extraordinary."
+
+"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
+method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
+has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
+fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
+to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
+included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
+say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
+among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"
+
+"Excellent genius!"
+
+"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
+Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
+dog?"
+
+"A saint a sad dog?"
+
+"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
+boy."
+
+"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
+tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."
+
+"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
+eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
+that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
+an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
+than in nature herself."
+
+"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
+his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
+don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
+five and thirty boys of mine."
+
+"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
+flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
+boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
+of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
+corn."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
+illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how often
+I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
+half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
+of August."
+
+"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
+analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
+thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
+thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
+hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
+at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."
+
+"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
+I intended."
+
+"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
+of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
+Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
+it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
+charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
+of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
+Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
+Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."
+
+"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
+said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
+asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
+reformado boys."
+
+"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
+never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
+juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
+boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
+measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
+but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
+you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
+boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."
+
+"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
+fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
+absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
+might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
+conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
+Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
+this sort of conditional confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a
+boy, in sober fact, could you send me? And what would be your fee?"
+
+"Conducted," replied the other somewhat loftily, rising now in eloquence
+as his proselyte, for all his pretenses, sunk in conviction, "conducted
+upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
+usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is
+forced to charge somewhat higher than customary. Briefly, our fee is
+three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a
+very promising little fellow now in my eye--a very likely little fellow,
+indeed."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at
+least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his
+head, submitted to me by the mother."
+
+"How old?"
+
+"Just fifteen."
+
+"Tall? Stout?"
+
+"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."
+
+"Industrious?"
+
+"The busy bee."
+
+The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy,
+he spoke:
+
+"Do you think now, candidly, that--I say candidly--candidly--could I
+have some small, limited--some faint, conditional degree of confidence
+in that boy? Candidly, now?"
+
+"Candidly, you could."
+
+"A sound boy? A good boy?"
+
+"Never knew one more so."
+
+The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well,
+now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too.
+Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
+Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try
+that boy. I don't think him an angel, mind. No, no. But I'll try him.
+There are my three dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
+day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money for his passage.
+There," handing it somewhat reluctantly.
+
+"Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;" then, altering in manner,
+and gravely holding the bills, continued: "Respected sir, never
+willingly do I handle money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a
+certain alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect and
+unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy now) or permit me
+respectfully to return these bills."
+
+"Put 'em up, put 'em-up!"
+
+"Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of
+business transactions. Without it, commerce between man and man, as
+between country and country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
+now, supposing that against present expectation the lad should, after
+all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
+dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
+vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
+and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
+grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
+the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
+brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE
+OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A
+RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.
+
+
+At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up
+its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand
+at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
+Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three
+undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.
+
+In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with
+fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain
+passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over
+the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
+medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his
+cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.
+He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this
+villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.
+Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform
+treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,
+had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To
+what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the
+mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with
+Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the
+morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere
+bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake
+up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and
+for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
+the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally
+little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.
+
+But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,
+experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but
+unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its
+genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
+indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished
+by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse
+henceforth.
+
+He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he
+fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a
+fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
+case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.
+He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the
+operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the
+lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And
+yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the
+person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,
+that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems
+him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make
+out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough
+doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of
+cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples
+the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast
+in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by
+the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the
+insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky
+beast that windeth his way on his belly.
+
+From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the
+shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which
+came a voice, sweet as a seraph's:
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET
+BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.
+
+
+"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
+moroseness.
+
+"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair
+has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a
+fine fellow wears it."
+
+"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't
+you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat."
+
+This ungentle mention of the toucan was not improbably suggested by the
+parti-hued, and rather plumagy aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would
+seem, but a liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
+than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
+informalities, might, even to observers less critical than the bachelor,
+have looked, if anything, a little out of the common; but not more so
+perhaps, than, considering the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor's
+own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture barred with
+various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style
+participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from
+its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
+while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over
+maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple
+crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently.
+Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused; all showed signs
+of easy service, the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
+That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was
+now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of
+Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its
+long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
+bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked
+nations--a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing
+essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something
+similar of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But rosy
+pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on that unrosy man, the
+bachelor, who, waiting a moment till the commotion, caused by the boat's
+renewed progress, had a little abated, thus continued:
+
+"Hark ye," jeeringly eying the cap and belt, "did you ever see Signor
+Marzetti in the African pantomime?"
+
+"No;--good performer?"
+
+"Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it. With such
+naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that
+of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
+hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that."
+
+The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on one hip, his right
+leg cavalierly crossed before the other, the toe of his vertical slipper
+pointed easily down on the deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of
+indifferent and charitable puff, betokening him more or less of the
+mature man of the world, a character which, like its opposite, the
+sincere Christian's, is not always swift to take offense; and then,
+drawing near, still smoking, again laid his hand, this time with mild
+impressiveness, on the ursine shoulder, and not unamiably said: "That in
+your address there is a sufficiency of the _fortiter in re_ few unbiased
+observers will question; but that this is duly attempered with the
+_suaviter in modo_ may admit, I think, of an honest doubt. My dear
+fellow," beaming his eyes full upon him, "what injury have I done you,
+that you should receive my greeting with a curtailed civility?"
+
+"Off hands;" once more shaking the friendly member from him. "Who in the
+name of the great chimpanzee, in whose likeness, you, Marzetti, and the
+other chatterers are made, who in thunder are you?"
+
+"A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such, ties himself to no
+narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume,
+something of the various gallantries of men under various suns. Oh, one
+roams not over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal and
+fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost anybody. Warm and
+confiding, you wait not for measured advances. And though, indeed,
+mine, in this instance, have met with no very hilarious encouragement,
+yet the principle of a true citizen of the world is still to return good
+for ill.--My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."
+
+"By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world, into the heart of
+the Lunar Mountains. You are another of them. Out of my sight!"
+
+"Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you then? Ah, I may be
+foolish, but for my part, in all its aspects, I love it. Served up a la
+Pole, or a la Moor, a la Ladrone, or a la Yankee, that good dish, man,
+still delights me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of comparing
+and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan, a sort of
+London-Dock-Vault connoisseur, going about from Teheran to Natchitoches,
+a taster of races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy
+creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal palates which have
+a distaste even for Amontillado, so I suppose there may be teetotal
+souls which relish not even the very best brands of humanity. Excuse me,
+but it just occurs to me that you, my dear fellow, possibly lead a
+solitary life."
+
+"Solitary?" starting as at a touch of divination.
+
+"Yes: in a solitary life one insensibly contracts oddities,--talking to
+one's self now."
+
+"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"
+
+"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without
+much reproach to the hearer."
+
+"You are an eaves-dropper."
+
+"Well. Be it so."
+
+"Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?"
+
+"I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing by, caught a
+word or two, and, by like chance, something previous of your chat with
+the Intelligence-office man;--a rather sensible fellow, by the way; much
+of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake, he were of my style of
+dress. Grief to good minds, to see a man of superior sense forced to
+hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.--Well, from what
+little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable
+philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have
+observed--excuse me--to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness,
+of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix
+in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a
+good time. Life is a pic-nic _en costume_; one must take a part, assume
+a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
+plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a
+discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold
+water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated
+ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
+confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
+soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
+Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
+beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."
+
+"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
+for?"
+
+"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
+story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
+wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
+might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
+green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
+into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
+her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
+after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
+husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured?' 'Indeed I do.'
+'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
+drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
+can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
+doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
+the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
+woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
+famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
+experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
+herself a cup too low."
+
+This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
+though hardly into approval.
+
+"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
+churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
+unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
+view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
+though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
+jug."
+
+"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
+see; you go in for the lofty."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
+story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
+sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
+leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
+philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
+be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
+humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
+is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
+one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
+one, or the one that has the pip."
+
+"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.
+
+"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
+race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."
+
+"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.
+
+"And what race may _you_ belong to? now don't you see, my dear fellow,
+in what inconsistencies one involves himself by affecting disesteem for
+men. To a charm, my little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
+of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude. I fear, by
+the way, you have at some time been reading Zimmermann, that old Mr.
+Megrims of a Zimmermann, whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume's on
+Suicide, as Bacon's on Knowledge; and, like these, will betray him who
+seeks to steer soul and body by it, like a false religion. All they, be
+they what boasted ones you please, who, to the yearning of our kind
+after a founded rule of content, offer aught not in the spirit of
+fellowly gladness based on due confidence in what is above, away with
+them for poor dupes, or still poorer impostors."
+
+His manner here was so earnest that scarcely any auditor, perhaps, but
+would have been more or less impressed by it, while, possibly, nervous
+opponents might have a little quailed under it. Thinking within himself
+a moment, the bachelor replied: "Had you experience, you would know that
+your tippling theory, take it in what sense you will, is poor as any
+other. And Rabelais's pro-wine Koran no more trustworthy than Mahomet's
+anti-wine one."
+
+"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and
+keep talking, and still stand where we did. What do you say for a walk?
+My arm, and let's a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck
+to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to save the
+pieces, you hold my loose change; and following that, I propose that
+you, my dear fellow, stack your gun, and throw your bearskins in a
+sailor's hornpipe--I holding your watch. What do you say?"
+
+At this proposition the other was himself again, all raccoon.
+
+"Look you," thumping down his rifle, "are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?"
+
+"Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor
+the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted
+with."
+
+"You are his confidential clerk, ain't you?"
+
+"_Whose_, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in,
+but I don't understand."
+
+"You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary
+metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that
+herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that
+come after him."
+
+"Herb-doctor? who is he?"
+
+"Like you--another of them."
+
+"_Who?_" Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his
+left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a
+ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter
+into a little argument and----"
+
+"No you don't. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little
+arguments to-day."
+
+"But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading
+a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions
+touching strangers?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the
+controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look,
+you----"
+
+"Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for
+double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say
+what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society
+in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace
+it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny."
+
+Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into
+the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening
+world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
+corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for
+disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through
+lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of
+man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.
+
+"Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could
+abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony,
+and Satire, his bosom friend."
+
+"A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his
+rifle-lock.
+
+"Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous. But, no, no, you didn't
+mean it; any way, I can make allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how
+much pleasanter to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
+fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your worldling, glutton,
+and coquette, though, doubtless, being such, they may have their little
+foibles--as who has not?--yet not one of the three can be reproached
+with that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for not seldom
+it presupposes a still darker thing than itself--remorse."
+
+"Remorse drives man away from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain,
+after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it
+that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?
+
+"My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you will, I for one must have
+my fellow-creatures round me. Thick, too--I must have them thick."
+
+"The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures round him.
+Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd but for his end; and the end of too
+many is the same as the pick-pocket's--a purse."
+
+"Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience to say that, when
+it is as much according to natural law that men are social as sheep
+gregarious. But grant that, in being social, each man has his end, do
+you, upon the strength of that, do you yourself, I say, mix with man,
+now, immediately, and be your end a more genial philosophy. Come, let's
+take a turn."
+
+Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor once more flung it
+off, and, raising his rifle in energetic invocation, cried: "Now the
+high-constable catch and confound all knaves in towns and rats in
+grain-bins, and if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the
+time, any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin him, thou
+high rat-catcher, against this rail."
+
+"A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And when a card's that,
+little matters it whether it be spade or diamond. You are good wine
+that, to be still better, only needs a shaking up. Come, let's agree
+that we'll to New Orleans, and there embark for London--I staying with
+my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting up at the Piazza, Covent
+Garden--Piazza, Covent Garden; for tell me--since you will not be a
+disciple to the full--tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes, which
+led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market, better than that
+of the less wise Athenian, which made him a skulking scare-crow in
+pine-barrens? An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon."
+
+"Your hand!" seizing it.
+
+"Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we shall be brothers,
+then?"
+
+"As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be," with another and
+terrific squeeze. "I had thought that the moderns had degenerated
+beneath the capacity of misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one
+instance, and that disguised, to be undeceived."
+
+The other stared in blank amaze.
+
+"Won't do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise. I say--Diogenes
+masquerading as a cosmopolitan."
+
+With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute awhile. At
+length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who,
+in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he
+but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change
+of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I
+came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for
+your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate
+accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
+but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
+"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
+men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
+See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
+beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
+I stark and stiff!"
+
+With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
+come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
+sapient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
+with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
+stranger.
+
+"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
+Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
+Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
+Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
+should think."
+
+It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
+deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
+vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
+speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
+scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.
+
+A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
+fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
+less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
+beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
+the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
+reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
+sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
+habit.
+
+But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
+unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
+not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
+curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
+contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
+saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
+thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
+fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
+were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might have hinted that
+they were too good to be true; or rather, were not so good as they might
+be; since the best false teeth are those made with at least two or three
+blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately for better
+constructions, no such critics had the stranger now in eye; only the
+cosmopolitan, who, after, in the first place, acknowledging his advances
+with a mute salute--in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
+spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably
+because of the saddening sequel of that late interview--thus now
+replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly;
+"that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he
+anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock Hall, Northamptonshire,
+England?"
+
+"I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall than of the Burdocks
+of Burdock Hut," returned the other, with the air somehow of one whose
+fortunes had been of his own making; "all I know is, that the late
+Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time; eye like Lochiel's;
+finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount's; and with but two little
+oddities--seldom stirred without his rifle, and hated Indians like
+snakes."
+
+"Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of Misanthrope Hall--the
+Woods. No very sleek creature, the colonel, I fancy."
+
+"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly
+headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians--how the
+late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians,
+to be sure!"
+
+"Never heard of such a thing. Hate Indians? Why should he or anybody
+else hate Indians? _I_ admire Indians. Indians I have always heard to be
+one of the finest of the primitive races, possessed of many heroic
+virtues. Some noble women, too. When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready
+to love Indians. Then there's Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and
+Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan--all heroes; and there's the Five
+Nations, and Araucanians--federations and communities of heroes. God
+bless me; hate Indians? Surely the late Colonel John Moredock must have
+wandered in his mind."
+
+"Wandered in the woods considerably, but never wandered elsewhere, that
+I ever heard."
+
+"Are you in earnest? Was there ever one who so made it his particular
+mission to hate Indians that, to designate him, a special word has been
+coined--Indian-hater?"
+
+"Even so."
+
+"Dear me, you take it very calmly.--But really, I would like to know
+something about this Indian-hating, I can hardly believe such a thing to
+be. Could you favor me with a little history of the extraordinary man
+you mentioned?"
+
+"With all my heart," and immediately stepping from the porch, gestured
+the cosmopolitan to a settee near by, on deck. "There, sir, sit you
+there, and I will sit here beside you--you desire to hear of Colonel
+John Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with a white
+stone--the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached, hanging
+in a cabin on the West bank of the Wabash river. I was going westward a
+long journey through the wilderness with my father. It was nigh noon,
+and we had stopped at the cabin to unsaddle and bait. The man at the
+cabin pointed out the rifle, and told whose it was, adding that the
+colonel was that moment sleeping on wolf-skins in the corn-loft above,
+so we must not talk very loud, for the colonel had been out all night
+hunting (Indians, mind), and it would be cruel to disturb his sleep.
+Curious to see one so famous, we waited two hours over, in hopes he
+would come forth; but he did not. So, it being necessary to get to the
+next cabin before nightfall, we had at last to ride off without the
+wished-for satisfaction. Though, to tell the truth, I, for one, did not
+go away entirely ungratified, for, while my father was watering the
+horses, I slipped back into the cabin, and stepping a round or two up
+the ladder, pushed my head through the trap, and peered about. Not much
+light in the loft; but off, in the further corner, I saw what I took to
+be the wolf-skins, and on them a bundle of something, like a drift of
+leaves; and at one end, what seemed a moss-ball; and over it,
+deer-antlers branched; and close by, a small squirrel sprang out from a
+maple-bowl of nuts, brushed the moss-ball with his tail, through a hole,
+and vanished, squeaking. That bit of woodland scene was all I saw. No
+Colonel Moredock there, unless that moss-ball was his curly head, seen
+in the back view. I would have gone clear up, but the man below had
+warned me, that though, from his camping habits, the colonel could sleep
+through thunder, he was for the same cause amazing quick to waken at the
+sound of footsteps, however soft, and especially if human."
+
+"Excuse me," said the other, softly laying his hand on the narrator's
+wrist, "but I fear the colonel was of a distrustful nature--little or no
+confidence. He _was_ a little suspicious-minded, wasn't he?"
+
+"Not a bit. Knew too much. Suspected nobody, but was not ignorant of
+Indians. Well: though, as you may gather, I never fully saw the man,
+yet, have I, one way and another, heard about as much of him as any
+other; in particular, have I heard his history again and again from my
+father's friend, James Hall, the judge, you know. In every company being
+called upon to give this history, which none could better do, the judge
+at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke
+less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking
+for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an
+equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you
+the judge upon the colonel almost word for word."
+
+"Do so, by all means," said the cosmopolitan, well pleased.
+
+"Shall I give you the judge's philosophy, and all?"
+
+"As to that," rejoined the other gravely, pausing over the pipe-bowl he
+was filling, "the desirableness, to a man of a certain mind, of having
+another man's philosophy given, depends considerably upon what school of
+philosophy that other man belongs to. Of what school or system was the
+judge, pray?"
+
+"Why, though he knew how to read and write, the judge never had much
+schooling. But, I should say he belonged, if anything, to the
+free-school system. Yes, a true patriot, the judge went in strong for
+free-schools."
+
+"In philosophy? The man of a certain mind, then, while respecting the
+judge's patriotism, and not blind to the judge's capacity for narrative,
+such as he may prove to have, might, perhaps, with prudence, waive an
+opinion of the judge's probable philosophy. But I am no rigorist;
+proceed, I beg; his philosophy or not, as you please."
+
+"Well, I would mostly skip that part, only, to begin, some
+reconnoitering of the ground in a philosophical way the judge always
+deemed indispensable with strangers. For you must know that
+Indian-hating was no monopoly of Colonel Moredock's; but a passion, in
+one form or other, and to a degree, greater or less, largely shared
+among the class to which he belonged. And Indian-hating still exists;
+and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do.
+Indian-hating, then, shall be my first theme, and Colonel Moredock, the
+Indian-hater, my next and last."
+
+With which the stranger, settling himself in his seat, commenced--the
+hearer paying marked regard, slowly smoking, his glance, meanwhile,
+steadfastly abstracted towards the deck, but his right ear so disposed
+towards the speaker that each word came through as little atmospheric
+intervention as possible. To intensify the sense of hearing, he seemed
+to sink the sense of sight. No complaisance of mere speech could have
+been so flattering, or expressed such striking politeness as this mute
+eloquence of thoroughly digesting attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CONTAINING THE METAPHYSICS OF INDIAN-HATING, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF
+ONE EVIDENTLY NOT SO PREPOSSESSED AS ROUSSEAU IN FAVOR OF SAVAGES.
+
+
+"The judge always began in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of
+the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the
+frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian
+rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once prevailed, the
+philanthropist is surprised that Indian-hating has not in like degree
+ceased with it. He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the red
+man in much the same spirit that a jury does a murderer, or a trapper a
+wild cat--a creature, in whose behalf mercy were not wisdom; truce is
+vain; he must be executed.
+
+"'A curious point,' the judge would continue, 'which perhaps not
+everybody, even upon explanation, may fully understand; while, in order
+for any one to approach to an understanding, it is necessary for him to
+learn, or if he already know, to bear in mind, what manner of man the
+backwoodsman is; as for what manner of man the Indian is, many know,
+either from history or experience.
+
+"'The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a man
+strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call
+unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less
+hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to
+see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he
+must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence
+self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it
+stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in
+following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines
+such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum.
+To these fellow-beings of the wilds their untutored sagacity is their
+best dependence. If with either it prove faulty, if the 'possum's betray
+it to the trap, or the backwoodsman's mislead him into ambuscade, there
+are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame. As with the
+'possum, instincts prevail with the backwoodsman over precepts. Like the
+'possum, the backwoodsman presents the spectacle of a creature dwelling
+exclusively among the works of God, yet these, truth must confess, breed
+little in him of a godly mind. Small bowing and scraping is his, further
+than when with bent knee he points his rifle, or picks its flint. With
+few companions, solitude by necessity his lengthened lot, he stands the
+trial--no slight one, since, next to dying, solitude, rightly borne, is
+perhaps of fortitude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
+backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases is anxious to be
+so. The sight of smoke ten miles off is provocation to one more remove
+from man, one step deeper into nature. Is it that he feels that whatever
+man may be, man is not the universe? that glory, beauty, kindness, are
+not all engrossed by him? that as the presence of man frights birds
+away, so, many bird-like thoughts? Be that how it will, the backwoodsman
+is not without some fineness to his nature. Hairy Orson as he looks, it
+may be with him as with the Shetland seal--beneath the bristles lurks
+the fur.
+
+"'Though held in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to
+America what Alexander was to Asia--captain in the vanguard of
+conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or
+power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to
+those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship.
+Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in
+Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted
+legions, marched so through the elements, day after day. The tide of
+emigration, let it roll as it will, never overwhelms the backwoodsman
+into itself; he rides upon advance, as the Polynesian upon the comb of
+the surf.
+
+"'Thus, though he keep moving on through life, he maintains with respect
+to nature much the same unaltered relation throughout; with her
+creatures, too, including panthers and Indians. Hence, it is not
+unlikely that, accurate as the theory of the Peace Congress may be with
+respect to those two varieties of beings, among others, yet the
+backwoodsman might be qualified to throw out some practical suggestions.
+
+"'As the child born to a backwoodsman must in turn lead his father's
+life--a life which, as related to humanity, is related mainly to
+Indians--it is thought best not to mince matters, out of delicacy; but
+to tell the boy pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must
+expect from him. For however charitable it may be to view Indians as
+members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one
+ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their
+lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel.
+At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which
+backwoods' education is based. Accordingly, if in youth the backwoodsman
+incline to knowledge, as is generally the case, he hears little from his
+schoolmasters, the old chroniclers of the forest, but histories of
+Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing, Indian fraud and
+perfidy, Indian want of conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian
+diabolism--histories which, though of wild woods, are almost as full of
+things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the Annals of Europe. In
+these Indian narratives and traditions the lad is thoroughly grounded.
+"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The instinct of antipathy
+against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and
+bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother is to be
+loved, and an Indian to be hated.
+
+"'Such are the facts,' the judge would say, 'upon which, if one seek to
+moralize, he must do so with an eye to them. It is terrible that one
+creature should so regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an
+entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising? Surprising, that one
+should hate a race which he believes to be red from a cause akin to that
+which makes some tribes of garden insects green? A race whose name is
+upon the frontier a _memento mori_; painted to him in every evil light;
+now a horse-thief like those in Moyamensing; now an assassin like a New
+York rowdy; now a treaty-breaker like an Austrian; now a Palmer with
+poisoned arrows; now a judicial murderer and Jeffries, after a fierce
+farce of trial condemning his victim to bloody death; or a Jew with
+hospitable speeches cozening some fainting stranger into ambuscade,
+there to burk him, and account it a deed grateful to Manitou, his god.
+
+"'Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians than as
+examples of the backwoodsman's impression of them--in which the
+charitable may think he does them some injustice. Certain it is, the
+Indians themselves think so; quite unanimously, too. The Indians, in
+deed, protest against the backwoodsman's view of them; and some think
+that one cause of their returning his antipathy so sincerely as they do,
+is their moral indignation at being so libeled by him, as they really
+believe and say. But whether, on this or any point, the Indians should
+be permitted to testify for themselves, to the exclusion of other
+testimony, is a question that may be left to the Supreme Court. At any
+rate, it has been observed that when an Indian becomes a genuine
+proselyte to Christianity (such cases, however, not being very many;
+though, indeed, entire tribes are sometimes nominally brought to the
+true light,) he will not in that case conceal his enlightened
+conviction, that his race's portion by nature is total depravity; and,
+in that way, as much as admits that the backwoodsman's worst idea of it
+is not very far from true; while, on the other hand, those red men who
+are the greatest sticklers for the theory of Indian virtue, and Indian
+loving-kindness, are sometimes the arrantest horse-thieves and
+tomahawkers among them. So, at least, avers the backwoodsman. And
+though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he does, he fancies he
+is not ignorant that an Indian may in some points deceive himself almost
+as effectually as in bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and his
+practice as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency so
+extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it on the supposition
+that when a tomahawking red-man advances the notion of the benignity of
+the red race, it is but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which
+he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general conduct of life.'
+
+"In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with which the
+backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge used to think it might
+perhaps a little help, to consider what kind of stimulus to it is
+furnished in those forest histories and traditions before spoken of. In
+which behalf, he would tell the story of the little colony of Wrights
+and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia, who, after
+successive removals with their families, at last established themselves
+near the southern frontier of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: 'They were
+strong, brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those days,
+theirs was no love of conflict for conflict's sake. Step by step they
+had been lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
+seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
+during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
+built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
+persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
+tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
+cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
+spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
+cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
+Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
+enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
+first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
+hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
+on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
+the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
+renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.
+
+"'But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly blind them to what the
+chief had been; so that, though in no small degree influenced by his
+change of bearing, they still distrusted him enough to covenant with
+him, among other articles on their side, that though friendly visits
+should be exchanged between the wigwams and the cabins, yet the five
+cousins should never, on any account, be expected to enter the chief's
+lodge together. The intention was, though they reserved it, that if
+ever, under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them mischief, and
+effect it, it should be but partially; so that some of the five might
+survive, not only for their families' sake, but also for retribution's.
+Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
+carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a
+feast of bear's meat, and there, by stratagem, ended them. Years after,
+over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief,
+reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
+jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant
+first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting
+Mocmohoc."'
+
+"At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his hand, and rolling
+his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough voice, 'Circling wiles and bloody
+lusts. The acuteness and genius of the chief but make him the more
+atrocious.'
+
+"After another pause, he would begin an imaginary kind of dialogue
+between a backwoodsman and a questioner:
+
+"'But are all Indians like Mocmohoc?--Not all have proved such; but in
+the least harmful may lie his germ. There is an Indian nature. "Indian
+blood is in me," is the half-breed's threat.--But are not some Indians
+kind?--Yes, but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed simple--at
+all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the red men being taken from
+the active, and those accounted wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind
+Indians have but proportionate influence. And kind Indians may be forced
+to do unkind biddings. So "beware the Indian, kind or unkind," said
+Daniel Boone, who lost his sons by them.--But, have all you backwoodsmen
+been some way victimized by Indians?--No.--Well, and in certain cases
+may not at least some few of you be favored by them?--Yes, but scarce
+one among us so self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his
+personal exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off against the
+contrary experience of so many others, as that he must needs, in a
+general way, think well of Indians; or, if he do, an arrow in his flank
+might suggest a pertinent doubt.
+
+"'In short,' according to the judge, 'if we at all credit the
+backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be taken aright, must be
+considered as being not so much on his own account as on others', or
+jointly on both accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some
+member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed or scalped. What
+avails, then, that some one Indian, or some two or three, treat a
+backwoodsman friendly-like? He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from
+me, give him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how know I what
+involuntary preparations may be going on in him for things as unbeknown
+in present time to him as me--a sort of chemical preparation in the
+soul for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for malady.'
+
+"Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words, you see, but the judge
+found him expression for his meaning. And this point he would conclude
+with saying, that, 'what is called a "friendly Indian" is a very rare
+sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness exceeds that
+of a "friendly Indian" turned enemy. A coward friend, he makes a valiant
+foe.
+
+"'But, thus far the passion in question has been viewed in a general way
+as that of a community. When to his due share of this the backwoodsman
+adds his private passion, we have then the stock out of which is formed,
+if formed at all, the Indian-hater _par excellence_.'
+
+"The Indian-hater _par excellence_ the judge defined to be one 'who,
+having with his mother's milk drank in small love for red men, in youth
+or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at
+their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same,
+some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her
+solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly
+does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as
+straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling
+thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus thought, assimilate with
+it, and swell it. At last, taking counsel with the elements, he comes to
+his resolution. An intenser Hannibal, he makes a vow, the hate of which
+is a vortex from whose suction scarce the remotest chip of the guilty
+race may reasonably feel secure. Next, he declares himself and settles
+his temporal affairs. With the solemnity of a Spaniard turned monk, he
+takes leave of his kin; or rather, these leave-takings have something of
+the still more impressive finality of death-bed adieus. Last, he commits
+himself to the forest primeval; there, so long as life shall be his, to
+act upon a calm, cloistered scheme of strategical, implacable, and
+lonesome vengeance. Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected,
+patient; less seen than felt; snuffing, smelling--a Leather-stocking
+Nemesis. In the settlements he will not be seen again; in eyes of old
+companions tears may start at some chance thing that speaks of him; but
+they never look for him, nor call; they know he will not come. Suns and
+seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap
+in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-hater is good as gone to his
+long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph.'
+
+"Here the judge, not unaffected, would pause again, but presently
+resume: 'How evident that in strict speech there can be no biography of
+an Indian-hater _par excellence_, any more than one of a sword-fish, or
+other deep-sea denizen; or, which is still less imaginable, one of a
+dead man. The career of the Indian-hater _par excellence_ has the
+impenetrability of the fate of a lost steamer. Doubtless, events,
+terrible ones, have happened, must have happened; but the powers that be
+in nature have taken order that they shall never become news.
+
+"'But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
+Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft
+enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail;
+a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too,
+though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green harbor
+which he does not forget. It is with him as with the Papist converts in
+Senegal; fasting and mortification prove hard to bear.'
+
+"The judge, with his usual judgment, always thought that the intense
+solitude to which the Indian-hater consigns himself, has, by its
+overawing influence, no little to do with relaxing his vow. He would
+relate instances where, after some months' lonely scoutings, the
+Indian-hater is suddenly seized with a sort of calenture; hurries openly
+towards the first smoke, though he knows it is an Indian's, announces
+himself as a lost hunter, gives the savage his rifle, throws himself
+upon his charity, embraces him with much affection, imploring the
+privilege of living a while in his sweet companionship. What is too
+often the sequel of so distempered a procedure may be best known by
+those who best know the Indian. Upon the whole, the judge, by two and
+thirty good and sufficient reasons, would maintain that there was no
+known vocation whose consistent following calls for such
+self-containings as that of the Indian-hater _par excellence_. In the
+highest view, he considered such a soul one peeping out but once an age.
+
+"For the diluted Indian-hater, although the vacations he permits himself
+impair the keeping of the character, yet, it should not be overlooked
+that this is the man who, by his very infirmity, enables us to form
+surmises, however inadequate, of what Indian-hating in its perfection
+is."
+
+"One moment," gently interrupted the cosmopolitan here, "and let me
+refill my calumet."
+
+Which being done, the other proceeded:--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+SOME ACCOUNT OF A MAN OF QUESTIONABLE MORALITY, BUT WHO, NEVERTHELESS,
+WOULD SEEM ENTITLED TO THE ESTEEM OF THAT EMINENT ENGLISH MORALIST WHO
+SAID HE LIKED A GOOD HATER.
+
+
+"Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus far said was but the
+introduction, the judge, who, like you, was a great smoker, would insist
+upon all the company taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one
+himself, rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice,
+say--'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'
+when, after several whiffs taken standing in deep silence and deeper
+reverie, he would resume his seat and his discourse, something in these
+words:
+
+"'Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater _par excellence_,
+he yet cherished a kind of sentiment towards the red man, and in that
+degree, and so acted out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the
+tribute just rendered to his memory.
+
+"'John Moredock was the son of a woman married thrice, and thrice
+widowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had
+been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
+wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last
+found herself at a little clearing, afterwards Vincennes. There she
+joined a company about to remove to the new country of Illinois. On the
+eastern side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on the west
+side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were, near the mouth of the
+Kaskaskia, some old hamlets of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets,
+very innocent and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's party
+was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines, they meant to settle.
+They embarked upon the Wabash in boats, proposing descending that stream
+into the Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
+towards the point to be reached. All went well till they made the rock
+of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where they had to land and drag
+their boats round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party of
+Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered nearly all of them. The
+widow was among the victims with her children, John excepted, who, some
+fifty miles distant, was following with a second party.
+
+"He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left in nature sole
+survivor of his race. Other youngsters might have turned mourners; he
+turned avenger. His nerves were electric wires--sensitive, but steel. He
+was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither to flush nor
+pale. It is said that when the tidings were brought him, he was ashore
+sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison--and as the
+tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but
+slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as
+if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his
+intent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms,
+prevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to
+discover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a
+band of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even among
+Indians, and who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew. No
+opportunity for action being at the time presented, he dismissed his
+friends; told them to go on, thanking them, and saying he would ask
+their aid at some future day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds,
+he watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable chance having
+occurred--it being midwinter, and the savages encamped, apparently to
+remain so--he anew mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,
+getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in such panic that
+everything was left behind but their weapons. During the winter, much
+the same thing happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next year he
+sought them at the head of a party pledged to serve him for forty days.
+At last the hour came. It was on the shore of the Mississippi. From
+their covert, Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains in
+the red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled island in
+mid-stream, there the more securely to lodge; for Moredock's retributive
+spirit in the wilderness spoke ever to their trepidations now, like the
+voice calling through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the
+whites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden with their arms.
+On landing, Moredock cut the fastenings of the enemy's canoes, and
+turned them, with his own raft, adrift; resolved that there should be
+neither escape for the Indians, nor safety, except in victory, for the
+whites. Victorious the whites were; but three of the Indians saved
+themselves by taking to the stream. Moredock's band lost not a man.
+
+"'Three of the murderers survived. He knew their names and persons. In
+the course of three years each successively fell by his own hand. All
+were now dead. But this did not suffice. He made no avowal, but to kill
+Indians had become his passion. As an athlete, he had few equals; as a
+shot, none; in single combat, not to be beaten. Master of that
+woodland-cunning enabling the adept to subsist where the tyro would
+perish, and expert in all those arts by which an enemy is pursued for
+weeks, perhaps months, without once suspecting it, he kept to the
+forest. The solitary Indian that met him, died. When a murder was
+descried, he would either secretly pursue their track for some chance to
+strike at least one blow; or if, while thus engaged, he himself was
+discovered, he would elude them by superior skill.
+
+"'Many years he spent thus; and though after a time he was, in a degree,
+restored to the ordinary life of the region and period, yet it is
+believed that John Moredock never let pass an opportunity of quenching
+an Indian. Sins of commission in that kind may have been his, but none
+of omission.
+
+"'It were to err to suppose,' the judge would say, 'that this gentleman
+was naturally ferocious, or peculiarly possessed of those qualities,
+which, unhelped by provocation of events, tend to withdraw man from
+social life. On the contrary, Moredock was an example of something
+apparently self-contradicting, certainly curious, but, at the same time,
+undeniable: namely, that nearly all Indian-haters have at bottom loving
+hearts; at any rate, hearts, if anything, more generous than the
+average. Certain it is, that, to the degree in which he mingled in the
+life of the settlements, Moredock showed himself not without humane
+feelings. No cold husband or colder father, he; and, though often and
+long away from his household, bore its needs in mind, and provided for
+them. He could be very convivial; told a good story (though never of his
+more private exploits), and sung a capital song. Hospitable, not
+backward to help a neighbor; by report, benevolent, as retributive, in
+secret; while, in a general manner, though sometimes grave--as is not
+unusual with men of his complexion, a sultry and tragical brown--yet
+with nobody, Indians excepted, otherwise than courteous in a manly
+fashion; a moccasined gentleman, admired and loved. In fact, no one more
+popular, as an incident to follow may prove.
+
+"'His bravery, whether in Indian fight or any other, was unquestionable.
+An officer in the ranging service during the war of 1812, he acquitted
+himself with more than credit. Of his soldierly character, this anecdote
+is told: Not long after Hull's dubious surrender at Detroit, Moredock
+with some of his rangers rode up at night to a log-house, there to rest
+till morning. The horses being attended to, supper over, and
+sleeping-places assigned the troop, the host showed the colonel his
+best bed, not on the ground like the rest, but a bed that stood on legs.
+But out of delicacy, the guest declined to monopolize it, or, indeed, to
+occupy it at all; when, to increase the inducement, as the host thought,
+he was told that a general officer had once slept in that bed. "Who,
+pray?" asked the colonel. "General Hull." "Then you must not take
+offense," said the colonel, buttoning up his coat, "but, really, no
+coward's bed, for me, however comfortable." Accordingly he took up with
+valor's bed--a cold one on the ground.
+
+"'At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial council of
+Illinois, and at the formation of the state government, was pressed to
+become candidate for governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he
+declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those who best knew
+him the cause was not wholly unsurmised. In his official capacity he
+might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes,
+a thing not to be thought of. And even did no such contingecy arise, yet
+he felt there would be an impropriety in the Governor of Illinois
+stealing out now and then, during a recess of the legislative bodies,
+for a few days' shooting at human beings, within the limits of his
+paternal chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large honors,
+from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These were incompatibles.
+In short, he was not unaware that to be a consistent Indian-hater
+involves the renunciation of ambition, with its objects--the pomps and
+glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing such things
+vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them, therefore, so far as this
+goes, Indian-hating, whatever may be thought of it in other respects,
+may be regarded as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout
+sentiment.'"
+
+Here the narrator paused. Then, after his long and irksome sitting,
+started to his feet, and regulating his disordered shirt-frill, and at
+the same time adjustingly shaking his legs down in his rumpled
+pantaloons, concluded: "There, I have done; having given you, not my
+story, mind, or my thoughts, but another's. And now, for your friend
+Coonskins, I doubt not, that, if the judge were here, he would pronounce
+him a sort of comprehensive Colonel Moredock, who, too much spreading
+his passion, shallows it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
+
+
+"Charity, charity!" exclaimed the cosmopolitan, "never a sound judgment
+without charity. When man judges man, charity is less a bounty from our
+mercy than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of human
+fallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should be what you
+hint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly. His outside deceived you;
+at first it came near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,
+owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself a little open;
+I seized that lucky chance, I say, to inspect his heart, and found it an
+inviting oyster in a forbidding shell. His outside is but put on.
+Ashamed of his own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange old
+uncles in romances do their nephews--snapping at them all the time and
+yet loving them as the apple of their eye."
+
+"Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is not what I took him
+for. Yes, for aught I know, you may be right."
+
+"Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only
+for its being graceful. And now, since you have renounced your notion,
+I should be happy, would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too.
+That, story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder. To me
+some parts don't hang together. If the man of hate, how could John
+Moredock be also the man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulous
+as Hercules'; or else, those being true, what was thrown in about his
+geniality is but garnish. In short, if ever there was such a man as
+Moredock, he, in my way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;
+and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused on one race of
+men. Though, like suicide, man-hatred would seem peculiarly a Roman and
+a Grecian passion--that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome nor
+Greece can produce the equal in man-hatred of Colonel Moredock, as the
+judge and you have painted him. As for this Indian-hating in general, I
+can only say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbon
+earthquake: 'Sir, I don't believe it.'"
+
+"Didn't believe it? Why not? Clashed with any little prejudice of his?"
+
+"Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain other person,"
+with an ingenuous smile, "he had sensibilities, and those were pained."
+
+"Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn't he?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"Suppose he had been something else."
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake."
+
+"Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?"
+
+"Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders alleged to have
+been perpetrated under the pall of smoke and ashes. The infidels of the
+time were quick to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,
+while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certain
+cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claims
+to despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it."
+
+"You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity."
+
+"I do not jumble them; they are coordinates. For misanthropy, springing
+from the same root with disbelief of religion, is twin with that. It
+springs from the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and what
+is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a
+ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not,
+or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't you see?
+In either case the vice consists in a want of confidence."
+
+"What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?"
+
+"Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is hydrophobia. Don't know;
+never had it. But I have often wondered what it can be like. Can a
+misanthrope feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable with
+himself? Can a misanthrope smoke a cigar and muse? How fares he in
+solitude? Has the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a peach
+refresh him? The effervescence of champagne, with what eye does he
+behold it? Is summer good to him? Of long winters how much can he
+sleep? What are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, when
+suddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades of thunder?"
+
+"Like you," said the stranger, "I can't understand the misanthrope. So
+far as my experience goes, either mankind is worthy one's best love, or
+else I have been lucky. Never has it been my lot to have been wronged,
+though but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting,
+superciliousness, disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that brood, I know
+but by report. Cold regards tossed over the sinister shoulder of a
+former friend, ingratitude in a beneficiary, treachery in a
+confidant--such things may be; but I must take somebody's word for it.
+Now the bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not praise it?"
+
+"Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so. Man is a noble fellow,
+and in an age of satirists, I am not displeased to find one who has
+confidence in him, and bravely stands up for him."
+
+"Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what is more, am always
+ready to do a good deed for him."
+
+"You are a man after my own heart," responded the cosmopolitan, with a
+candor which lost nothing by its calmness. "Indeed," he added, "our
+sentiments agree so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,
+few but the nicest critics might determine."
+
+"Since we are thus joined in mind," said the stranger, "why not be
+joined in hand?"
+
+"My hand is always at the service of virtue," frankly extending it to
+him as to virtue personified.
+
+"And now," said the stranger, cordially retaining his hand, "you know
+our fashion here at the West. It may be a little low, but it is kind.
+Briefly, we being newly-made friends must drink together. What say you?"
+
+"Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so many old friends, all
+free-hearted, convivial gentlemen, that really, really, though for the
+present I succeed in mastering it, I am at bottom almost in the
+condition of a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, ere
+night reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity than his
+heart."
+
+At the allusion to old friends, the stranger's countenance a little
+fell, as a jealous lover's might at hearing from his sweetheart of
+former ones. But rallying, he said: "No doubt they treated you to
+something strong; but wine--surely, that gentle creature, wine; come,
+let us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables here.
+Come, come." Then essaying to roll about like a full pipe in the sea,
+sang in a voice which had had more of good-fellowship, had there been
+less of a latent squeak to it:
+
+    "Let us drink of the wine of the vine benign,
+    That sparkles warm in Zansovine."
+
+The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood as sorely tempted and
+wavering a moment; then, abruptly stepping towards him, with a look of
+dissolved surrender, said: "When mermaid songs move figure-heads, then
+may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments on me. But a good
+fellow, singing a good song, he woos forth my every spike, so that my
+whole hull, like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with
+acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain sort, it is in
+vain trying to be resolute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE BOON COMPANIONS.
+
+
+The wine, port, being called for, and the two seated at the little
+table, a natural pause of convivial expectancy ensued; the stranger's
+eye turned towards the bar near by, watching the red-cheeked,
+white-aproned man there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly
+arranging the salver and glasses; when, with a sudden impulse turning
+round his head towards his companion, he said, "Ours is friendship at
+first sight, ain't it?"
+
+"It is," was the placidly pleased reply: "and the same may be said of
+friendship at first sight as of love at first sight: it is the only true
+one, the only noble one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding
+his way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by night, into an
+enemy's harbor?"
+
+"Right. Boldly in before the wind. Agreeable, how we always agree.
+By-the-way, though but a formality, friends should know each other's
+names. What is yours, pray?"
+
+"Francis Goodman. But those who love me, call me Frank. And yours?"
+
+"Charles Arnold Noble. But do you call me Charlie."
+
+"I will, Charlie; nothing like preserving in manhood the fraternal
+familiarities of youth. It proves the heart a rosy boy to the last."
+
+"My sentiments again. Ah!"
+
+It was a smiling waiter, with the smiling bottle, the cork drawn; a
+common quart bottle, but for the occasion fitted at bottom into a little
+bark basket, braided with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian
+fashion. This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it with
+affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend
+not to, a handsome red label pasted on the bottle, bearing the capital
+letters, P. W.
+
+"P. W.," said he at last, perplexedly eying the pleasing poser, "now
+what does P. W. mean?"
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said the cosmopolitan gravely, "if it stood for port
+wine. You called for port wine, didn't you?"
+
+"Why so it is, so it is!"
+
+"I find some little mysteries not very hard to clear up," said the
+other, quietly crossing his legs.
+
+This commonplace seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of
+his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a
+strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good
+wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both
+glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air
+of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that
+now-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; that almost every variety on sale
+is less the vintage of vineyards than laboratories; that most
+bar-keepers are but a set of male Brinvilliarses, with complaisant arts
+practicing against the lives of their best friends, their customers."
+
+A shade passed over the cosmopolitan. After a few minutes' down-cast
+musing, he lifted his eyes and said: "I have long thought, my dear
+Charlie, that the spirit in which wine is regarded by too many in these
+days is one of the most painful examples of want of confidence. Look at
+these glasses. He who could mistrust poison in this wine would mistrust
+consumption in Hebe's cheek. While, as for suspicions against the
+dealers in wine and sellers of it, those who cherish such suspicions can
+have but limited trust in the human heart. Each human heart they must
+think to be much like each bottle of port, not such port as this, but
+such port as they hold to. Strange traducers, who see good faith in
+nothing, however sacred. Not medicines, not the wine in sacraments, has
+escaped them. The doctor with his phial, and the priest with his
+chalice, they deem equally the unconscious dispensers of bogus cordials
+to the dying."
+
+"Dreadful!"
+
+"Dreadful indeed," said the cosmopolitan solemnly. "These distrusters
+stab at the very soul of confidence. If this wine," impressively holding
+up his full glass, "if this wine with its bright promise be not true,
+how shall man be, whose promise can be no brighter? But if wine be
+false, while men are true, whither shall fly convivial geniality? To
+think of sincerely-genial souls drinking each other's health at unawares
+in perfidious and murderous drugs!"
+
+"Horrible!"
+
+"Much too much so to be true, Charlie. Let us forget it. Come, you are
+my entertainer on this occasion, and yet you don't pledge me. I have
+been waiting for it."
+
+"Pardon, pardon," half confusedly and half ostentatiously lifting his
+glass. "I pledge you, Frank, with my whole heart, believe me," taking a
+draught too decorous to be large, but which, small though it was, was
+followed by a slight involuntary wryness to the mouth.
+
+"And I return you the pledge, Charlie, heart-warm as it came to me, and
+honest as this wine I drink it in," reciprocated the cosmopolitan with
+princely kindliness in his gesture, taking a generous swallow,
+concluding in a smack, which, though audible, was not so much so as to
+be unpleasing.
+
+"Talking of alleged spuriousness of wines," said he, tranquilly setting
+down his glass, and then sloping back his head and with friendly
+fixedness eying the wine, "perhaps the strangest part of those allegings
+is, that there is, as claimed, a kind of man who, while convinced that
+on this continent most wines are shams, yet still drinks away at them;
+accounting wine so fine a thing, that even the sham article is better
+than none at all. And if the temperance people urge that, by this
+course, he will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers,
+'And do you think I don't know that? But health without cheer I hold a
+bore; and cheer, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am
+willing to pay.'"
+
+"Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably bacchanalian."
+
+"Yes, if such a man there be, which I don't credit. It is a fable, but a
+fable from which I once heard a person of less genius than grotesqueness
+draw a moral even more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that
+it illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition
+ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly associate with men,
+though, at the same time, he believed the greater part of men
+false-hearted--accounting society so sweet a thing that even the
+spurious sort was better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites
+urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in
+security, he answers, 'And do you think I don't know that? But security
+without society I hold a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort,
+has its price, which I am willing to pay.'"
+
+"A most singular theory," said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying
+his companion with some inquisitiveness, "indeed, Frank, a most
+slanderous thought," he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary
+look almost of being personally aggrieved.
+
+"In one sense it merits all you say, and more," rejoined the other with
+wonted mildness, "but, for a kind of drollery in it, charity might,
+perhaps, overlook something of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so
+blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human
+mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are
+clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all
+the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any
+rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of
+beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm--nearly all men
+agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else--and in
+its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world,
+that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man
+capable of a good loud laugh--seem how he may in other things--can
+hardly be a heartless scamp."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale
+pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it
+were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some
+mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and
+curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"I see," said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a
+kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in
+this case accompanied it, "I see; and the way in which it moves you,
+Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of.
+Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so.
+For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a
+sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and
+smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may
+laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!--no no, no no."
+
+"Why Charlie, your explosions illustrate my remarks almost as aptly as
+the chemist's imitation volcano did his lectures. But even if experience
+did not sanction the proverb, that a good laugher cannot be a bad man, I
+should yet feel bound in confidence to believe it, since it is a saying
+current among the people, and I doubt not originated among them, and
+hence _must_ be true; for the voice of the people is the voice of truth.
+Don't you think so?"
+
+"Of course I do. If Truth don't speak through the people, it never
+speaks at all; so I heard one say."
+
+"A true saying. But we stray. The popular notion of humor, considered as
+index to the heart, would seem curiously confirmed by Aristotle--I
+think, in his 'Politics,' (a work, by-the-by, which, however it may be
+viewed upon the whole, yet, from the tenor of certain sections, should
+not, without precaution, be placed in the hands of youth)--who remarks
+that the least lovable men in history seem to have had for humor not
+only a disrelish, but a hatred; and this, in some cases, along with an
+extraordinary dry taste for practical punning. I remember it is related
+of Phalaris, the capricious tyrant of Sicily, that he once caused a poor
+fellow to be beheaded on a horse-block, for no other cause than having a
+horse-laugh."
+
+"Funny Phalaris!"
+
+"Cruel Phalaris!"
+
+As after fire-crackers, there was a pause, both looking downward on the
+table as if mutually struck by the contrast of exclamations, and
+pondering upon its significance, if any. So, at least, it seemed; but on
+one side it might have been otherwise: for presently glancing up, the
+cosmopolitan said: "In the instance of the moral, drolly cynic, drawn
+from the queer bacchanalian fellow we were speaking of, who had his
+reasons for still drinking spurious wine, though knowing it to be
+such--there, I say, we have an example of what is certainly a wicked
+thought, but conceived in humor. I will now give you one of a wicked
+thought conceived in wickedness. You shall compare the two, and answer,
+whether in the one case the sting is not neutralized by the humor, and
+whether in the other the absence of humor does not leave the sting free
+play. I once heard a wit, a mere wit, mind, an irreligious Parisian wit,
+say, with regard to the temperance movement, that none, to their
+personal benefit, joined it sooner than niggards and knaves; because, as
+he affirmed, the one by it saved money and the other made money, as in
+ship-owners cutting off the spirit ration without giving its equivalent,
+and gamblers and all sorts of subtle tricksters sticking to cold water,
+the better to keep a cool head for business."
+
+"A wicked thought, indeed!" cried the stranger, feelingly.
+
+"Yes," leaning over the table on his elbow and genially gesturing at him
+with his forefinger: "yes, and, as I said, you don't remark the sting of
+it?"
+
+"I do, indeed. Most calumnious thought, Frank!"
+
+"No humor in it?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"Well now, Charlie," eying him with moist regard, "let us drink. It
+appears to me you don't drink freely."
+
+"Oh, oh--indeed, indeed--I am not backward there. I protest, a freer
+drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal
+snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it.
+"By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention
+from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital
+thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me so, I got it by heart at
+two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in
+something the same relation to blank verse which that does to rhyme. A
+sort of free-and-easy chant with refrains to it. Shall I recite it?"
+
+"Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to hear," rejoined the
+cosmopolitan, "the more so," he gravely proceeded, "as of late I have
+observed in some quarters a disposition to disparage the press."
+
+"Disparage the press?"
+
+"Even so; some gloomy souls affirming that it is proving with that great
+invention as with brandy or eau-de-vie, which, upon its first discovery,
+was believed by the doctors to be, as its French name implies, a
+panacea--a notion which experience, it may be thought, has not fully
+verified."
+
+"You surprise me, Frank. Are there really those who so decry the press?
+Tell me more. Their reasons."
+
+"Reasons they have none, but affirmations they have many; among other
+things affirming that, while under dynastic despotisms, the press is to
+the people little but an improvisatore, under popular ones it is too apt
+to be their Jack Cade. In fine, these sour sages regard the press in the
+light of a Colt's revolver, pledged to no cause but his in whose chance
+hands it may be; deeming the one invention an improvement upon the pen,
+much akin to what the other is upon the pistol; involving, along with
+the multiplication of the barrel, no consecration of the aim. The term
+'freedom of the press' they consider on a par with _freedom of Colt's
+revolver_. Hence, for truth and the right, they hold, to indulge hopes
+from the one is little more sensible than for Kossuth and Mazzini to
+indulge hopes from the other. Heart-breaking views enough, you think;
+but their refutation is in every true reformer's contempt. Is it not
+so?"
+
+"Without doubt. But go on, go on. I like to hear you," flatteringly
+brimming up his glass for him.
+
+"For one," continued the cosmopolitan, grandly swelling his chest, "I
+hold the press to be neither the people's improvisatore, nor Jack Cade;
+neither their paid fool, nor conceited drudge. I think interest never
+prevails with it over duty. The press still speaks for truth though
+impaled, in the teeth of lies though intrenched. Disdaining for it the
+poor name of cheap diffuser of news, I claim for it the independent
+apostleship of Advancer of Knowledge:--the iron Paul! Paul, I say; for
+not only does the press advance knowledge, but righteousness. In the
+press, as in the sun, resides, my dear Charlie, a dedicated principle of
+beneficent force and light. For the Satanic press, by its coappearance
+with the apostolic, it is no more an aspersion to that, than to the true
+sun is the coappearance of the mock one. For all the baleful-looking
+parhelion, god Apollo dispenses the day. In a word, Charlie, what the
+sovereign of England is titularly, I hold the press to be
+actually--Defender of the Faith!--defender of the faith in the final
+triumph of truth over error, metaphysics over superstition, theory over
+falsehood, machinery over nature, and the good man over the bad. Such
+are my views, which, if stated at some length, you, Charlie, must
+pardon, for it is a theme upon which I cannot speak with cold brevity.
+And now I am impatient for your panegyric, which, I doubt not, will put
+mine to the blush."
+
+"It is rather in the blush-giving vein," smiled the other; "but such as
+it is, Frank, you shall have it."
+
+"Tell me when you are about to begin," said the cosmopolitan, "for, when
+at public dinners the press is toasted, I always drink the toast
+standing, and shall stand while you pronounce the panegyric."
+
+"Very good, Frank; you may stand up now."
+
+He accordingly did so, when the stranger likewise rose, and uplifting
+the ruby wine-flask, began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+OPENING WITH A POETICAL EULOGY OF THE PRESS AND CONTINUING WITH TALK
+INSPIRED BY THE SAME.
+
+
+"'Praise be unto the press, not Faust's, but Noah's; let us extol and
+magnify the press, the true press of Noah, from which breaketh the true
+morning. Praise be unto the press, not the black press but the red; let
+us extol and magnify the press, the red press of Noah, from which cometh
+inspiration. Ye pressmen of the Rhineland and the Rhine, join in with
+all ye who tread out the glad tidings on isle Madeira or Mitylene.--Who
+giveth redness of eyes by making men long to tarry at the fine
+print?--Praise be unto the press, the rosy press of Noah, which giveth
+rosiness of hearts, by making men long to tarry at the rosy wine.--Who
+hath babblings and contentions? Who, without cause, inflicteth wounds?
+Praise be unto the press, the kindly press of Noah, which knitteth
+friends, which fuseth foes.--Who may be bribed?--Who may be
+bound?--Praise be unto the press, the free press of Noah, which will not
+lie for tyrants, but make tyrants speak the truth.--Then praise be unto
+the press, the frank old press of Noah; then let us extol and magnify
+the press, the brave old press of Noah; then let us with roses garland
+and enwreath the press, the grand old press of Noah, from which flow
+streams of knowledge which give man a bliss no more unreal than his
+pain.'"
+
+"You deceived me," smiled the cosmopolitan, as both now resumed their
+seats; "you roguishly took advantage of my simplicity; you archly played
+upon my enthusiasm. But never mind; the offense, if any, was so
+charming, I almost wish you would offend again. As for certain poetic
+left-handers in your panegyric, those I cheerfully concede to the
+indefinite privileges of the poet. Upon the whole, it was quite in the
+lyric style--a style I always admire on account of that spirit of
+Sibyllic confidence and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime
+ingredient. But come," glancing at his companion's glass, "for a lyrist,
+you let the bottle stay with you too long."
+
+"The lyre and the vine forever!" cried the other in his rapture, or what
+seemed such, heedless of the hint, "the vine, the vine! is it not the
+most graceful and bounteous of all growths? And, by its being such, is
+not something meant--divinely meant? As I live, a vine, a Catawba vine,
+shall be planted on my grave!"
+
+"A genial thought; but your glass there."
+
+"Oh, oh," taking a moderate sip, "but you, why don't you drink?"
+
+"You have forgotten, my dear Charlie, what I told you of my previous
+convivialities to-day."
+
+"Oh," cried the other, now in manner quite abandoned to the lyric mood,
+not without contrast to the easy sociability of his companion. "Oh, one
+can't drink too much of good old wine--the genuine, mellow old port.
+Pooh, pooh! drink away."
+
+"Then keep me company."
+
+"Of course," with a flourish, taking another sip--"suppose we have
+cigars. Never mind your pipe there; a pipe is best when alone. I say,
+waiter, bring some cigars--your best."
+
+They were brought in a pretty little bit of western pottery,
+representing some kind of Indian utensil, mummy-colored, set down in a
+mass of tobacco leaves, whose long, green fans, fancifully grouped,
+formed with peeps of red the sides of the receptacle.
+
+Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of pottery, but smaller,
+both globes; one in guise of an apple flushed with red and gold to the
+life, and, through a cleft at top, you saw it was hollow. This was for
+the ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a
+wasp's nest, was the match-box. "There," said the stranger, pushing over
+the cigar-stand, "help yourself, and I will touch you off," taking a
+match. "Nothing like tobacco," he added, when the fumes of the cigar
+began to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, "I will have
+a Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the Catawba vine."
+
+"Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself was good--but you
+don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently--let me fill your glass again. You don't drink."
+
+"Thank you; but no more just now. Fill _your_ glass."
+
+"Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it
+strikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or
+fanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious
+abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron
+boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain
+revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists
+must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the
+cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still,
+after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good
+goads him on to his fierce misery once more--poor eunuch!"
+
+"I agree with you," said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, "but
+you don't smoke."
+
+"Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was saying about----"
+
+"But _why_ don't you smoke--come. You don't think that tobacco, when in
+league with wine, too much enhances the latter's vinous quality--in
+short, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do
+you?"
+
+"To think that, were treason to good fellowship," was the warm
+disclaimer. "No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in
+my mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't
+smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But
+smoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink. By-the-way, while we
+sit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing,
+your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought
+to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real
+heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind."
+
+"Why," with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, "I thought
+I had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better
+understanding of my eccentric friend."
+
+"Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know.
+In truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance
+things which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had
+with him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West
+here, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less
+to make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles
+sometimes effect great results, I shouldn't wonder, if his history were
+probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias
+to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of
+Polonius to Laertes--advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is
+almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of
+money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small
+retail traders in New England."
+
+"I do hope now, my dear fellow," said the cosmopolitan with an air of
+bland protest, "that, in my presence at least, you will throw out
+nothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans."
+
+"Hey-day and high times indeed," exclaimed the other, nettled, "sons of
+the Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must
+do them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom
+Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies."
+
+"Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius," observed
+the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a
+superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; "how do you
+characterize his advice to Laertes?"
+
+"As false, fatal, and calumnious," exclaimed the other, with a degree of
+ardor befitting one resenting a stigma upon the family escutcheon, "and
+for a father to give his son--monstrous. The case you see is this: The
+son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke
+God's blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams
+him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France,
+with maxims of Italy."
+
+"No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not among other things
+say:--
+
+    'The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+    Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel'?
+
+Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?"
+
+"Yes it is, Frank. Don't you see? Laertes is to take the best of care of
+his friends--his proved friends, on the same principle that a
+wine-corker takes the best of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle
+gets a sharp knock and don't break, he says, 'Ah, I'll keep that
+bottle.' Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular use for it."
+
+"Dear, dear!" appealingly turning in distress, "that--that kind of
+criticism is--is--in fact--it won't do."
+
+"Won't truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with everybody, do but
+consider the tone of the speech. Now I put it to you, Frank; is there
+anything in it hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything
+like 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor?' And, in other points,
+what desire seems most in the father's mind, that his son should cherish
+nobleness for himself, or be on his guard against the contrary thing in
+others? An irreligious warner, Frank--no devout counselor, is Polonius.
+I hate him. Nor can I bear to hear your veterans of the world affirm,
+that he who steers through life by the advice of old Polonius will not
+steer among the breakers."
+
+"No, no--I hope nobody affirms that," rejoined the cosmopolitan, with
+tranquil abandonment; sideways reposing his arm at full length upon the
+table. "I hope nobody affirms that; because, if Polonius' advice be
+taken in your sense, then the recommendation of it by men of experience
+would appear to involve more or less of an unhandsome sort of reflection
+upon human nature. And yet," with a perplexed air, "your suggestions
+have put things in such a strange light to me as in fact a little to
+disturb my previous notions of Polonius and what he says. To be frank,
+by your ingenuity you have unsettled me there, to that degree that were
+it not for our coincidence of opinion in general, I should almost think
+I was now at length beginning to feel the ill effect of an immature
+mind, too much consorting with a mature one, except on the ground of
+first principles in common."
+
+"Really and truly," cried the other with a kind of tickled modesty and
+pleased concern, "mine is an understanding too weak to throw out
+grapnels and hug another to it. I have indeed heard of some great
+scholars in these days, whose boast is less that they have made
+disciples than victims. But for me, had I the power to do such things, I
+have not the heart to desire."
+
+"I believe you, my dear Charlie. And yet, I repeat, by your commentaries
+on Polonius you have, I know not how, unsettled me; so that now I don't
+exactly see how Shakespeare meant the words he puts in Polonius' mouth."
+
+"Some say that he meant them to open people's eyes; but I don't think
+so."
+
+"Open their eyes?" echoed the cosmopolitan, slowly expanding his; "what
+is there in this world for one to open his eyes to? I mean in the sort
+of invidious sense you cite?"
+
+"Well, others say he meant to corrupt people's morals; and still others,
+that he had no express intention at all, but in effect opens their eyes
+and corrupts their morals in one operation. All of which I reject."
+
+"Of course you reject so crude an hypothesis; and yet, to confess, in
+reading Shakespeare in my closet, struck by some passage, I have laid
+down the volume, and said: 'This Shakespeare is a queer man.' At times
+seeming irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There appears
+to be a certain--what shall I call it?--hidden sun, say, about him, at
+once enlightening and mystifying. Now, I should be afraid to say what I
+have sometimes thought that hidden sun might be."
+
+"Do you think it was the true light?" with clandestine geniality again
+filling the other's glass.
+
+"I would prefer to decline answering a categorical question there.
+Shakespeare has got to be a kind of deity. Prudent minds, having certain
+latent thoughts concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of
+lasting probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations, we are
+permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to be adored, not arraigned;
+but, so we do it with humility, we may a little canvass his characters.
+There's his Autolycus now, a fellow that always puzzled me. How is one
+to take Autolycus? A rogue so happy, so lucky, so triumphant, of so
+almost captivatingly vicious a career that a virtuous man reduced to the
+poor-house (were such a contingency conceivable), might almost long to
+change sides with him. And yet, see the words put into his mouth: 'Oh,'
+cries Autolycus, as he comes galloping, gay as a buck, upon the stage,
+'oh,' he laughs, 'oh what a fool is Honesty, and Trust, his sworn
+brother, a very simple gentleman.' Think of that. Trust, that is,
+confidence--that is, the thing in this universe the sacredest--is
+rattlingly pronounced just the simplest. And the scenes in which the
+rogue figures seem purposely devised for verification of his principles.
+Mind, Charlie, I do not say it _is_ so, far from it; but I _do_ say it
+seems so. Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon the
+persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets than picking
+them, more to be made by an expert knave than a bungling beggar; and for
+this reason, as he thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft
+hearts. The devil's drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore
+the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one
+thus wicked and thus happy, my sole consolation is in the fact that no
+such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which
+evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he is, though only a
+poet was his maker. It may be, that in that paper-and-ink investiture of
+his, Autolycus acts more effectively upon mankind than he would in a
+flesh-and-blood one. Can his influence be salutary? True, in Autolycus
+there is humor; but though, according to my principle, humor is in
+general to be held a saving quality, yet the case of Autolycus is an
+exception; because it is his humor which, so to speak, oils his
+mischievousness. The bravadoing mischievousness of Autolycus is slid
+into the world on humor, as a pirate schooner, with colors flying, is
+launched into the sea on greased ways."
+
+"I approve of Autolycus as little as you," said the stranger, who,
+during his companion's commonplaces, had seemed less attentive to them
+than to maturing with in his own mind the original conceptions destined
+to eclipse them. "But I cannot believe that Autolycus, mischievous as he
+must prove upon the stage, can be near so much so as such a character as
+Polonius."
+
+"I don't know about that," bluntly, and yet not impolitely, returned the
+cosmopolitan; "to be sure, accepting your view of the old courtier,
+then if between him and Autolycus you raise the question of
+unprepossessingness, I grant you the latter comes off best. For a moist
+rogue may tickle the midriff, while a dry worldling may but wrinkle the
+spleen."
+
+"But Polonius is not dry," said the other excitedly; "he drules. One
+sees the fly-blown old fop drule and look wise. His vile wisdom is made
+the viler by his vile rheuminess. The bowing and cringing, time-serving
+old sinner--is such an one to give manly precepts to youth? The
+discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state; senile prudence; fatuous
+soullessness! The ribanded old dog is paralytic all down one side, and
+that the side of nobleness. His soul is gone out. Only nature's
+automatonism keeps him on his legs. As with some old trees, the bark
+survives the pith, and will still stand stiffly up, though but to rim
+round punk, so the body of old Polonius has outlived his soul."
+
+"Come, come," said the cosmopolitan with serious air, almost displeased;
+"though I yield to none in admiration of earnestness, yet, I think, even
+earnestness may have limits. To human minds, strong language is always
+more or less distressing. Besides, Polonius is an old man--as I remember
+him upon the stage--with snowy locks. Now charity requires that such a
+figure--think of it how you will--should at least be treated with
+civility. Moreover, old age is ripeness, and I once heard say, 'Better
+ripe than raw.'"
+
+"But not better rotten than raw!" bringing down his hand with energy on
+the table.
+
+"Why, bless me," in mild surprise contemplating his heated comrade, "how
+you fly out against this unfortunate Polonius--a being that never was,
+nor will be. And yet, viewed in a Christian light," he added pensively,
+"I don't know that anger against this man of straw is a whit less wise
+than anger against a man of flesh, Madness, to be mad with anything."
+
+"That may be, or may not be," returned the other, a little testily,
+perhaps; "but I stick to what I said, that it is better to be raw than
+rotten. And what is to be feared on that head, may be known from this:
+that it is with the best of hearts as with the best of pears--a
+dangerous experiment to linger too long upon the scene. This did
+Polonius. Thank fortune, Frank, I am young, every tooth sound in my
+head, and if good wine can keep me where I am, long shall I remain so."
+
+"True," with a smile. "But wine, to do good, must be drunk. You have
+talked much and well, Charlie; but drunk little and indifferently--fill
+up."
+
+"Presently, presently," with a hasty and preoccupied air. "If I remember
+right, Polonius hints as much as that one should, under no
+circumstances, commit the indiscretion of aiding in a pecuniary way an
+unfortunate friend. He drules out some stale stuff about 'loan losing
+both itself and friend,' don't he? But our bottle; is it glued fast?
+Keep it moving, my dear Frank. Good wine, and upon my soul I begin to
+feel it, and through me old Polonius--yes, this wine, I fear, is what
+excites me so against that detestable old dog without a tooth."
+
+Upon this, the cosmopolitan, cigar in mouth, slowly raised the bottle,
+and brought it slowly to the light, looking at it steadfastly, as one
+might at a thermometer in August, to see not how low it was, but how
+high. Then whiffing out a puff, set it down, and said: "Well, Charlie,
+if what wine you have drunk came out of this bottle, in that case I
+should say that if--supposing a case--that if one fellow had an object
+in getting another fellow fuddled, and this fellow to be fuddled was of
+your capacity, the operation would be comparatively inexpensive. What do
+you think, Charlie?"
+
+"Why, I think I don't much admire the supposition," said Charlie, with a
+look of resentment; "it ain't safe, depend upon it, Frank, to venture
+upon too jocose suppositions with one's friends."
+
+"Why, bless you, Frank, my supposition wasn't personal, but general. You
+mustn't be so touchy."
+
+"If I am touchy it is the wine. Sometimes, when I freely drink, it has a
+touchy effect on me, I have observed."
+
+"Freely drink? you haven't drunk the perfect measure of one glass, yet.
+While for me, this must be my fourth or fifth, thanks to your
+importunity; not to speak of all I drank this morning, for old
+acquaintance' sake. Drink, drink; you must drink."
+
+"Oh, I drink while you are talking," laughed the other; "you have not
+noticed it, but I have drunk my share. Have a queer way I learned from a
+sedate old uncle, who used to tip off his glass-unperceived. Do you fill
+up, and my glass, too. There! Now away with that stump, and have a new
+cigar. Good fellowship forever!" again in the lyric mood, "Say, Frank,
+are we not men? I say are we not human? Tell me, were they not human who
+engendered us, as before heaven I believe they shall be whom we shall
+engender? Fill up, up, up, my friend. Let the ruby tide aspire, and all
+ruby aspirations with it! Up, fill up! Be we convivial. And
+conviviality, what is it? The word, I mean; what expresses it? A living
+together. But bats live together, and did you ever hear of convivial
+bats?"
+
+"If I ever did," observed the cosmopolitan, "it has quite slipped my
+recollection."
+
+"But _why_ did you never hear of convivial bats, nor anybody else?
+Because bats, though they live together, live not together genially.
+Bats are not genial souls. But men are; and how delightful to think that
+the word which among men signifies the highest pitch of geniality,
+implies, as indispensable auxiliary, the cheery benediction of the
+bottle. Yes, Frank, to live together in the finest sense, we must drink
+together. And so, what wonder that he who loves not wine, that sober
+wretch has a lean heart--a heart like a wrung-out old bluing-bag, and
+loves not his kind? Out upon him, to the rag-house with him, hang
+him--the ungenial soul!"
+
+"Oh, now, now, can't you be convivial without being censorious? I like
+easy, unexcited conviviality. For the sober man, really, though for my
+part I naturally love a cheerful glass, I will not prescribe my nature
+as the law to other natures. So don't abuse the sober man. Conviviality
+is one good thing, and sobriety is another good thing. So don't be
+one-sided."
+
+"Well, if I am one-sided, it is the wine. Indeed, indeed, I have
+indulged too genially. My excitement upon slight provocation shows it.
+But yours is a stronger head; drink you. By the way, talking of
+geniality, it is much on the increase in these days, ain't it?"
+
+"It is, and I hail the fact. Nothing better attests the advance of the
+humanitarian spirit. In former and less humanitarian ages--the ages of
+amphitheatres and gladiators--geniality was mostly confined to the
+fireside and table. But in our age--the age of joint-stock companies and
+free-and-easies--it is with this precious quality as with precious gold
+in old Peru, which Pizarro found making up the scullion's sauce-pot as
+the Inca's crown. Yes, we golden boys, the moderns, have geniality
+everywhere--a bounty broadcast like noonlight."
+
+"True, true; my sentiments again. Geniality has invaded each department
+and profession. We have genial senators, genial authors, genial
+lecturers, genial doctors, genial clergymen, genial surgeons, and the
+next thing we shall have genial hangmen."
+
+"As to the last-named sort of person," said the cosmopolitan, "I trust
+that the advancing spirit of geniality will at last enable us to
+dispense with him. No murderers--no hangmen. And surely, when the whole
+world shall have been genialized, it will be as out of place to talk of
+murderers, as in a Christianized world to talk of sinners."
+
+"To pursue the thought," said the other, "every blessing is attended
+with some evil, and----"
+
+"Stay," said the cosmopolitan, "that may be better let pass for a loose
+saying, than for hopeful doctrine."
+
+"Well, assuming the saying's truth, it would apply to the future
+supremacy of the genial spirit, since then it will fare with the hangman
+as it did with the weaver when the spinning-jenny whizzed into the
+ascendant. Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch turn his hand
+to? Butchering?"
+
+"That he could turn his hand to it seems probable; but that, under the
+circumstances, it would be appropriate, might in some minds admit of a
+question. For one, I am inclined to think--and I trust it will not be
+held fastidiousness--that it would hardly be suitable to the dignity of
+our nature, that an individual, once employed in attending the last
+hours of human unfortunates, should, that office being extinct, transfer
+himself to the business of attending the last hours of unfortunate
+cattle. I would suggest that the individual turn valet--a vocation to
+which he would, perhaps, appear not wholly inadapted by his familiar
+dexterity about the person. In particular, for giving a finishing tie to
+a gentleman's cravat, I know few who would, in all likelihood, be, from
+previous occupation, better fitted than the professional person in
+question."
+
+"Are you in earnest?" regarding the serene speaker with unaffected
+curiosity; "are you really in earnest?"
+
+"I trust I am never otherwise," was the mildly earnest reply; "but
+talking of the advance of geniality, I am not without hopes that it
+will eventually exert its influence even upon so difficult a subject as
+the misanthrope."
+
+"A genial misanthrope! I thought I had stretched the rope pretty hard in
+talking of genial hangmen. A genial misanthrope is no more conceivable
+than a surly philanthropist."
+
+"True," lightly depositing in an unbroken little cylinder the ashes of
+his cigar, "true, the two you name are well opposed."
+
+"Why, you talk as if there _was_ such a being as a surly
+philanthropist."
+
+"I do. My eccentric friend, whom you call Coonskins, is an example. Does
+he not, as I explained to you, hide under a surly air a philanthropic
+heart? Now, the genial misanthrope, when, in the process of eras, he
+shall turn up, will be the converse of this; under an affable air, he
+will hide a misanthropical heart. In short, the genial misanthrope will
+be a new kind of monster, but still no small improvement upon the
+original one, since, instead of making faces and throwing stones at
+people, like that poor old crazy man, Timon, he will take steps, fiddle
+in hand, and set the tickled world a'dancing. In a word, as the progress
+of Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind,
+much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so,
+thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish
+address, will take on refinement and softness--to so genial a degree,
+indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the
+coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to
+say, some philanthropists of the present time would seem not to be, as
+witness my eccentric friend named before."
+
+"Well," cried the other, a little weary, perhaps, of a speculation so
+abstract, "well, however it may be with the century to come, certainly
+in the century which is, whatever else one may be, he must be genial or
+he is nothing. So fill up, fill up, and be genial!"
+
+"I am trying my best," said the cosmopolitan, still calmly
+companionable. "A moment since, we talked of Pizarro, gold, and Peru; no
+doubt, now, you remember that when the Spaniard first entered Atahalpa's
+treasure-chamber, and saw such profusion of plate stacked up, right and
+left, with the wantonness of old barrels in a brewer's yard, the needy
+fellow felt a twinge of misgiving, of want of confidence, as to the
+genuineness of an opulence so profuse. He went about rapping the shining
+vases with his knuckles. But it was all gold, pure gold, good gold,
+sterling gold, which how cheerfully would have been stamped such at
+Goldsmiths' Hall. And just so those needy minds, which, through their
+own insincerity, having no confidence in mankind, doubt lest the liberal
+geniality of this age be spurious. They are small Pizarros in their
+way--by the very princeliness of men's geniality stunned into distrust
+of it."
+
+"Far be such distrust from you and me, my genial friend," cried the
+other fervently; "fill up, fill up!"
+
+"Well, this all along seems a division of labor," smiled the
+cosmopolitan. "I do about all the drinking, and you do about all--the
+genial. But yours is a nature competent to do that to a large
+population. And now, my friend," with a peculiarly grave air, evidently
+foreshadowing something not unimportant, and very likely of close
+personal interest; "wine, you know, opens the heart, and----"
+
+"Opens it!" with exultation, "it thaws it right out. Every heart is
+ice-bound till wine melt it, and reveal the tender grass and sweet
+herbage budding below, with every dear secret, hidden before like a
+dropped jewel in a snow-bank, lying there unsuspected through winter
+till spring."
+
+"And just in that way, my dear Charlie, is one of my little secrets now
+to be shown forth."
+
+"Ah!" eagerly moving round his chair, "what is it?"
+
+"Be not so impetuous, my dear Charlie. Let me explain. You see,
+naturally, I am a man not overgifted with assurance; in general, I am,
+if anything, diffidently reserved; so, if I shall presently seem
+otherwise, the reason is, that you, by the geniality you have evinced in
+all your talk, and especially the noble way in which, while affirming
+your good opinion of men, you intimated that you never could prove false
+to any man, but most by your indignation at a particularly illiberal
+passage in Polonius' advice--in short, in short," with extreme
+embarrassment, "how shall I express what I mean, unless I add that by
+your whole character you impel me to throw myself upon your nobleness;
+in one word, put confidence in you, a generous confidence?"
+
+"I see, I see," with heightened interest, "something of moment you wish
+to confide. Now, what is it, Frank? Love affair?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"What, then, my _dear_ Frank? Speak--depend upon me to the last. Out
+with it."
+
+"Out it shall come, then," said the cosmopolitan. "I am in want, urgent
+want, of money."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A METAMORPHOSIS MORE SURPRISING THAN ANY IN OVID.
+
+
+"In want of money!" pushing back his chair as from a suddenly-disclosed
+man-trap or crater.
+
+"Yes," naively assented the cosmopolitan, "and you are going to loan me
+fifty dollars. I could almost wish I was in need of more, only for your
+sake. Yes, my dear Charlie, for your sake; that you might the better
+prove your noble, kindliness, my dear Charlie."
+
+"None of your dear Charlies," cried the other, springing to his feet,
+and buttoning up his coat, as if hastily to depart upon a long journey.
+
+"Why, why, why?" painfully looking up.
+
+"None of your why, why, whys!" tossing out a foot, "go to the devil,
+sir! Beggar, impostor!--never so deceived in a man in my life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+SHOWING THAT THE AGE OF MAGIC AND MAGICIANS IS NOT YET OVER.
+
+
+While speaking or rather hissing those words, the boon companion
+underwent much such a change as one reads of in fairy-books. Out of old
+materials sprang a new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake.
+
+The cosmopolitan rose, the traces of previous feeling vanished; looked
+steadfastly at his transformed friend a moment, then, taking ten
+half-eagles from his pocket, stooped down, and laid them, one by one, in
+a circle round him; and, retiring a pace, waved his long tasseled pipe
+with the air of a necromancer, an air heightened by his costume,
+accompanying each wave with a solemn murmur of cabalistical words.
+
+Meantime, he within the magic-ring stood suddenly rapt, exhibiting every
+symptom of a successful charm--a turned cheek, a fixed attitude, a
+frozen eye; spellbound, not more by the waving wand than by the ten
+invincible talismans on the floor.
+
+"Reappear, reappear, reappear, oh, my former friend! Replace this
+hideous apparition with thy blest shape, and be the token of thy return
+the words, 'My dear Frank.'"
+
+"My dear Frank," now cried the restored friend, cordially stepping out
+of the ring, with regained self-possession regaining lost identity, "My
+dear Frank, what a funny man you are; full of fun as an egg of meat. How
+could you tell me that absurd story of your being in need? But I relish
+a good joke too well to spoil it by letting on. Of course, I humored the
+thing; and, on my side, put on all the cruel airs you would have me.
+Come, this little episode of fictitious estrangement will but enhance
+the delightful reality. Let us sit down again, and finish our bottle."
+
+"With all my heart," said the cosmopolitan, dropping the necromancer
+with the same facility with which he had assumed it. "Yes," he added,
+soberly picking up the gold pieces, and returning them with a chink to
+his pocket, "yes, I am something of a funny man now and then; while for
+you, Charlie," eying him in tenderness, "what you say about your
+humoring the thing is true enough; never did man second a joke better
+than you did just now. You played your part better than I did mine; you
+played it, Charlie, to the life."
+
+"You see, I once belonged to an amateur play company; that accounts for
+it. But come, fill up, and let's talk of something else."
+
+"Well," acquiesced the cosmopolitan, seating himself, and quietly
+brimming his glass, "what shall we talk about?"
+
+"Oh, anything you please," a sort of nervously accommodating.
+
+"Well, suppose we talk about Charlemont?"
+
+"Charlemont? What's Charlemont? Who's Charlemont?"
+
+"You shall hear, my dear Charlie," answered the cosmopolitan. "I will
+tell you the story of Charlemont, the gentleman-madman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+WHICH MAY PASS FOR WHATEVER IT MAY PROVE TO BE WORTH.
+
+
+But ere be given the rather grave story of Charlemont, a reply must in
+civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view
+of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics
+appear, exclaims: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like
+your cosmopolitan? And who, it might be returned, did ever dress or act
+like harlequin?
+
+Strange, that in a work of amusement, this severe fidelity to real life
+should be exacted by any one, who, by taking up such a work,
+sufficiently shows that he is not unwilling to drop real life, and turn,
+for a time, to something different. Yes, it is, indeed, strange that any
+one should clamor for the thing he is weary of; that any one, who, for
+any cause, finds real life dull, should yet demand of him who is to
+divert his attention from it, that he should be true to that dullness.
+
+There is another class, and with this class we side, who sit down to a
+work of amusement tolerantly as they sit at a play, and with much the
+same expectations and feelings. They look that fancy shall evoke scenes
+different from those of the same old crowd round the custom-house
+counter, and same old dishes on the boardinghouse table, with characters
+unlike those of the same old acquaintances they meet in the same old way
+every day in the same old street. And as, in real life, the proprieties
+will not allow people to act out themselves with that unreserve
+permitted to the stage; so, in books of fiction, they look not only for
+more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real
+life itself can show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want nature,
+too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed. In this
+way of thinking, the people in a fiction, like the people in a play,
+must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act
+as nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion: it should
+present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
+
+If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely a
+little is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does but
+seek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish of
+the more indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin can
+never appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut capers too fantastic.
+
+One word more. Though every one knows how bootless it is to be in all
+cases vindicating one's self, never mind how convinced one may be that
+he is never in the wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation of
+his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied to
+but a work of imagination, is no easy thing. The mention of this
+weakness will explain why such readers as may think they perceive
+something harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitan
+with the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with the
+boon-companion, are now referred to that chapter where some similar
+apparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles,
+modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN TELLS THE STORY OF THE GENTLEMAN MADMAN.
+
+
+"Charlemont was a young merchant of French descent, living in St.
+Louis--a man not deficient in mind, and possessed of that sterling and
+captivating kindliness, seldom in perfection seen but in youthful
+bachelors, united at times to a remarkable sort of gracefully
+devil-may-care and witty good-humor. Of course, he was admired by
+everybody, and loved, as only mankind can love, by not a few. But in his
+twenty-ninth year a change came over him. Like one whose hair turns gray
+in a night, so in a day Charlemont turned from affable to morose. His
+acquaintances were passed without greeting; while, as for his
+confidential friends, them he pointedly, unscrupulously, and with a kind
+of fierceness, cut dead.
+
+"One, provoked by such conduct, would fain have resented it with words
+as disdainful; while another, shocked by the change, and, in concern for
+a friend, magnanimously overlooking affronts, implored to know what
+sudden, secret grief had distempered him. But from resentment and from
+tenderness Charlemont alike turned away.
+
+"Ere long, to the general surprise, the merchant Charlemont was
+gazetted, and the same day it was reported that he had withdrawn from
+town, but not before placing his entire property in the hands of
+responsible assignees for the benefit of creditors.
+
+"Whither he had vanished, none could guess. At length, nothing being
+heard, it was surmised that he must have made away with himself--a
+surmise, doubtless, originating in the remembrance of the change some
+months previous to his bankruptcy--a change of a sort only to be
+ascribed to a mind suddenly thrown from its balance.
+
+"Years passed. It was spring-time, and lo, one bright morning,
+Charlemont lounged into the St. Louis coffee-houses--gay, polite,
+humane, companionable, and dressed in the height of costly elegance. Not
+only was he alive, but he was himself again. Upon meeting with old
+acquaintances, he made the first advances, and in such a manner that it
+was impossible not to meet him half-way. Upon other old friends, whom he
+did not chance casually to meet, he either personally called, or left
+his card and compliments for them; and to several, sent presents of game
+or hampers of wine.
+
+"They say the world is sometimes harshly unforgiving, but it was not so
+to Charlemont. The world feels a return of love for one who returns to
+it as he did. Expressive of its renewed interest was a whisper, an
+inquiring whisper, how now, exactly, so long after his bankruptcy, it
+fared with Charlemont's purse. Rumor, seldom at a loss for answers,
+replied that he had spent nine years in Marseilles in France, and there
+acquiring a second fortune, had returned with it, a man devoted
+henceforth to genial friendships.
+
+"Added years went by, and the restored wanderer still the same; or
+rather, by his noble qualities, grew up like golden maize in the
+encouraging sun of good opinions. But still the latent wonder was, what
+had caused that change in him at a period when, pretty much as now, he
+was, to all appearance, in the possession of the same fortune, the same
+friends, the same popularity. But nobody thought it would be the thing
+to question him here.
+
+"At last, at a dinner at his house, when all the guests but one had
+successively departed; this remaining guest, an old acquaintance, being
+just enough under the influence of wine to set aside the fear of
+touching upon a delicate point, ventured, in a way which perhaps spoke
+more favorably for his heart than his tact, to beg of his host to
+explain the one enigma of his life. Deep melancholy overspread the
+before cheery face of Charlemont; he sat for some moments tremulously
+silent; then pushing a full decanter towards the guest, in a choked
+voice, said: 'No, no! when by art, and care, and time, flowers are made
+to bloom over a grave, who would seek to dig all up again only to know
+the mystery?--The wine.' When both glasses were filled, Charlemont took
+his, and lifting it, added lowly: 'If ever, in days to come, you shall
+see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble
+for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and, partly through
+love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand
+with the world, and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin
+to yourself, then will you do as one I now dream of once did, and like
+him will you suffer; but how fortunate and how grateful should you be,
+if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy
+again.'
+
+"When the guest went away, it was with the persuasion, that though
+outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of
+Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends
+to touch one dangerous string."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN STRIKINGLY EVINCES THE ARTLESSNESS OF HIS
+NATURE.
+
+
+"Well, what do you think of the story of Charlemont?" mildly asked he
+who had told it.
+
+"A very strange one," answered the auditor, who had been such not with
+perfect ease, "but is it true?"
+
+"Of course not; it is a story which I told with the purpose of every
+story-teller--to amuse. Hence, if it seem strange to you, that
+strangeness is the romance; it is what contrasts it with real life; it
+is the invention, in brief, the fiction as opposed to the fact. For do
+but ask yourself, my dear Charlie," lovingly leaning over towards him,
+"I rest it with your own heart now, whether such a forereaching motive
+as Charlemont hinted he had acted on in his change--whether such a
+motive, I say, were a sort of one at all justified by the nature of
+human society? Would you, for one, turn the cold shoulder to a friend--a
+convivial one, say, whose pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to
+you?"
+
+"How can you ask me, my dear Frank? You know I would scorn such
+meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted--"really, early as it is, I
+think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels
+unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of
+it, has played the deuce with me."
+
+"Little as you drank of this elixir of logwood? Why, Charlie, you are
+losing your mind. To talk so of the genuine, mellow old port. Yes, I
+think that by all means you had better away, and sleep it off.
+There--don't apologize--don't explain--go, go--I understand you exactly.
+I will see you to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON ENSUES
+PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.
+
+
+As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew, a stranger
+advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan, said: "I think I heard you say
+you would see that man again. Be warned; don't you do so."
+
+He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man, sandy-haired, and
+Saxon-looking; perhaps five and forty; tall, and, but for a certain
+angularity, well made; little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a
+look of plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
+dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow, placidly thoughtful,
+than by his general aspect, which had that look of youthfulness in
+maturity, peculiar sometimes to habitual health of body, the original
+gift of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance of
+the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution as much as morality. A
+neat, comely, almost ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red
+clover-blossom at coolish dawn--the color of warmth preserved by the
+virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what of
+shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled; in that way, he seemed a
+kind of cross between a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it
+seemed as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability play
+second fiddle to the last.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I
+cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just
+been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
+disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone
+have prompted such an intimation. My friend, whose seat is still warm,
+has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here.
+Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if you choose
+to hint aught further unfavorable to the man, the genial warmth of whose
+person in part passes into yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders
+through you--be it so."
+
+"Quite beautiful conceits," said the stranger, now scholastically and
+artistically eying the picturesque speaker, as if he were a statue in
+the Pitti Palace; "very beautiful:" then with the gravest interest,
+"yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul--one full of all
+love and truth; for where beauty is, there must those be."
+
+"A pleasing belief," rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning with an even
+air, "and to confess, long ago it pleased me. Yes, with you and
+Schiller, I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible
+with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the
+latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose
+lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft
+in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"
+
+As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit--as
+some earnest descriptive speakers will--as unconsciously to wreathe his
+form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature
+described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise,
+apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and
+presently said:
+
+"When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to
+change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to
+glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole
+beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish
+never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and
+conscience, and revel for a while in the carefree, joyous life of a
+perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"
+
+"Such a wish," replied the other, not perceptibly disturbed, "I must
+confess, never consciously was mine. Such a wish, indeed, could hardly
+occur to ordinary imaginations, and mine I cannot think much above the
+average."
+
+"But now that the idea is suggested," said the stranger, with infantile
+intellectuality, "does it not raise the desire?"
+
+"Hardly. For though I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice
+against the rattle-snake, still, I should not like to be one. If I were
+a rattle-snake now, there would be no such thing as being genial with
+men--men would be afraid of me, and then I should be a very lonesome and
+miserable rattle-snake."
+
+"True, men would be afraid of you. And why? Because of your rattle, your
+hollow rattle--a sound, as I have been told, like the shaking together
+of small, dry skulls in a tune of the Waltz of Death. And here we have
+another beautiful truth. When any creature is by its make inimical to
+other creatures, nature in effect labels that creature, much as an
+apothecary does a poison. So that whoever is destroyed by a
+rattle-snake, or other harmful agent, it is his own fault. He should
+have respected the label. Hence that significant passage in Scripture,
+'Who will pity the charmer that is bitten with a serpent?'"
+
+"_I_ would pity him," said the cosmopolitan, a little bluntly, perhaps.
+
+"But don't you think," rejoined the other, still maintaining his
+passionless air, "don't you think, that for a man to pity where nature
+is pitiless, is a little presuming?"
+
+"Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion the heart decides
+for itself. But, sir," deepening in seriousness, "as I now for the first
+realize, you but a moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a
+way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of a tolerant spirit, as I
+hope, I try my best never to be frightened at any speculation, so long
+as it is pursued in honesty, yet, for once, I must acknowledge that you
+do really, in the point cited, cause me uneasiness; because a proper
+view of the universe, that view which is suited to breed a proper
+confidence, teaches, if I err not, that since all things are justly
+presided over, not very many living agents but must be some way
+accountable."
+
+"Is a rattle-snake accountable?" asked the stranger with such a
+preternaturally cold, gemmy glance out of his pellucid blue eye, that he
+seemed more a metaphysical merman than a feeling man; "is a rattle-snake
+accountable?"
+
+"If I will not affirm that it is," returned the other, with the caution
+of no inexperienced thinker, "neither will I deny it. But if we suppose
+it so, I need not say that such accountability is neither to you, nor
+me, nor the Court of Common Pleas, but to something superior."
+
+He was proceeding, when the stranger would have interrupted him; but as
+reading his argument in his eye, the cosmopolitan, without waiting for
+it to be put into words, at once spoke to it: "You object to my
+supposition, for but such it is, that the rattle-snake's accountability
+is not by nature manifest; but might not much the same thing be urged
+against man's? A _reductio ad absurdum_, proving the objection vain. But
+if now," he continued, "you consider what capacity for mischief there is
+in a rattle-snake (observe, I do not charge it with being mischievous, I
+but say it has the capacity), could you well avoid admitting that that
+would be no symmetrical view of the universe which should maintain that,
+while to man it is forbidden to kill, without judicial cause, his
+fellow, yet the rattle-snake has an implied permit of unaccountability
+to murder any creature it takes capricious umbrage at--man
+included?--But," with a wearied air, "this is no genial talk; at least
+it is not so to me. Zeal at unawares embarked me in it. I regret it.
+Pray, sit down, and take some of this wine."
+
+"Your suggestions are new to me," said the other, with a kind of
+condescending appreciativeness, as of one who, out of devotion to
+knowledge, disdains not to appropriate the least crumb of it, even from
+a pauper's board; "and, as I am a very Athenian in hailing a new
+thought, I cannot consent to let it drop so abruptly. Now, the
+rattle-snake----"
+
+"Nothing more about rattle-snakes, I beseech," in distress; "I must
+positively decline to reenter upon that subject. Sit down, sir, I beg,
+and take some of this wine."
+
+"To invite me to sit down with you is hospitable," collectedly
+acquiescing now in the change of topics; "and hospitality being fabled
+to be of oriental origin, and forming, as it does, the subject of a
+pleasing Arabian romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in
+itself--hence I always hear the expressions of hospitality with
+pleasure. But, as for the wine, my regard for that beverage is so
+extreme, and I am so fearful of letting it sate me, that I keep my love
+for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I
+quaff immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but wine from a
+cup I seldom as much as sip."
+
+The cosmopolitan turned a mild glance upon the speaker, who, now
+occupying the chair opposite him, sat there purely and coldly radiant as
+a prism. It seemed as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and
+ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting with a sign, the
+cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of ice-water. "Ice it well, waiter,"
+said he; "and now," turning to the stranger, "will you, if you please,
+give me your reason for the warning words you first addressed to me?"
+
+"I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings are," said the
+stranger; "warnings which do not forewarn, but in mockery come after the
+fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent
+design your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains
+unaccomplished. You read his label."
+
+"And what did it say? 'This is a genial soul,' So you see you must
+either give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against
+my friend. But tell me," with renewed earnestness, "what do you take him
+for? What is he?"
+
+"What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which
+life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as
+insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to
+determine the triangle."
+
+"But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent with your
+doctrine of labels?"
+
+"Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a
+philosophical view, consistency is a certain level at all times,
+maintained in all the thoughts of one's mind. But, since nature is
+nearly all hill and dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in
+knowledge without submitting to the natural inequalities in the
+progress? Advance into knowledge is just like advance upon the grand
+Erie canal, where, from the character of the country, change of level is
+inevitable; you are locked up and locked down with perpetual
+inconsistencies, and yet all the time you get on; while the dullest part
+of the whole route is what the boatmen call the 'long level'--a
+consistently-flat surface of sixty miles through stagnant swamps."
+
+"In one particular," rejoined the cosmopolitan, "your simile is,
+perhaps, unfortunate. For, after all these weary lockings-up and
+lockings-down, upon how much of a higher plain do you finally stand?
+Enough to make it an object? Having from youth been taught reverence for
+knowledge, you must pardon me if, on but this one account, I reject your
+analogy. But really you someway bewitch me with your tempting discourse,
+so that I keep straying from my point unawares. You tell me you cannot
+certainly know who or what my friend is; pray, what do you conjecture
+him to be?"
+
+"I conjecture him to be what, among the ancient Egyptians, was called a
+----" using some unknown word.
+
+"A ----! And what is that?"
+
+"A ---- is what Proclus, in a little note to his third book on the
+theology of Plato, defines as ---- ----" coming out with a sentence of
+Greek.
+
+Holding up his glass, and steadily looking through its transparency, the
+cosmopolitan rejoined: "That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it
+to modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible
+of, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in
+words suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for a favor.
+
+"A favor!" slightly lifting his cool eyebrows; "a bridal favor I
+understand, a knot of white ribands, a very beautiful type of the purity
+of true marriage; but of other favors I am yet to learn; and still, in a
+vague way, the word, as you employ it, strikes me as unpleasingly
+significant in general of some poor, unheroic submission to being done
+good to."
+
+Here the goblet of iced-water was brought, and, in compliance with a
+sign from the cosmopolitan, was placed before the stranger, who, not
+before expressing acknowledgments, took a draught, apparently
+refreshing--its very coldness, as with some is the case, proving not
+entirely uncongenial.
+
+At last, setting down the goblet, and gently wiping from his lips the
+beads of water freshly clinging there as to the valve of a coral-shell
+upon a reef, he turned upon the cosmopolitan, and, in a manner the most
+cool, self-possessed, and matter-of-fact possible, said: "I hold to the
+metempsychosis; and whoever I may be now, I feel that I was once the
+stoic Arrian, and have inklings of having been equally puzzled by a word
+in the current language of that former time, very probably answering to
+your word _favor_."
+
+"Would you favor me by explaining?" said the cosmopolitan, blandly.
+
+"Sir," responded the stranger, with a very slight degree of severity, "I
+like lucidity, of all things, and am afraid I shall hardly be able to
+converse satisfactorily with you, unless you bear it in mind."
+
+The cosmopolitan ruminatingly eyed him awhile, then said: "The best way,
+as I have heard, to get out of a labyrinth, is to retrace one's steps. I
+will accordingly retrace mine, and beg you will accompany me. In short,
+once again to return to the point: for what reason did you warn me
+against my friend?"
+
+"Briefly, then, and clearly, because, as before said, I conjecture him
+to be what, among the ancient Egyptians----"
+
+"Pray, now," earnestly deprecated the cosmopolitan, "pray, now, why
+disturb the repose of those ancient Egyptians? What to us are their
+words or their thoughts? Are we pauper Arabs, without a house of our
+own, that, with the mummies, we must turn squatters among the dust of
+the Catacombs?"
+
+"Pharaoh's poorest brick-maker lies proudlier in his rags than the
+Emperor of all the Russias in his hollands," oracularly said the
+stranger; "for death, though in a worm, is majestic; while life, though
+in a king, is contemptible. So talk not against mummies. It is a part of
+my mission to teach mankind a due reverence for mummies."
+
+Fortunately, to arrest these incoherencies, or rather, to vary them, a
+haggard, inspired-looking man now approached--a crazy beggar, asking
+alms under the form of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by
+himself, and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship.
+Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for,
+by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared
+the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over
+with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge
+upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed
+his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by
+what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him
+any lasting good, but enough, perhaps, to suggest a torment of latent
+doubts at times, whether his addled dream of glory were true.
+
+Accepting the tract offered him, the cosmopolitan glanced over it, and,
+seeming to see just what it was, closed it, put it in his pocket, eyed
+the man a moment, then, leaning over and presenting him with a shilling,
+said to him, in tones kind and considerate: "I am sorry, my friend, that
+I happen to be engaged just now; but, having purchased your work, I
+promise myself much satisfaction in its perusal at my earliest leisure."
+
+In his tattered, single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned meagerly up to his
+chin, the shutter-brain made him a bow, which, for courtesy, would not
+have misbecome a viscount, then turned with silent appeal to the
+stranger. But the stranger sat more like a cold prism than ever, while
+an expression of keen Yankee cuteness, now replacing his former mystical
+one, lent added icicles to his aspect. His whole air said: "Nothing
+from me." The repulsed petitioner threw a look full of resentful pride
+and cracked disdain upon him, and went his way.
+
+"Come, now," said the cosmopolitan, a little reproachfully, "you ought
+to have sympathized with that man; tell me, did you feel no
+fellow-feeling? Look at his tract here, quite in the transcendental
+vein."
+
+"Excuse me," said the stranger, declining the tract, "I never patronize
+scoundrels."
+
+"Scoundrels?"
+
+"I detected in him, sir, a damning peep of sense--damning, I say; for
+sense in a seeming madman is scoundrelism. I take him for a cunning
+vagabond, who picks up a vagabond living by adroitly playing the madman.
+Did you not remark how he flinched under my eye?'
+
+"Really?" drawing a long, astonished breath, "I could hardly have
+divined in you a temper so subtlely distrustful. Flinched? to be sure he
+did, poor fellow; you received him with so lame a welcome. As for his
+adroitly playing the madman, invidious critics might object the same to
+some one or two strolling magi of these days. But that is a matter I
+know nothing about. But, once more, and for the last time, to return to
+the point: why sir, did you warn me against my friend? I shall rejoice,
+if, as I think it will prove, your want of confidence in my friend rests
+upon a basis equally slender with your distrust of the lunatic. Come,
+why did you warn me? Put it, I beseech, in few words, and those
+English."
+
+"I warned you against him because he is suspected for what on these
+boats is known--so they tell me--as a Mississippi operator."
+
+"An operator, ah? he operates, does he? My friend, then, is something
+like what the Indians call a Great Medicine, is he? He operates, he
+purges, he drains off the repletions."
+
+"I perceive, sir," said the stranger, constitutionally obtuse to the
+pleasant drollery, "that your notion, of what is called a Great
+Medicine, needs correction. The Great Medicine among the Indians is less
+a bolus than a man in grave esteem for his politic sagacity."
+
+"And is not my friend politic? Is not my friend sagacious? By your own
+definition, is not my friend a Great Medicine?"
+
+"No, he is an operator, a Mississippi operator; an equivocal character.
+That he is such, I little doubt, having had him pointed out to me as
+such by one desirous of initiating me into any little novelty of this
+western region, where I never before traveled. And, sir, if I am not
+mistaken, you also are a stranger here (but, indeed, where in this
+strange universe is not one a stranger?) and that is a reason why I felt
+moved to warn you against a companion who could not be otherwise than
+perilous to one of a free and trustful disposition. But I repeat the
+hope, that, thus far at least, he has not succeeded with you, and trust
+that, for the future, he will not."
+
+"Thank you for your concern; but hardly can I equally thank you for so
+steadily maintaining the hypothesis of my friend's objectionableness.
+True, I but made his acquaintance for the first to-day, and know little
+of his antecedents; but that would seem no just reason why a nature like
+his should not of itself inspire confidence. And since your own
+knowledge of the gentleman is not, by your account, so exact as it might
+be, you will pardon me if I decline to welcome any further suggestions
+unflattering to him. Indeed, sir," with friendly decision, "let us
+change the subject."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE MYSTICAL MASTER INTRODUCES THE PRACTICAL DISCIPLE.
+
+
+"Both, the subject and the interlocutor," replied the stranger rising,
+and waiting the return towards him of a promenader, that moment turning
+at the further end of his walk.
+
+"Egbert!" said he, calling.
+
+Egbert, a well-dressed, commercial-looking gentleman of about thirty,
+responded in a way strikingly deferential, and in a moment stood near,
+in the attitude less of an equal companion apparently than a
+confidential follower.
+
+"This," said the stranger, taking Egbert by the hand and leading him to
+the cosmopolitan, "this is Egbert, a disciple. I wish you to know
+Egbert. Egbert was the first among mankind to reduce to practice the
+principles of Mark Winsome--principles previously accounted as less
+adapted to life than the closet. Egbert," turning to the disciple, who,
+with seeming modesty, a little shrank under these compliments, "Egbert,
+this," with a salute towards the cosmopolitan, "is, like all of us, a
+stranger. I wish you, Egbert, to know this brother stranger; be
+communicative with him. Particularly if, by anything hitherto dropped,
+his curiosity has been roused as to the precise nature of my philosophy,
+I trust you will not leave such curiosity ungratified. You, Egbert, by
+simply setting forth your practice, can do more to enlighten one as to
+my theory, than I myself can by mere speech. Indeed, it is by you that I
+myself best understand myself. For to every philosophy are certain rear
+parts, very important parts, and these, like the rear of one's head, are
+best seen by reflection. Now, as in a glass, you, Egbert, in your life,
+reflect to me the more important part of my system. He, who approves
+you, approves the philosophy of Mark Winsome."
+
+Though portions of this harangue may, perhaps, in the phraseology seem
+self-complaisant, yet no trace of self-complacency was perceptible in
+the speaker's manner, which throughout was plain, unassuming, dignified,
+and manly; the teacher and prophet seemed to lurk more in the idea, so
+to speak, than in the mere bearing of him who was the vehicle of it.
+
+"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, who seemed not a little interested in this
+new aspect of matters, "you speak of a certain philosophy, and a more or
+less occult one it may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life;
+pray, tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the same
+formation of character with the experiences of the world?"
+
+"It does; and that is the test of its truth; for any philosophy that,
+being in operation contradictory to the ways of the world, tends to
+produce a character at odds with it, such a philosophy must necessarily
+be but a cheat and a dream."
+
+"You a little surprise me," answered the cosmopolitan; "for, from an
+occasional profundity in you, and also from your allusions to a profound
+work on the theology of Plato, it would seem but natural to surmise
+that, if you are the originator of any philosophy, it must needs so
+partake of the abstruse, as to exalt it above the comparatively vile
+uses of life."
+
+"No uncommon mistake with regard to me," rejoined the other. Then meekly
+standing like a Raphael: "If still in golden accents old Memnon murmurs
+his riddle, none the less does the balance-sheet of every man's ledger
+unriddle the profit or loss of life. Sir," with calm energy, "man came
+into this world, not to sit down and muse, not to befog himself with
+vain subtleties, but to gird up his loins and to work. Mystery is in the
+morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is
+everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must
+be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be
+undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers
+before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg,
+though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the
+main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a
+man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know me for such.
+And as for my disciple here," turning towards him, "if you look to find
+any soft Utopianisms and last year's sunsets in him, I smile to think
+how he will set you right. The doctrines I have taught him will, I
+trust, lead him neither to the mad-house nor the poor-house, as so many
+other doctrines have served credulous sticklers. Furthermore," glancing
+upon him paternally, "Egbert is both my disciple and my poet. For poetry
+is not a thing of ink and rhyme, but of thought and act, and, in the
+latter way, is by any one to be found anywhere, when in useful action
+sought. In a word, my disciple here is a thriving young merchant, a
+practical poet in the West India trade. There," presenting Egbert's hand
+to the cosmopolitan, "I join you, and leave you." With which words, and
+without bowing, the master withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE DISCIPLE UNBENDS, AND CONSENTS TO ACT A SOCIAL PART.
+
+
+In the master's presence the disciple had stood as one not ignorant of
+his place; modesty was in his expression, with a sort of reverential
+depression. But the presence of the superior withdrawn, he seemed
+lithely to shoot up erect from beneath it, like one of those wire men
+from a toy snuff-box.
+
+He was, as before said, a young man of about thirty. His countenance of
+that neuter sort, which, in repose, is neither prepossessing nor
+disagreeable; so that it seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out.
+His dress was neat, with just enough of the mode to save it from the
+reproach of originality; in which general respect, though with a
+readjustment of details, his costume seemed modeled upon his master's.
+But, upon the whole, he was, to all appearances, the last person in the
+world that one would take for the disciple of any transcendental
+philosophy; though, indeed, something about his sharp nose and shaved
+chin seemed to hint that if mysticism, as a lesson, ever came in his
+way, he might, with the characteristic knack of a true New-Englander,
+turn even so profitless a thing to some profitable account.
+
+"Well" said he, now familiarly seating himself in the vacated chair,
+"what do you think of Mark? Sublime fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"That each member of the human guild is worthy respect my friend,"
+rejoined the cosmopolitan, "is a fact which no admirer of that guild
+will question; but that, in view of higher natures, the word sublime, so
+frequently applied to them, can, without confusion, be also applied to
+man, is a point which man will decide for himself; though, indeed, if he
+decide it in the affirmative, it is not for me to object. But I am
+curious to know more of that philosophy of which, at present, I have but
+inklings. You, its first disciple among men, it seems, are peculiarly
+qualified to expound it. Have you any objections to begin now?"
+
+"None at all," squaring himself to the table. "Where shall I begin? At
+first principles?"
+
+"You remember that it was in a practical way that you were represented
+as being fitted for the clear exposition. Now, what you call first
+principles, I have, in some things, found to be more or less vague.
+Permit me, then, in a plain way, to suppose some common case in real
+life, and that done, I would like you to tell me how you, the practical
+disciple of the philosophy I wish to know about, would, in that case,
+conduct."
+
+"A business-like view. Propose the case."
+
+"Not only the case, but the persons. The case is this: There are two
+friends, friends from childhood, bosom-friends; one of whom, for the
+first time, being in need, for the first time seeks a loan from the
+other, who, so far as fortune goes, is more than competent to grant it.
+And the persons are to be you and I: you, the friend from whom the loan
+is sought--I, the friend who seeks it; you, the disciple of the
+philosophy in question--I, a common man, with no more philosophy than to
+know that when I am comfortably warm I don't feel cold, and when I have
+the ague I shake. Mind, now, you must work up your imagination, and, as
+much as possible, talk and behave just as if the case supposed were a
+fact. For brevity, you shall call me Frank, and I will call you Charlie.
+Are you agreed?"
+
+"Perfectly. You begin."
+
+The cosmopolitan paused a moment, then, assuming a serious and care-worn
+air, suitable to the part to be enacted, addressed his hypothesized
+friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.
+
+
+"Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you."
+
+"You always have, and with reason. What is it Frank?"
+
+"Charlie, I am in want--urgent want of money."
+
+"That's not well."
+
+"But it _will_ be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. I
+would not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have so
+long shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side,
+that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the same
+inequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor won't
+you?"
+
+"Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do you a favor?"
+
+"Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so."
+
+"Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to talk so."
+
+"But won't you loan me the money?"
+
+"No, Frank."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but never loan it; and of
+course the man who calls himself my friend is above receiving alms. The
+negotiation of a loan is a business transaction. And I will transact no
+business with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially and
+intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too high
+to degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure
+there are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is,
+commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-ink
+line between them and my friends in the true sense--my friends social
+and intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
+he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such unfriendly
+accommodations as are to be had from the soulless corporation of a bank,
+by giving the regular security and paying the regular discount."
+
+"An _unfriendly_ accommodation? Do those words go together handsomely?"
+
+"Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and a cow--not handsomely,
+but to the purpose. Look, Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale
+of money on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an accommodation,
+but where is the friendliness? Few men in their senses, except
+operators, borrow money on interest, except upon a necessity akin to
+starvation. Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
+starving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of flour upon the
+condition that, on a given day, he shall let me have the money's worth
+of a barrel and a half of flour; especially if I add this further
+proviso, that if he fail so to do, I shall then, to secure to myself
+the money's worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up at
+public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families, throw in his
+wife's and children's?"
+
+"I understand," with a pathetic shudder; "but even did it come to that,
+such a step on the creditor's part, let us, for the honor of human
+nature, hope, were less the intention than the contingency."
+
+"But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in the taking beforehand
+of due securities."
+
+"Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a friend's act?"
+
+"And the auction in the last place an enemy's act. Don't you see? The
+enmity lies couched in the friendship, just as the ruin in the relief."
+
+"I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really, I can't understand
+this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but it strikes me that in going into
+the philosophy of the subject, you go somewhat out of your depth."
+
+"So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but the ocean replied:
+'It is just the other way, my wet friend,' and drowned him."
+
+"That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of
+AEsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would
+scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
+But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship,
+and ruin in relief."
+
+"I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train slipped off the
+rail. He who loans him money on interest is the one who, by way of
+accommodation, helps get the train back where it belongs; but then, by
+way of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an agent,
+thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just there, on his account,
+a beam across the track. Your needy man's principle-and-interest friend
+is, I say again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my dear
+friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest."
+
+"Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me without interest."
+
+"That would be alms again."
+
+"Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?"
+
+"Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest."
+
+"Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the alms. Seeing that it
+is you, Charlie, gratefully will I accept the alms of the interest. No
+humiliation between friends."
+
+"Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you suffer yourself to
+talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me. For though I am not of the sour
+mind of Solomon, that, in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a
+brother; yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his Essay
+on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a terrestrial convenience,
+not to his friend celestial (or friend social and intellectual) would he
+go; no: for his terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or
+humbler business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the reason:
+Because, for the superior nature, which on no account can ever descend
+to do good, to be annoyed with requests to do it, when the inferior
+one, which by no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands
+always inclined to it--this is unsuitable."
+
+"Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial, but as the other."
+
+"It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I'll do it. We are
+business friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan.
+Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where is
+your security?"
+
+"Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your old
+schoolmate--him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves of
+Academe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in
+kindliness--and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being
+fellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security."
+
+"Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst of
+securities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just no
+security at all. You forget we are now business friends."
+
+"And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend I
+can give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get an
+indorser."
+
+"No indorser, then, no business loan."
+
+"Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friend
+you have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, I
+sue as both?"
+
+"Are you a centaur?"
+
+"When all is said then, what good have I of your friendship, regarded in
+what light you will?"
+
+"The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome, as reduced to
+practice by a practical disciple."
+
+"And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy of Mark Winsome do
+me? Ah," turning invokingly, "what is friendship, if it be not the
+helping hand and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out at
+need the purse as the vial!"
+
+"Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through tears never did man see
+his way in the dark. I should hold you unworthy that sincere friendship
+I bear you, could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
+you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank, that you would
+seriously shake the foundations of our love, if ever again you should
+repeat the present scene. The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest
+way, teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most suitable
+time, candidly disclose certain circumstances you seem in ignorance of.
+Though our friendship began in boyhood, think not that, on my side at
+least, it began injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
+juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable points at the
+time; not the least of which were your good manners, handsome dress, and
+your parents' rank and repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man,
+boy though I was, I went into the market and chose me my mutton, not for
+its leanness, but its fatness. In other words, there seemed in you, the
+schoolboy who always had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probability
+that you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if my early
+impression has not been verified by the event, it is only because of
+the caprice of fortune producing a fallibility of human expectations,
+however discreet.'"
+
+"Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!"
+
+"A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear Frank, wouldn't do
+you any harm, let me tell you. Cold-blooded? You say that, because my
+disclosure seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not so. My
+reason for choosing you in part for the points I have mentioned, was
+solely with a view of preserving inviolate the delicacy of the
+connection. For--do but think of it--what more distressing to delicate
+friendship, formed early, than your friend's eventually, in manhood,
+dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five dollars or so?
+Can delicate friendship stand that? And, on the other side, would
+delicate friendship, so long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Would
+you not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry, 'I have
+been deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this man; he is no true friend
+that, in platonic love to demand love-rites?'"
+
+"And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!"
+
+"Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately claiming
+those rights, as you call them, you shake those foundations I hinted of.
+For though, as it turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fair
+house on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished on that
+house, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I would not lose the sweet
+boon of your friendship, Frank. But beware."
+
+"And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie! you talk not to a god, a
+being who in himself holds his own estate, but to a man who, being a
+man, is the sport of fate's wind and wave, and who mounts towards heaven
+or sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough or on crest."
+
+"Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that comes to--no poor
+drifting sea-weed of the universe. Man has a soul; which, if he will,
+puts him beyond fortune's finger and the future's spite. Don't whine
+like fortune's whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true friend, I
+will cut ye."
+
+"Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the quick. Call to mind
+the days we went nutting, the times we walked in the woods, arms
+wreathed about each other, showing trunks invined like the trees:--oh,
+Charlie!"
+
+"Pish! we were boys."
+
+"Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold in the grave ere
+maturity struck them with a sharper frost.--Charlie?"
+
+"Fie! you're a girl."
+
+"Help, help, Charlie, I want help!"
+
+"Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something wrong about the
+man who wants help. There is somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a
+need, a crying need, somewhere about that man."
+
+"So there is, Charlie.--Help, Help!"
+
+"How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself the proof of
+undesert of it."
+
+"Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some ventriloquist who
+usurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome that speaks, not Charlie."
+
+"If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is not alien but
+congenial to my larynx. If the philosophy of that illustrious teacher
+find little response among mankind at large, it is less that they do not
+possess teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate as not
+to have natures predisposed to accord with him.
+
+"Welcome, that compliment to humanity," exclaimed Frank with energy,
+"the truer because unintended. And long in this respect may humanity
+remain what you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardly
+feeling how subject it is to straits, and hence how precious is help,
+will, for selfishness' sake, if no other, long postpone ratifying a
+philosophy that banishes help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie!
+speak as you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case reversed,
+not less freely would I loan you the money than you would ask me to loan
+it.
+
+"_I_ ask? _I_ ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstances
+would I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. The
+experience of China Aster might warn me."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace
+of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace
+vanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do
+so in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller here has so
+tyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat his
+incidents without sliding into his style. I forewarn you of this, that
+you may not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story would seem
+to make its narrator. It is too bad that any intellect, especially in so
+small a matter, should have such power to impose itself upon another,
+against its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to know
+that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully approve. But, to
+begin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+IN WHICH THE STORY OF CHINA ASTER IS AT SECOND-HAND TOLD BY ONE WHO,
+WHILE NOT DISAPPROVING THE MORAL, DISCLAIMS THE SPIRIT OF THE STYLE.
+
+
+"China Aster was a young candle-maker of Marietta, at the mouth of the
+Muskingum--one whose trade would seem a kind of subordinate branch of
+that parent craft and mystery of the hosts of heaven, to be the means,
+effectively or otherwise, of shedding some light through the darkness of
+a planet benighted. But he made little money by the business. Much ado
+had poor China Aster and his family to live; he could, if he chose,
+light up from his stores a whole street, but not so easily could he
+light up with prosperity the hearts of his household.
+
+"Now, China Aster, it so happened, had a friend, Orchis, a shoemaker;
+one whose calling it is to defend the understandings of men from naked
+contact with the substance of things: a very useful vocation, and which,
+spite of all the wiseacres may prophesy, will hardly go out of fashion
+so long as rocks are hard and flints will gall. All at once, by a
+capital prize in a lottery, this useful shoemaker was raised from a
+bench to a sofa. A small nabob was the shoemaker now, and the
+understandings of men, let them shift for themselves. Not that Orchis
+was, by prosperity, elated into heartlessness. Not at all. Because, in
+his fine apparel, strolling one morning into the candlery, and gayly
+switching about at the candle-boxes with his gold-headed cane--while
+poor China Aster, with his greasy paper cap and leather apron, was
+selling one candle for one penny to a poor orange-woman, who, with the
+patronizing coolness of a liberal customer, required it to be carefully
+rolled up and tied in a half sheet of paper--lively Orchis, the woman
+being gone, discontinued his gay switchings and said: 'This is poor
+business for you, friend China Aster; your capital is too small. You
+must drop this vile tallow and hold up pure spermaceti to the world. I
+tell you what it is, you shall have one thousand dollars to extend with.
+In fact, you must make money, China Aster. I don't like to see your
+little boy paddling about without shoes, as he does.'
+
+"'Heaven bless your goodness, friend Orchis,' replied the candle-maker,
+'but don't take it illy if I call to mind the word of my uncle, the
+blacksmith, who, when a loan was offered him, declined it, saying: "To
+ply my own hammer, light though it be, I think best, rather than piece
+it out heavier by welding to it a bit off a neighbor's hammer, though
+that may have some weight to spare; otherwise, were the borrowed bit
+suddenly wanted again, it might not split off at the welding, but too
+much to one side or the other."'
+
+"'Nonsense, friend China Aster, don't be so honest; your boy is
+barefoot. Besides, a rich man lose by a poor man? Or a friend be the
+worse by a friend? China Aster, I am afraid that, in leaning over into
+your vats here, this, morning, you have spilled out your wisdom. Hush! I
+won't hear any more. Where's your desk? Oh, here.' With that, Orchis
+dashed off a check on his bank, and off-handedly presenting it, said:
+'There, friend China Aster, is your one thousand dollars; when you make
+it ten thousand, as you soon enough will (for experience, the only true
+knowledge, teaches me that, for every one, good luck is in store), then,
+China Aster, why, then you can return me the money or not, just as you
+please. But, in any event, give yourself no concern, for I shall never
+demand payment.'
+
+"Now, as kind heaven will so have it that to a hungry man bread is a
+great temptation, and, therefore, he is not too harshly to be blamed,
+if, when freely offered, he take it, even though it be uncertain whether
+he shall ever be able to reciprocate; so, to a poor man, proffered money
+is equally enticing, and the worst that can be said of him, if he accept
+it, is just what can be said in the other case of the hungry man. In
+short, the poor candle-maker's scrupulous morality succumbed to his
+unscrupulous necessity, as is now and then apt to be the case. He took
+the check, and was about carefully putting it away for the present, when
+Orchis, switching about again with his gold-headed cane, said:
+'By-the-way, China Aster, it don't mean anything, but suppose you make a
+little memorandum of this; won't do any harm, you know.' So China Aster
+gave Orchis his note for one thousand dollars on demand. Orchis took it,
+and looked at it a moment, 'Pooh, I told you, friend China Aster, I
+wasn't going ever to make any _demand_.' Then tearing up the note, and
+switching away again at the candle-boxes, said, carelessly; 'Put it at
+four years.' So China Aster gave Orchis his note for one thousand
+dollars at four years. 'You see I'll never trouble you about this,' said
+Orchis, slipping it in his pocket-book, 'give yourself no further
+thought, friend China Aster, than how best to invest your money. And
+don't forget my hint about spermaceti. Go into that, and I'll buy all my
+light of you,' with which encouraging words, he, with wonted, rattling
+kindness, took leave.
+
+"China Aster remained standing just where Orchis had left him; when,
+suddenly, two elderly friends, having nothing better to do, dropped in
+for a chat. The chat over, China Aster, in greasy cap and apron, ran
+after Orchis, and said: 'Friend Orchis, heaven will reward you for your
+good intentions, but here is your check, and now give me my note.'
+
+"'Your honesty is a bore, China Aster,' said Orchis, not without
+displeasure. 'I won't take the check from you.'
+
+"'Then you must take it from the pavement, Orchis,' said China Aster;
+and, picking up a stone, he placed the check under it on the walk.
+
+"'China Aster,' said Orchis, inquisitively eying him, after my leaving
+the candlery just now, what asses dropped in there to advise with you,
+that now you hurry after me, and act so like a fool? Shouldn't wonder if
+it was those two old asses that the boys nickname Old Plain Talk and Old
+Prudence.'
+
+"'Yes, it was those two, Orchis, but don't call them names.'
+
+"'A brace of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a
+wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke
+down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better
+sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out
+his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands by, leaning on his staff,
+wagging his frosty old pow, and chiming in at every clause.'
+
+"'How can you speak so, friend Orchis, of those who were my father's
+friends?'"
+
+"'Save me from my friends, if those old croakers were Old Honesty's
+friends. I call your father so, for every one used to. Why did they let
+him go in his old age on the town? Why, China Aster, I've often heard
+from my mother, the chronicler, that those two old fellows, with Old
+Conscience--as the boys called the crabbed old quaker, that's dead
+now--they three used to go to the poor-house when your father was there,
+and get round his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz,
+Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes, Job's comforters
+were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence, and Old Conscience, to your poor
+old father. Friends? I should like to know who you call foes? With their
+everlasting croaking and reproaching they tormented poor Old Honesty,
+your father, to death.'
+
+"At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy parent, China Aster
+could not restrain some tears. Upon which Orchis said: 'Why, China
+Aster, you are the dolefulest creature. Why don't you, China Aster,
+take a bright view of life? You will never get on in your business or
+anything else, if you don't take the bright view of life. It's the
+ruination of a man to take the dismal one.' Then, gayly poking at him
+with his gold-headed cane, 'Why don't you, then? Why don't you be bright
+and hopeful, like me? Why don't you have confidence, China Aster?
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, friend Orchis,' soberly replied China Aster,
+'but may be my not having drawn a lottery-prize, like you, may make some
+difference.'
+
+"Nonsense! before I knew anything about the prize I was gay as a lark,
+just as gay as I am now. In fact, it has always been a principle with me
+to hold to the bright view.'
+
+"Upon this, China Aster looked a little hard at Orchis, because the
+truth was, that until the lucky prize came to him, Orchis had gone under
+the nickname of Doleful Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a
+hypochondriac turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars of
+his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to groan so much
+about.
+
+"I tell you what it is, now, friend China Aster,' said Orchis, pointing
+down to the check under the stone, and then slapping his pocket, 'the
+check shall lie there if you say so, but your note shan't keep it
+company. In fact, China Aster, I am too sincerely your friend to take
+advantage of a passing fit of the blues in you. You _shall_ reap the
+benefit of my friendship.' With which, buttoning up his coat in a
+jiffy, away he ran, leaving the check behind.
+
+"At first, China Aster was going to tear it up, but thinking that this
+ought not to be done except in the presence of the drawer of the check,
+he mused a while, and picking it up, trudged back to the candlery, fully
+resolved to call upon Orchis soon as his day's work was over, and
+destroy the check before his eyes. But it so happened that when China
+Aster called, Orchis was out, and, having waited for him a weary time in
+vain, China Aster went home, still with the check, but still resolved
+not to keep it another day. Bright and early next morning he would a
+second time go after Orchis, and would, no doubt, make a sure thing of
+it, by finding him in his bed; for since the lottery-prize came to him,
+Orchis, besides becoming more cheery, had also grown a little lazy. But
+as destiny would have it, that same night China Aster had a dream, in
+which a being in the guise of a smiling angel, and holding a kind of
+cornucopia in her hand, hovered over him, pouring down showers of small
+gold dollars, thick as kernels of corn. 'I am Bright Future, friend
+China Aster,' said the angel, 'and if you do what friend Orchis would
+have you do, just see what will come of it.' With which Bright Future,
+with another swing of her cornucopia, poured such another shower of
+small gold dollars upon him, that it seemed to bank him up all round,
+and he waded about in it like a maltster in malt.
+
+"Now, dreams are wonderful things, as everybody knows--so wonderful,
+indeed, that some people stop not short of ascribing them directly to
+heaven; and China Aster, who was of a proper turn of mind in everything,
+thought that in consideration of the dream, it would be but well to wait
+a little, ere seeking Orchis again. During the day, China Aster's mind
+dwelling continually upon the dream, he was so full of it, that when Old
+Plain Talk dropped in to see him, just before dinnertime, as he often
+did, out of the interest he took in Old Honesty's son, China Aster told
+all about his vision, adding that he could not think that so radiant an
+angel could deceive; and, indeed, talked at such a rate that one would
+have thought he believed the angel some beautiful human philanthropist.
+Something in this sort Old Plain Talk understood him, and, accordingly,
+in his plain way, said: 'China Aster, you tell me that an angel appeared
+to you in a dream. Now, what does that amount to but this, that you
+dreamed an angel appeared to you? Go right away, China Aster, and return
+the check, as I advised you before. If friend Prudence were here, he
+would say just the same thing.' With which words Old Plain Talk went off
+to find friend Prudence, but not succeeding, was returning to the
+candlery himself, when, at distance mistaking him for a dun who had long
+annoyed him, China Aster in a panic barred all his doors, and ran to the
+back part of the candlery, where no knock could be heard.
+
+"By this sad mistake, being left with no friend to argue the other side
+of the question, China Aster was so worked upon at last, by musing over
+his dream, that nothing would do but he must get the check cashed, and
+lay out the money the very same day in buying a good lot of spermaceti
+to make into candles, by which operation he counted upon turning a
+better penny than he ever had before in his life; in fact, this he
+believed would prove the foundation of that famous fortune which the
+angel had promised him.
+
+"Now, in using the money, China Aster was resolved punctually to pay the
+interest every six months till the principal should be returned, howbeit
+not a word about such a thing had been breathed by Orchis; though,
+indeed, according to custom, as well as law, in such matters, interest
+would legitimately accrue on the loan, nothing to the contrary having
+been put in the bond. Whether Orchis at the time had this in mind or
+not, there is no sure telling; but, to all appearance, he never so much
+as cared to think about the matter, one way or other.
+
+"Though the spermaceti venture rather disappointed China Aster's
+sanguine expectations, yet he made out to pay the first six months'
+interest, and though his next venture turned out still less
+prosperously, yet by pinching his family in the matter of fresh meat,
+and, what pained him still more, his boys' schooling, he contrived to
+pay the second six months' interest, sincerely grieved that integrity,
+as well as its opposite, though not in an equal degree, costs something,
+sometimes.
+
+"Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by advice of a
+physician; it so happening that, since the lottery-prize came to him, it
+had been discovered to Orchis that his health was not very firm, though
+he had never complained of anything before but a slight ailing of the
+spleen, scarce worth talking about at the time. So Orchis, being abroad,
+could not help China Aster's paying his interest as he did, however much
+he might have been opposed to it; for China Aster paid it to Orchis's
+agent, who was of too business-like a turn to decline interest regularly
+paid in on a loan.
+
+"But overmuch to trouble the agent on that score was not again to be the
+fate of China Aster; for, not being of that skeptical spirit which
+refuses to trust customers, his third venture resulted, through bad
+debts, in almost a total loss--a bad blow for the candle-maker. Neither
+did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect the opportunity to read him
+an uncheerful enough lesson upon the consequences of his disregarding
+their advice in the matter of having nothing to do with borrowed money.
+'It's all just as I predicted,' said Old Plain Talk, blowing his old
+nose with his old bandana. 'Yea, indeed is it,' chimed in Old Prudence,
+rapping his staff on the floor, and then leaning upon it, looking with
+solemn forebodings upon China Aster. Low-spirited enough felt the poor
+candle-maker; till all at once who should come with a bright face to him
+but his bright friend, the angel, in another dream. Again the cornucopia
+poured out its treasure, and promised still more. Revived by the vision,
+he resolved not to be down-hearted, but up and at it once more--contrary
+to the advice of Old Plain Talk, backed as usual by his crony, which was
+to the effect, that, under present circumstances, the best thing China
+Aster could do, would be to wind up his business, settle, if he could,
+all his liabilities, and then go to work as a journeyman, by which he
+could earn good wages, and give up, from that time henceforth, all
+thoughts of rising above being a paid subordinate to men more able than
+himself, for China Aster's career thus far plainly proved him the
+legitimate son of Old Honesty, who, as every one knew, had never shown
+much business-talent, so little, in fact, that many said of him that he
+had no business to be in business. And just this plain saying Plain Talk
+now plainly applied to China Aster, and Old Prudence never disagreed
+with him. But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain Talk, put
+quite other notions into the candle-maker.
+
+"He considered what he should do towards reestablishing himself.
+Doubtless, had Orchis been in the country, he would have aided him in
+this strait. As it was, he applied to others; and as in the world, much
+as some may hint to the contrary, an honest man in misfortune still can
+find friends to stay by him and help him, even so it proved with China
+Aster, who at last succeeded in borrowing from a rich old farmer the sum
+of six hundred dollars, at the usual interest of money-lenders, upon the
+security of a secret bond signed by China Aster's wife and himself, to
+the effect that all such right and title to any property that should be
+left her by a well-to-do childless uncle, an invalid tanner, such
+property should, in the event of China Aster's failing to return the
+borrowed sum on the given day, be the lawful possession of the
+money-lender. True, it was just as much as China Aster could possibly do
+to induce his wife, a careful woman, to sign this bond; because she had
+always regarded her promised share in her uncle's estate as an anchor
+well to windward of the hard times in which China Aster had always been
+more or less involved, and from which, in her bosom, she never had seen
+much chance of his freeing himself. Some notion may be had of China
+Aster's standing in the heart and head of his wife, by a short sentence
+commonly used in reply to such persons as happened to sound her on the
+point. 'China Aster,' she would say, 'is a good husband, but a bad
+business man!' Indeed, she was a connection on the maternal side of Old
+Plain Talk's. But had not China Aster taken good care not to let Old
+Plain Talk and Old Prudence hear of his dealings with the old farmer,
+ten to one they would, in some way, have interfered with his success in
+that quarter.
+
+"It has been hinted that the honesty of China Aster was what mainly
+induced the money-lender to befriend him in his misfortune, and this
+must be apparent; for, had China Aster been a different man, the
+money-lender might have dreaded lest, in the event of his failing to
+meet his note, he might some way prove slippery--more especially as, in
+the hour of distress, worked upon by remorse for so jeopardizing his
+wife's money, his heart might prove a traitor to his bond, not to hint
+that it was more than doubtful how such a secret security and claim, as
+in the last resort would be the old farmer's, would stand in a court of
+law. But though one inference from all this may be, that had China Aster
+been something else than what he was, he would not have been trusted,
+and, therefore, he would have been effectually shut out from running his
+own and wife's head into the usurer's noose; yet those who, when
+everything at last came out, maintained that, in this view and to this
+extent, the honesty of the candle-maker was no advantage to him, in so
+saying, such persons said what every good heart must deplore, and no
+prudent tongue will admit.
+
+"It may be mentioned, that the old farmer made China Aster take part of
+his loan in three old dried-up cows and one lame horse, not improved by
+the glanders. These were thrown in at a pretty high figure, the old
+money-lender having a singular prejudice in regard to the high value of
+any sort of stock raised on his farm. With a great deal of difficulty,
+and at more loss, China Aster disposed of his cattle at public auction,
+no private purchaser being found who could be prevailed upon to invest.
+And now, raking and scraping in every way, and working early and late,
+China Aster at last started afresh, nor without again largely and
+confidently extending himself. However, he did not try his hand at the
+spermaceti again, but, admonished by experience, returned to tallow.
+But, having bought a good lot of it, by the time he got it into candles,
+tallow fell so low, and candles with it, that his candles per pound
+barely sold for what he had paid for the tallow. Meantime, a year's
+unpaid interest had accrued on Orchis' loan, but China Aster gave
+himself not so much concern about that as about the interest now due to
+the old farmer. But he was glad that the principal there had yet some
+time to run. However, the skinny old fellow gave him some trouble by
+coming after him every day or two on a scraggy old white horse,
+furnished with a musty old saddle, and goaded into his shambling old
+paces with a withered old raw hide. All the neighbors said that surely
+Death himself on the pale horse was after poor China Aster now. And
+something so it proved; for, ere long, China Aster found himself
+involved in troubles mortal enough.
+
+At this juncture Orchis was heard of. Orchis, it seemed had returned
+from his travels, and clandestinely married, and, in a kind of queer
+way, was living in Pennsylvania among his wife's relations, who, among
+other things, had induced him to join a church, or rather semi-religious
+school, of Come-Outers; and what was still more, Orchis, without coming
+to the spot himself, had sent word to his agent to dispose of some of
+his property in Marietta, and remit him the proceeds. Within a year
+after, China Aster received a letter from Orchis, commending him for his
+punctuality in paying the first year's interest, and regretting the
+necessity that he (Orchis) was now under of using all his dividends; so
+he relied upon China Aster's paying the next six months' interest, and
+of course with the back interest. Not more surprised than alarmed, China
+Aster thought of taking steamboat to go and see Orchis, but he was saved
+that expense by the unexpected arrival in Marietta of Orchis in person,
+suddenly called there by that strange kind of capriciousness lately
+characterizing him. No sooner did China Aster hear of his old friend's
+arrival than he hurried to call upon him. He found him curiously rusty
+in dress, sallow in cheek, and decidedly less gay and cordial in manner,
+which the more surprised China Aster, because, in former days, he had
+more than once heard Orchis, in his light rattling way, declare that all
+he (Orchis) wanted to make him a perfectly happy, hilarious, and
+benignant man, was a voyage to Europe and a wife, with a free
+development of his inmost nature.
+
+"Upon China Aster's stating his case, his trusted friend was silent for
+a time; then, in an odd way, said that he would not crowd China Aster,
+but still his (Orchis') necessities were urgent. Could not China Aster
+mortgage the candlery? He was honest, and must have moneyed friends; and
+could he not press his sales of candles? Could not the market be forced
+a little in that particular? The profits on candles must be very great.
+Seeing, now, that Orchis had the notion that the candle-making business
+was a very profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an error was
+here, China Aster tried to undeceive him. But he could not drive the
+truth into Orchis--Orchis being very obtuse here, and, at the same time,
+strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis glanced off from so
+unpleasing a subject into the most unexpected reflections, taken from a
+religious point of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of the
+human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced something of that
+sort of thing, China Aster did not take exception to his friend's
+observations, but still refrained from so doing, almost as much for the
+sake of sympathetic sociality as anything else. Presently, Orchis,
+without much ceremony, rose, and saying he must write a letter to his
+wife, bade his friend good-bye, but without warmly shaking him by the
+hand as of old.
+
+"In much concern at the change, China Aster made earnest inquiries in
+suitable quarters, as to what things, as yet unheard of, had befallen
+Orchis, to bring about such a revolution; and learned at last that,
+besides traveling, and getting married, and joining the sect of
+Come-Outers, Orchis had somehow got a bad dyspepsia, and lost
+considerable property through a breach of trust on the part of a factor
+in New York. Telling these things to Old Plain Talk, that man of some
+knowledge of the world shook his old head, and told China Aster that,
+though he hoped it might prove otherwise, yet it seemed to him that all
+he had communicated about Orchis worked together for bad omens as to his
+future forbearance--especially, he added with a grim sort of smile, in
+view of his joining the sect of Come-Outers; for, if some men knew what
+was their inmost natures, instead of coming out with it, they would try
+their best to keep it in, which, indeed, was the way with the prudent
+sort. In all which sour notions Old Prudence, as usual, chimed in.
+
+"When interest-day came again, China Aster, by the utmost exertions,
+could only pay Orchis' agent a small part of what was due, and a part of
+that was made up by his children's gift money (bright tenpenny pieces
+and new quarters, kept in their little money-boxes), and pawning his
+best clothes, with those of his wife and children, so that all were
+subjected to the hardship of staying away from church. And the old
+usurer, too, now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid him his
+interest and some other pressing debts with money got by, at last,
+mortgaging the candlery.
+
+"When next interest-day came round for Orchis, not a penny could be
+raised. With much grief of heart, China Aster so informed Orchis' agent.
+Meantime, the note to the old usurer fell due, and nothing from China
+Aster was ready to meet it; yet, as heaven sends its rain on the just
+and unjust alike, by a coincidence not unfavorable to the old farmer,
+the well-to-do uncle, the tanner, having died, the usurer entered upon
+possession of such part of his property left by will to the wife of
+China Aster. When still the next interest-day for Orchis came round, it
+found China Aster worse off than ever; for, besides his other troubles,
+he was now weak with sickness. Feebly dragging himself to Orchis' agent,
+he met him in the street, told him just how it was; upon which the
+agent, with a grave enough face, said that he had instructions from his
+employer not to crowd him about the interest at present, but to say to
+him that about the time the note would mature, Orchis would have heavy
+liabilities to meet, and therefore the note must at that time be
+certainly paid, and, of course, the back interest with it; and not only
+so, but, as Orchis had had to allow the interest for good part of the
+time, he hoped that, for the back interest, China Aster would, in
+reciprocation, have no objections to allowing interest on the interest
+annually. To be sure, this was not the law; but, between friends who
+accommodate each other, it was the custom.
+
+"Just then, Old Plain Talk with Old Prudence turned the corner, coming
+plump upon China Aster as the agent left him; and whether it was a
+sun-stroke, or whether they accidentally ran against him, or whether it
+was his being so weak, or whether it was everything together, or how it
+was exactly, there is no telling, but poor China Aster fell to the
+earth, and, striking his head sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a
+day in July; such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of the
+inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home on a door; lingered a few
+days with a wandering mind, and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead
+of night, when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into the other
+world.
+
+"Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom ever omitted attending
+any funeral, which, indeed, was their chief exercise--these two were
+among the sincerest mourners who followed the remains of the son of
+their ancient friend to the grave.
+
+"It is needless to tell of the executions that followed; how that the
+candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how Orchis never got a penny for his
+loan; and how, in the case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered
+with mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
+childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of complaint, at
+what she impatiently called the bitterness of her lot and the hardness
+of the world, so preyed upon her, as ere long to hurry her from the
+obscurity of indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.
+
+"But though the straits in which China Aster had left his family had,
+besides apparently dimming the world's regard, likewise seemed to dim
+its sense of the probity of its deceased head, and though this, as some
+thought, did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this case,
+as in others, that, though the world may for a time seem insensible to
+that merit which lies under a cloud, yet, sooner or later, it always
+renders honor where honor is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the
+freemen of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and an
+expression of their conviction of his high moral worth, passed a
+resolution, that, until they attained maturity, his children should be
+considered the town's guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of
+some public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were officially
+installed in that hospitable edifice where their worthy grandfather, the
+town's guest before them, had breathed his last breath.
+
+"But sometimes honor maybe paid to the memory of an honest man, and
+still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the
+candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
+and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two to place upon it,
+when there was discovered, in China Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an
+epitaph, written, probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended
+with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent with him for
+some months prior to his end. A memorandum on the back expressed the
+wish that it might be placed over his grave. Though with the sentiment
+of the epitaph Plain Talk did not disagree, he himself being at times of
+a hypochondriac turn--at least, so many said--yet the language struck
+him as too much drawn out; so, after consultation with Old Prudence, he
+decided upon making use of the epitaph, yet not without verbal
+retrenchments. And though, when these were made, the thing still
+appeared wordy to him, nevertheless, thinking that, since a dead man was
+to be spoken about, it was but just to let him speak for himself,
+especially when he spoke sincerely, and when, by so doing, the more
+salutary lesson would be given, he had the retrenched inscription
+chiseled as follows upon the stone.
+
+  'HERE LIE
+  THE REMAINS OF
+  CHINA ASTER THE CANDLE-MAKER,
+  WHOSE CAREER
+  WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE, AS FOUND
+  IN THE
+  SOBER PHILOSOPHY
+  OF
+  SOLOMON THE WISE;
+  FOR HE WAS RUINED BY ALLOWING HIMSELF TO BE PERSUADED,
+  AGAINST HIS BETTER SENSE,
+  INTO THE FREE INDULGENCE OF CONFIDENCE,
+  AND
+  AN ARDENTLY BRIGHT VIEW OF LIFE,
+  TO THE EXCLUSION
+  OF
+  THAT COUNSEL WHICH COMES BY HEEDING
+  THE
+  OPPOSITE VIEW.'
+
+"This inscription raised some talk in the town, and was rather severely
+criticised by the capitalist--one of a very cheerful turn--who had
+secured his loan to China Aster by the mortgage; and though it also
+proved obnoxious to the man who, in town-meeting, had first moved for
+the compliment to China Aster's memory, and, indeed, was deemed by him a
+sort of slur upon the candle-maker, to that degree that he refused to
+believe that the candle-maker himself had composed it, charging Old
+Plain Talk with the authorship, alleging that the internal evidence
+showed that none but that veteran old croaker could have penned such a
+jeremiade--yet, for all this, the stone stood. In everything, of course,
+Old Plain Talk was seconded by Old Prudence; who, one day going to the
+grave-yard, in great-coat and over-shoes--for, though it was a sunshiny
+morning, he thought that, owing to heavy dews, dampness might lurk in
+the ground--long stood before the stone, sharply leaning over on his
+staff, spectacles on nose, spelling out the epitaph word by word; and,
+afterwards meeting Old Plain Talk in the street, gave a great rap with
+his stick, and said: 'Friend, Plain Talk, that epitaph will do very
+well. Nevertheless, one short sentence is wanting.' Upon which, Plain
+Talk said it was too late, the chiseled words being so arranged, after
+the usual manner of such inscriptions, that nothing could be interlined.
+Then,' said Old Prudence, 'I will put it in the shape of a postscript.'
+Accordingly, with the approbation of Old Plain Talk, he had the
+following words chiseled at the left-hand corner of the stone, and
+pretty low down:
+
+  'The root of all was a friendly loan.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.
+
+
+"With what heart," cried Frank, still in character, "have you told me
+this story? A story I can no way approve; for its moral, if accepted,
+would drain me of all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my
+last courage in life. For, what was that bright view of China Aster but
+a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up a brave heart, worked hard, and
+ever hoped for the best, all at last would go well? If your purpose,
+Charlie, in telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you have
+succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence, I praise God
+you have not."
+
+"Confidence?" cried Charlie, who, on his side, seemed with his whole
+heart to enter into the spirit of the thing, "what has confidence to do
+with the matter? That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
+you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping a friend.
+For was not that loan of Orchis to China Aster the first step towards
+their estrangement? And did it not bring about what in effect was the
+enmity of Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
+precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And what more
+meddlesome between friends than a loan? A regular marplot. For how can
+you help that the helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
+friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most lenient case; since,
+out of lenity to forego one's claim, is less to be a friendly creditor
+than to cease to be a creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon
+this lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the worst, is
+subject to all mortal contingencies. He may travel, he may marry, he may
+join the Come-Outers, or some equally untoward school or sect, not to
+speak of other things that more or less tend to new-cast the character.
+And were there nothing else, who shall answer for his digestion, upon
+which so much depends?"
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie----"
+
+"Nay, wait.--You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see
+that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is
+no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain
+personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may
+hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
+from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in your present need, be
+willing to accept a loan from a friend, securing him by a mortgage on
+your homestead, and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel
+satisfied that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred into the
+hands of a foe? Yet the difference between this man and that man is not
+so great as the difference between what the same man be to-day and what
+he may be in days to come. For there is no bent of heart or turn of
+thought which any man holds by virtue of an unalterable nature or will.
+Even those feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
+right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal persuasions,
+they may in reality be but the result of some chance tip of Fate's elbow
+in throwing her dice. For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and
+passing by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that habit
+of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you change this man's
+experiences or that man's books, will wisdom go surety for his unchanged
+convictions? As particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
+experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I will hear nothing
+of that fine babble about development and its laws; there is no
+development in opinion and feeling but the developments of time and
+tide. You may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids me
+show you how fundamental the reasons for treating you as I do."
+
+"But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are these? I thought that
+man was no poor drifting weed of the universe, as you phrased it; that,
+if so minded, he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of his
+own? But now you have turned everything upside down again, with an
+inconsistency that amazes and shocks me."
+
+"Inconsistency? Bah!"
+
+"There speaks the ventriloquist again," sighed Frank, in bitterness.
+
+Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion little
+flattering to his originality, however much so to his docility, the
+disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming: "Yes, I turn over day and
+night, with indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master, and
+unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing _there_ that leads
+me to think otherwise than I do. But enough: in this matter the
+experience of China Aster teaches a moral more to the point than
+anything Mark Winsome can offer, or I either."
+
+"I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China Aster, nor do I
+stand in his position. The loan to China Aster was to extend his
+business with; the loan I seek is to relieve my necessities."
+
+"Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your cheek is not gaunt. Why
+talk of necessities when nakedness and starvation beget the only real
+necessities?"
+
+"But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now conjure you to
+forget that I was ever your friend, while I apply to you only as a
+fellow-being, whom, surely, you will not turn away."
+
+"That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to the ground, and
+supplicate an alms of me in the way of London streets, and you shall not
+be a sturdy beggar in vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
+friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for the honor of
+noble friendship, I turn stranger."
+
+"Enough," cried the other, rising, and with a toss of his shoulders
+seeming disdainfully to throw off the character he had assumed.
+"Enough. I have had my fill of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put
+into action. And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
+philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself engaged I should find.
+But, miserable for my race should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when
+he claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that the study of
+it tended to much the same formation of character with the experiences
+of the world.--Apt disciple! Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil
+both of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool by the
+under ice of the heart? What your illustrious magian has taught you, any
+poor, old, broken-down, heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray,
+leave me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman philosophy.
+And here, take this shilling, and at the first wood-landing buy yourself
+a few chips to warm the frozen natures of you and your philosopher by."
+
+With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan turned on his heel,
+leaving his companion at a loss to determine where exactly the
+fictitious character had been dropped, and the real one, if any,
+resumed. If any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to him,
+as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar lines:
+
+                  "All the world's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players,
+    Who have their exits and their entrances,
+    And one man in his time plays many parts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S
+SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.
+
+
+"Bless you, barber!"
+
+Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber had been all alone
+until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather
+dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with
+Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two
+very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an
+arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man
+would believe under oath.
+
+In short, with back presented to the glare of his lamps, and so to the
+door, the honest barber was taking what are called cat-naps, and
+dreaming in his chair; so that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction
+above, pronounced in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake, he
+stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger stood behind. What
+with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments, therefore, the voice seemed a
+sort of spiritual manifestation to him; so that, for the moment, he
+stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the air.
+
+"Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds there with salt?"
+
+"Ah!" turning round disenchanted, "it is only a man, then."
+
+"_Only_ a man? As if to be but a man were nothing. But don't be too sure
+what I am. You call me _man_, just as the townsfolk called the angels
+who, in man's form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
+the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs. You can conclude
+nothing absolute from the human form, barber."
+
+"But I can conclude something from that sort of talk, with that sort of
+dress," shrewdly thought the barber, eying him with regained
+self-possession, and not without some latent touch of apprehension at
+being alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed divined by the
+other, who now, more rationally and gravely, and as if he expected it
+should be attended to, said: "Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
+my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave," at the same time
+loosening his neck-cloth. "Are you competent to a good shave, barber?"
+
+"No broker more so, sir," answered the barber, whom the business-like
+proposition instinctively made confine to business-ends his views of the
+visitor.
+
+"Broker? What has a broker to do with lather? A broker I have always
+understood to be a worthy dealer in certain papers and metals."
+
+"He, he!" taking him now for some dry sort of joker, whose jokes, he
+being a customer, it might be as well to appreciate, "he, he! You
+understand well enough, sir. Take this seat, sir," laying his hand on a
+great stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered, and
+raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed but to lack a canopy and
+quarterings, to make it in aspect quite a throne, "take this seat, sir."
+
+"Thank you," sitting down; "and now, pray, explain that about the
+broker. But look, look--what's this?" suddenly rising, and pointing,
+with his long pipe, towards a gilt notification swinging among colored
+fly-papers from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, "_No Trust?_" "No trust
+means distrust; distrust means no confidence. Barber," turning upon him
+excitedly, "what fell suspiciousness prompts this scandalous confession?
+My life!" stamping his foot, "if but to tell a dog that you have no
+confidence in him be matter for affront to the dog, what an insult to
+take that way the whole haughty race of man by the beard! By my heart,
+sir! but at least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites with
+the pluck of Agamemnon."
+
+"Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line," said the barber,
+rather ruefully, being now again hopeless of his customer, and not
+without return of uneasiness; "not in my line, sir," he emphatically
+repeated.
+
+"But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit, barber, which I
+sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a disrespect for man. For how,
+indeed, may respectful conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual
+habit of taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too, clearly
+see the import of your notification, I do not, as yet, perceive the
+object. What is it?"
+
+"Now you speak a little in my line, sir," said the barber, not
+unrelieved at this return to plain talk; "that notification I find very
+useful, sparing me much work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good
+deal, off and on, before putting that up," gratefully glancing towards
+it.
+
+"But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to say, in so many
+words, that you have no confidence? For instance, now," flinging aside
+his neck-cloth, throwing back his blouse, and reseating himself on the
+tonsorial throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber mechanically
+filled a cup with hot water from a copper vessel over a spirit-lamp,
+"for instance, now, suppose I say to you, 'Barber, my dear barber,
+unhappily I have no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
+depend upon your money to-morrow'--suppose I should say that now, you
+would put trust in me, wouldn't you? You would have confidence?"
+
+"Seeing that it is you, sir," with complaisance replied the barber, now
+mixing the lather, "seeing that it is _you_ sir, I won't answer that
+question. No need to."
+
+"Of course, of course--in that view. But, as a supposition--you would
+have confidence in me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Why--yes, yes."
+
+"Then why that sign?"
+
+"Ah, sir, all people ain't like you," was the smooth reply, at the same
+time, as if smoothly to close the debate, beginning smoothly to apply
+the lather, which operation, however, was, by a motion, protested
+against by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which was
+done in these words:
+
+"All people ain't like me. Then I must be either better or worse than
+most people. Worse, you could not mean; no, barber, you could not mean
+that; hardly that. It remains, then, that you think me better than most
+people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe; though, from vanity, I
+confess, I could never yet, by my best wrestlings, entirely free myself;
+nor, indeed, to be frank, am I at bottom over anxious to--this same
+vanity, barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
+pleasingly preposterous a passion."
+
+"Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk very well. But the
+lather is getting a little cold, sir."
+
+"Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why that cold sign? Ah,
+I don't wonder you try to shirk the confession. You feel in your soul
+how ungenerous a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
+your eyes--which somehow speak to me of the mother that must have so
+often looked into them before me--I dare say, though you may not think
+it, that the spirit of that notification is not one with your nature.
+For look now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing in an
+abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber; supposing, I say,
+you see a stranger, his face accidentally averted, but his visible part
+very respectable-looking; what now, barber--I put it to your conscience,
+to your charity--what would be your impression of that man, in a moral
+point of view? Being in a signal sense a stranger, would you, for that,
+signally set him down for a knave?"
+
+"Certainly not, sir; by no means," cried the barber, humanely resentful.
+
+"You would upon the face of him----"
+
+"Hold, sir," said the barber, "nothing about the face; you remember,
+sir, that is out of sight."
+
+"I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the _back_ of him, conclude
+him to be, not improbably, some worthy sort of person; in short, an
+honest man: wouldn't you?"
+
+"Not unlikely I should, sir."
+
+"Well now--don't be so impatient with your brush, barber--suppose that
+honest man meet you by night in some dark corner of the boat where his
+face would still remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave--how
+then?"
+
+"Wouldn't trust him, sir."
+
+"But is not an honest man to be trusted?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir."
+
+"There! don't you see, now?"
+
+"See what?" asked the disconcerted barber, rather vexedly.
+
+"Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't you?"
+
+"No," doggedly.
+
+"Barber," gravely, and after a pause of concern, "the enemies of our
+race have a saying that insincerity is the most universal and
+inveterate vice of man--the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of
+individuals or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
+on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?"
+
+"Hity-tity!" cried the barber, losing patience, and with it respect;
+"stubbornness?" Then clattering round the brush in the cup, "Will you be
+shaved, or won't you?"
+
+"Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise
+your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your
+teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you will have."
+
+"I take as much comfort in this world as you or any other man," cried
+the barber, whom the other's sweetness of temper seemed rather to
+exasperate than soothe.
+
+"To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness I have often
+observed to be peculiar to certain orders of men," said the other
+pensively, and half to himself, "just as to be indifferent to that
+imputation, from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
+grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to other kinds of men.
+Pray, barber," innocently looking up, "which think you is the superior
+creature?"
+
+"All this sort of talk," cried the barber, still unmollified, "is, as I
+told you once before, not in my line. In a few minutes I shall shut up
+this shop. Will you be shaved?"
+
+"Shave away, barber. What hinders?" turning up his face like a flower.
+
+The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at length it became
+necessary to prepare to relather a little--affording an opportunity for
+resuming the subject, which, on one side, was not let slip.
+
+"Barber," with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling his way, "barber,
+now have a little patience with me; do; trust me, I wish not to offend.
+I have been thinking over that supposed case of the man with the averted
+face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that, by your opposite
+replies to my questions at the time, you showed yourself much of a piece
+with a good many other men--that is, you have confidence, and then
+again, you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you think it sensible
+standing for a sensible man, one foot on confidence and the other on
+suspicion? Don't you think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
+think consistency requires that you should either say 'I have confidence
+in all men,' and take down your notification; or else say, 'I suspect
+all men,' and keep it up."
+
+This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting the case, did not
+fail to impress the barber, and proportionately conciliate him.
+Likewise, from its pointedness, it served to make him thoughtful; for,
+instead of going to the copper vessel for more water, as he had
+purposed, he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
+hand, said: "Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice. I don't say, and
+can't say, and wouldn't say, that I suspect all men; but I _do_ say that
+strangers are not to be trusted, and so," pointing up to the sign, "no
+trust."
+
+"But look, now, I beg, barber," rejoined the other deprecatingly, not
+presuming too much upon the barber's changed temper; "look, now; to say
+that strangers are not to be trusted, does not that imply something like
+saying that mankind is not to be trusted; for the mass of mankind, are
+they not necessarily strangers to each individual man? Come, come, my
+friend," winningly, "you are no Timon to hold the mass of mankind
+untrustworthy. Take down your notification; it is misanthropical; much
+the same sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of a skull
+stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber; take it down to-night. Trust
+men. Just try the experiment of trusting men for this one little trip.
+Come now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against losing a
+cent."
+
+The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, "Sir, you must excuse me.
+I have a family."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+VERY CHARMING.
+
+
+"So you are a philanthropist, sir," added the barber with an illuminated
+look; "that accounts, then, for all. Very odd sort of man the
+philanthropist. You are the second one, sir, I have seen. Very odd sort
+of man, indeed, the philanthropist. Ah, sir," again meditatively
+stirring in the shaving-cup, "I sadly fear, lest you philanthropists
+know better what goodness is, than what men are." Then, eying him as if
+he were some strange creature behind cage-bars, "So you are a
+philanthropist, sir."
+
+"I am Philanthropos, and love mankind. And, what is more than you do,
+barber, I trust them."
+
+Here the barber, casually recalled to his business, would have
+replenished his shaving-cup, but finding now that on his last visit to
+the water-vessel he had not replaced it over the lamp, he did so now;
+and, while waiting for it to heat again, became almost as sociable as if
+the heating water were meant for whisky-punch; and almost as pleasantly
+garrulous as the pleasant barbers in romances.
+
+"Sir," said he, taking a throne beside his customer (for in a row there
+were three thrones on the dais, as for the three kings of Cologne, those
+patron saints of the barber), "sir, you say you trust men. Well, I
+suppose I might share some of your trust, were it not for this trade,
+that I follow, too much letting me in behind the scenes."
+
+"I think I understand," with a saddened look; "and much the same thing I
+have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours--from the
+lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others,
+each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his
+vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the
+conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which
+testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some
+disturbance in a good man's mind. But no, no; it is a mistake--all a
+mistake."
+
+"True, sir, very true," assented the barber.
+
+"Glad to hear that," brightening up.
+
+"Not so fast, sir," said the barber; "I agree with you in thinking that
+the lawyer, and the congressman, and the editor, are in error, but only
+in so far as each claims peculiar facilities for the sort of knowledge
+in question; because, you see, sir, the truth is, that every trade or
+pursuit which brings one into contact with the facts, sir, such trade or
+pursuit is equally an avenue to those facts."
+
+"_How_ exactly is that?"
+
+"Why, sir, in my opinion--and for the last twenty years I have, at odd
+times, turned the matter over some in my mind--he who comes to know
+man, will not remain in ignorance of man. I think I am not rash in
+saying that; am I, sir?"
+
+"Barber, you talk like an oracle--obscurely, barber, obscurely."
+
+"Well, sir," with some self-complacency, "the barber has always been
+held an oracle, but as for the obscurity, that I don't admit."
+
+"But pray, now, by your account, what precisely may be this mysterious
+knowledge gained in your trade? I grant you, indeed, as before hinted,
+that your trade, imposing on you the necessity of functionally tweaking
+the noses of mankind, is, in that respect, unfortunate, very much so;
+nevertheless, a well-regulated imagination should be proof even to such
+a provocation to improper conceits. But what I want to learn from you,
+barber, is, how does the mere handling of the outside of men's heads
+lead you to distrust the inside of their hearts?
+
+"What, sir, to say nothing more, can one be forever dealing in macassar
+oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches, wigs, and toupees, and
+still believe that men are wholly what they look to be? What think you,
+sir, are a thoughtful barber's reflections, when, behind a careful
+curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and then dismisses
+it to the world, radiant in curling auburn? To contrast the shamefaced
+air behind the curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly
+discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the cheerful assurance
+and challenging pride with which the same man steps forth again, a gay
+deception, into the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow
+humbly gives him the wall! Ah, sir, they may talk of the courage of
+truth, but my trade teaches me that truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies,
+lies, sir, brave lies are the lions!"
+
+"You twist the moral, barber; you sadly twist it. Look, now; take it
+this way: A modest man thrust out naked into the street, would he not be
+abashed? Take him in and clothe him; would not his confidence be
+restored? And in either case, is any reproach involved? Now, what is
+true of the whole, holds proportionably true of the part. The bald head
+is a nakedness which the wig is a coat to. To feel uneasy at the
+possibility of the exposure of one's nakedness at top, and to feel
+comforted by the consciousness of having it clothed--these feelings,
+instead of being dishonorable to a bold man, do, in fact, but attest a
+proper respect for himself and his fellows. And as for the deception,
+you may as well call the fine roof of a fine chateau a deception, since,
+like a fine wig, it also is an artificial cover to the head, and
+equally, in the common eye, decorates the wearer.--I have confuted you,
+my dear barber; I have confounded you."
+
+"Pardon," said the barber, "but I do not see that you have. His coat and
+his roof no man pretends to palm off as a part of himself, but the bald
+man palms off hair, not his, for his own."
+
+"Not _his_, barber? If he have fairly purchased his hair, the law will
+protect him in its ownership, even against the claims of the head on
+which it grew. But it cannot be that you believe what you say, barber;
+you talk merely for the humor. I could not think so of you as to suppose
+that you would contentedly deal in the impostures you condemn."
+
+"Ah, sir, I must live."
+
+"And can't you do that without sinning against your conscience, as you
+believe? Take up some other calling."
+
+"Wouldn't mend the matter much, sir."
+
+"Do you think, then, barber, that, in a certain point, all the trades
+and callings of men are much on a par? Fatal, indeed," raising his hand,
+"inexpressibly dreadful, the trade of the barber, if to such conclusions
+it necessarily leads. Barber," eying him not without emotion, "you
+appear to me not so much a misbeliever, as a man misled. Now, let me set
+you on the right track; let me restore you to trust in human nature, and
+by no other means than the very trade that has brought you to suspect
+it."
+
+"You mean, sir, you would have me try the experiment of taking down that
+notification," again pointing to it with his brush; "but, dear me, while
+I sit chatting here, the water boils over."
+
+With which words, and such a well-pleased, sly, snug, expression, as
+they say some men have when they think their little stratagem has
+succeeded, he hurried to the copper vessel, and soon had his cup foaming
+up with white bubbles, as if it were a mug of new ale.
+
+Meantime, the other would have fain gone on with the discourse; but the
+cunning barber lathered him with so generous a brush, so piled up the
+foam on him, that his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and
+vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea
+to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must
+keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative
+way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last
+removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his
+face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last,
+addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly so, from his
+previous one. Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any more than to
+hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign way, not wholly unlike the
+manner, fabled or otherwise, of certain creatures in nature, which have
+the power of persuasive fascination--the power of holding another
+creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite the serious
+disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest, of the victim. With this
+manner the conclusion of the matter was not out of keeping; for, in the
+end, all argument and expostulation proved vain, the barber being
+irresistibly persuaded to agree to try, for the remainder of the present
+trip, the experiment of trusting men, as both phrased it. True, to save
+his credit as a free agent, he was loud in averring that it was only for
+the novelty of the thing that he so agreed, and he required the other,
+as before volunteered, to go security to him against any loss that might
+ensue; but still the fact remained, that he engaged to trust men, a
+thing he had before said he would not do, at least not unreservedly.
+Still the more to save his credit, he now insisted upon it, as a last
+point, that the agreement should be put in black and white, especially
+the security part. The other made no demur; pen, ink, and paper were
+provided, and grave as any notary the cosmopolitan sat down, but, ere
+taking the pen, glanced up at the notification, and said: "First down
+with that sign, barber--Timon's sign, there; down with it."
+
+This, being in the agreement, was done--though a little
+reluctantly--with an eye to the future, the sign being carefully put
+away in a drawer.
+
+"Now, then, for the writing," said the cosmopolitan, squaring himself.
+"Ah," with a sigh, "I shall make a poor lawyer, I fear. Ain't used, you
+see, barber, to a business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds
+no nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber," taking up the blank paper,
+"that such flimsy stuff as this should make such strong hawsers; vile
+hawsers, too. Barber," starting up, "I won't put it in black and white.
+It were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your word, and
+you shall take mine."
+
+"But your memory may be none of the best, sir. Well for you, on your
+side, to have it in black and white, just for a memorandum like, you
+know."
+
+"That, indeed! Yes, and it would help _your_ memory, too, wouldn't it,
+barber? Yours, on your side, being a little weak, too, I dare say. Ah,
+barber! how ingenious we human beings are; and how kindly we reciprocate
+each other's little delicacies, don't we? What better proof, now, that
+we are kind, considerate fellows, with responsive fellow-feelings--eh,
+barber? But to business. Let me see. What's your name, barber?"
+
+"William Cream, sir."
+
+Pondering a moment, he began to write; and, after some corrections,
+leaned back, and read aloud the following:
+
+     "AGREEMENT
+     Between
+     FRANK GOODMAN, Philanthropist, and Citizen of the World,
+     and
+     WILLIAM CREAM, Barber of the Mississippi steamer, Fidele.
+
+     "The first hereby agrees to make good to the last any loss that may
+     come from his trusting mankind, in the way of his vocation, for the
+     residue of the present trip; PROVIDED that William Cream keep out
+     of sight, for the given term, his notification of NO TRUST, and by
+     no other mode convey any, the least hint or intimation, tending to
+     discourage men from soliciting trust from him, in the way of his
+     vocation, for the time above specified; but, on the contrary, he
+     do, by all proper and reasonable words, gestures, manners, and
+     looks, evince a perfect confidence in all men, especially
+     strangers; otherwise, this agreement to be void.
+
+     "Done, in good faith, this 1st day of April 18--, at a quarter to
+     twelve o'clock, P. M., in the shop of said William Cream, on board
+     the said boat, Fidele."
+
+"There, barber; will that do?"
+
+"That will do," said the barber, "only now put down your name."
+
+Both signatures being affixed, the question was started by the barber,
+who should have custody of the instrument; which point, however, he
+settled for himself, by proposing that both should go together to the
+captain, and give the document into his hands--the barber hinting that
+this would be a safe proceeding, because the captain was necessarily a
+party disinterested, and, what was more, could not, from the nature of
+the present case, make anything by a breach of trust. All of which was
+listened to with some surprise and concern.
+
+"Why, barber," said the cosmopolitan, "this don't show the right spirit;
+for me, I have confidence in the captain purely because he is a man; but
+he shall have nothing to do with our affair; for if you have no
+confidence in me, barber, I have in you. There, keep the paper
+yourself," handing it magnanimously.
+
+"Very good," said the barber, "and now nothing remains but for me to
+receive the cash."
+
+Though the mention of that word, or any of its singularly numerous
+equivalents, in serious neighborhood to a requisition upon one's purse,
+is attended with a more or less noteworthy effect upon the human
+countenance, producing in many an abrupt fall of it--in others, a
+writhing and screwing up of the features to a point not undistressing to
+behold, in some, attended with a blank pallor and fatal
+consternation--yet no trace of any of these symptoms was visible upon
+the countenance of the cosmopolitan, notwithstanding nothing could be
+more sudden and unexpected than the barber's demand.
+
+"You speak of cash, barber; pray in what connection?"
+
+"In a nearer one, sir," answered the barber, less blandly, "than I
+thought the man with the sweet voice stood, who wanted me to trust him
+once for a shave, on the score of being a sort of thirteenth cousin."
+
+"Indeed, and what did you say to him?"
+
+"I said, 'Thank you, sir, but I don't see the connection,'"
+
+"How could you so unsweetly answer one with a sweet voice?"
+
+"Because, I recalled what the son of Sirach says in the True Book: 'An
+enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips;' and so I did what the son of
+Sirach advises in such cases: 'I believed not his many words.'"
+
+"What, barber, do you say that such cynical sort of things are in the
+True Book, by which, of course, you mean the Bible?"
+
+"Yes, and plenty more to the same effect. Read the Book of Proverbs."
+
+"That's strange, now, barber; for I never happen to have met with those
+passages you cite. Before I go to bed this night, I'll inspect the Bible
+I saw on the cabin-table, to-day. But mind, you mustn't quote the True
+Book that way to people coming in here; it would be impliedly a
+violation of the contract. But you don't know how glad I feel that you
+have for one while signed off all that sort of thing."
+
+"No, sir; not unless you down with the cash."
+
+"Cash again! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, in this paper here, you engage, sir, to insure me against a
+certain loss, and----"
+
+"Certain? Is it so _certain_ you are going to lose?"
+
+"Why, that way of taking the word may not be amiss, but I didn't mean
+it so. I meant a _certain_ loss; you understand, a CERTAIN loss; that is
+to say, a certain loss. Now then, sir, what use your mere writing and
+saying you will insure me, unless beforehand you place in my hands a
+money-pledge, sufficient to that end?"
+
+"I see; the material pledge."
+
+"Yes, and I will put it low; say fifty dollars."
+
+"Now what sort of a beginning is this? You, barber, for a given time
+engage to trust man, to put confidence in men, and, for your first step,
+make a demand implying no confidence in the very man you engage with.
+But fifty dollars is nothing, and I would let you have it cheerfully,
+only I unfortunately happen to have but little change with me just now."
+
+"But you have money in your trunk, though?"
+
+"To be sure. But you see--in fact, barber, you must be consistent. No, I
+won't let you have the money now; I won't let you violate the inmost
+spirit of our contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you
+again."
+
+"Stay, sir"--humming and hawing--"you have forgotten something."
+
+"Handkerchief?--gloves? No, forgotten nothing. Good-night."
+
+"Stay, sir--the--the shaving."
+
+"Ah, I _did_ forget that. But now that it strikes me, I shan't pay you
+at present. Look at your agreement; you must trust. Tut! against loss
+you hold the guarantee. Good-night, my dear barber."
+
+With which words he sauntered off, leaving the barber in a maze, staring
+after.
+
+But it holding true in fascination as in natural philosophy, that
+nothing can act where it is not, so the barber was not long now in being
+restored to his self-possession and senses; the first evidence of which
+perhaps was, that, drawing forth his notification from the drawer, he
+put it back where it belonged; while, as for the agreement, that he tore
+up; which he felt the more free to do from the impression that in all
+human probability he would never again see the person who had drawn it.
+Whether that impression proved well-founded or not, does not appear. But
+in after days, telling the night's adventure to his friends, the worthy
+barber always spoke of his queer customer as the man-charmer--as certain
+East Indians are called snake-charmers--and all his friends united in
+thinking him QUITE AN ORIGINAL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF
+DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM
+THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
+
+
+"Quite an original:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the
+young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the
+well-read, or the man who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense
+of originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably at its
+lowest in him who has completed the circle of the sciences.
+
+As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on
+meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes
+hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score
+such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in
+the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to
+say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel,
+or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.
+
+More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are
+no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is.
+But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
+up?
+
+Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in
+town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the
+novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the
+cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are
+hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters--that
+is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this,
+that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to
+speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.
+
+In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of
+personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there,
+as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or
+the founder of a new religion.
+
+In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works
+of invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of
+the age; which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the
+claim, judged by the principles here suggested.
+
+Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle
+characters in fiction to being deemed original, is but something
+personal--confined to itself. The character sheds not its characteristic
+on its surroundings, whereas, the original character, essentially such,
+is like a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all round
+it--everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is
+with Hamlet), so that, in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate
+conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
+which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things.
+
+For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so
+can there be but one such original character to one work of invention.
+Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more
+than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for
+new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining
+and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To
+produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen
+much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he
+must have had much luck.
+
+There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon
+in fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's
+imagination--it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life
+is from the egg.
+
+In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase,
+_Quite an Original_, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at
+unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps
+upon the smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned to, will be,
+by retiring under cover of it, in good trim as may be, to the story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE COSMOPOLITAN INCREASES IN SERIOUSNESS.
+
+
+In the middle of the gentleman's cabin burned a solar lamp, swung from
+the ceiling, and whose shade of ground glass was all round fancifully
+variegated, in transparency, with the image of a horned altar, from
+which flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed man, his head
+encircled by a halo. The light of this lamp, after dazzlingly striking
+on marble, snow-white and round--the slab of a centre-table beneath--on
+all sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness, till,
+like circles from a stone dropped in water, the rays died dimly away in
+the furthest nook of the place.
+
+Here and there, true to their place, but not to their function, swung
+other lamps, barren planets, which had either gone out from exhaustion,
+or been extinguished by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
+or who wanted to sleep, not see.
+
+By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining lamp would have
+been extinguished as well, had not a steward forbade, saying that the
+commands of the captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
+light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who, like many in
+his vocation, was apt to be a little free-spoken at times, had been
+provoked by the man's pertinacity to remind him, not only of the sad
+consequences which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being left
+in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that, in a place full of
+strangers, to show one's self anxious to produce darkness there, such an
+anxiety was, to say the least, not becoming. So the lamp--last survivor
+of many--burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some berths, and
+inwardly execrated by those in others.
+
+Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which lighted his book on
+the table, sat a clean, comely, old man, his head snowy as the marble,
+and a countenance like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
+when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed him and
+departed in peace. From his hale look of greenness in winter, and his
+hands ingrained with the tan, less, apparently, of the present summer,
+than of accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do farmer,
+happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity, from the fields to
+the fireside--one of those who, at three-score-and-ten, are
+fresh-hearted as at fifteen; to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed
+than knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted by the world,
+because ignorant of it; just as a countryman putting up at a London inn,
+and never stirring out of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last
+without once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.
+
+Redolent from the barber's shop, as any bridegroom tripping to the
+bridal chamber might come, and by his look of cheeriness seeming to
+dispense a sort of morning through the night, in came the cosmopolitan;
+but marking the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned himself down,
+and trod softly, and took a seat on the other side of the table, and
+said nothing. Still, there was a kind of waiting expression about him.
+
+"Sir," said the old man, after looking up puzzled at him a moment,
+"sir," said he, "one would think this was a coffee-house, and it was
+war-time, and I had a newspaper here with great news, and the only copy
+to be had, you sit there looking at me so eager."
+
+"And so you _have_ good news there, sir--the very best of good news."
+
+"Too good to be true," here came from one of the curtained berths.
+
+"Hark!" said the cosmopolitan. "Some one talks in his sleep."
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "and you--_you_ seem to be talking in a dream.
+Why speak you, sir, of news, and all that, when you must see this is a
+book I have here--the Bible, not a newspaper?"
+
+"I know that; and when you are through with it--but not a moment
+sooner--I will thank you for it. It belongs to the boat, I believe--a
+present from a society."
+
+"Oh, take it, take it!"
+
+"Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I simply stated the fact
+in explanation of my waiting here--nothing more. Read on, sir, or you
+will distress me."
+
+This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his spectacles, and
+saying he had about finished his chapter, the old man kindly presented
+the volume, which was received with thanks equally kind. After reading
+for some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness into
+seriousness, and from that into a kind of pain, the cosmopolitan slowly
+laid down the book, and turning to the old man, who thus far had been
+watching him with benign curiosity, said: "Can you, my aged friend,
+resolve me a doubt--a disturbing doubt?"
+
+"There are doubts, sir," replied the old man, with a changed
+countenance, "there are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not
+man that can solve them."
+
+"True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one who thinks well of man.
+I love man. I have confidence in man. But what was told me not a
+half-hour since? I was told that I would find it written--'Believe not
+his many words--an enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips'--and also I was
+told that I would find a good deal more to the same effect, and all in
+this book. I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself,
+what do I read? Not only just what was quoted, but also, as was engaged,
+more to the same purpose, such as this: 'With much communication he will
+tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair, and say What
+wantest thou? If thou be for his profit he will use thee; he will make
+thee bear, and will not be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed.
+When thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.'"
+
+"Who's that describing the confidence-man?" here came from the berth
+again.
+
+"Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan,
+again looking off in surprise. "Same voice as before, ain't it? Strange
+sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?"
+
+"Never mind _him_, sir," said the old man anxiously, "but tell me truly,
+did you, indeed, read from the book just now?"
+
+"I did," with changed air, "and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster
+in man; to me, a philanthropist."
+
+"Why," moved, "you don't mean to say, that what you repeated is really
+down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years,
+and don't remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it," rising
+earnestly, and going round to him.
+
+"There it is; and there--and there"--turning over the leaves, and
+pointing to the sentences one by one; "there--all down in the 'Wisdom of
+Jesus, the Son of Sirach.'"
+
+"Ah!" cried the old man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the
+leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one
+side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers
+he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the
+right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but
+all I hold in my hand here is apocrypha."
+
+"Apocrypha?"
+
+"Yes; and there's the word in black and white," pointing to it. "And
+what says the word? It says as much as 'not warranted;' for what do
+college men say of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal. The
+word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies something of uncertain
+credit. So if your disturbance be raised from aught in this apocrypha,"
+again taking up the pages, "in that case, think no more of it, for it's
+apocrypha."
+
+"What's that about the Apocalypse?" here, a third time, came from the
+berth.
+
+"He's seeing visions now, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan, once more
+looking in the direction of the interruption. "But, sir," resuming, "I
+cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the
+apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when
+all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part
+should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did
+those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I
+never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man.
+This son of Sirach even says--I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy
+friends;' not, observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends,
+thy false friends, but thy _friends_, thy real friends--that is to say,
+not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly trusted. Can
+Rochefoucault equal that? I should not wonder if his view of human
+nature, like Machiavelli's, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And to
+call it wisdom--the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach! Wisdom, indeed! What an
+ugly thing wisdom must be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek,
+say I, rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But no, no; it
+ain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir. For how can that be
+trustworthy that teaches distrust?"
+
+"I tell you what it is," here cried the same voice as before, only more
+in less of mockery, "if you two don't know enough to sleep, don't be
+keeping wiser men awake. And if you want to know what wisdom is, go find
+it under your blankets."
+
+"Wisdom?" cried another voice with a brogue; "arrah and is't wisdom the
+two geese are gabbling about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils,
+and don't be after burning your fingers with the likes of wisdom."
+
+"We must talk lower," said the old man; "I fear we have annoyed these
+good people."
+
+"I should be sorry if wisdom annoyed any one," said the other; "but we
+will lower our voices, as you say. To resume: taking the thing as I did,
+can you be surprised at my uneasiness in reading passages so charged
+with the spirit of distrust?"
+
+"No, sir, I am not surprised," said the old man; then added: "from what
+you say, I see you are something of my way of thinking--you think that
+to distrust the creature, is a kind of distrusting of the Creator. Well,
+my young friend, what is it? This is rather late for you to be about.
+What do you want of me?"
+
+These questions were put to a boy in the fragment of an old linen coat,
+bedraggled and yellow, who, coming in from the deck barefooted on the
+soft carpet, had been unheard. All pointed and fluttering, the rags of
+the little fellow's red-flannel shirt, mixed with those of his yellow
+coat, flamed about him like the painted flames in the robes of a victim
+in _auto-da-fe_. His face, too, wore such a polish of seasoned grime,
+that his sloe-eyes sparkled from out it like lustrous sparks in fresh
+coal. He was a juvenile peddler, or _marchand_, as the polite French
+might have called him, of travelers' conveniences; and, having no
+allotted sleeping-place, had, in his wanderings about the boat, spied,
+through glass doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was,
+thought it might never be too much so for turning a penny.
+
+Among other things, he carried a curious affair--a miniature mahogany
+door, hinged to its frame, and suitably furnished in all respects but
+one, which will shortly appear. This little door he now meaningly held
+before the old man, who, after staring at it a while, said: "Go thy ways
+with thy toys, child."
+
+"Now, may I never get so old and wise as that comes to," laughed the boy
+through his grime; and, by so doing, disclosing leopard-like teeth, like
+those of Murillo's wild beggar-boy's.
+
+"The divils are laughing now, are they?" here came the brogue from the
+berth. "What do the divils find to laugh about in wisdom, begorrah? To
+bed with ye, ye divils, and no more of ye."
+
+"You see, child, you have disturbed that person," said the old man; "you
+mustn't laugh any more."
+
+"Ah, now," said the cosmopolitan, "don't, pray, say that; don't let him
+think that poor Laughter is persecuted for a fool in this world."
+
+"Well," said the old man to the boy, "you must, at any rate, speak very
+low."
+
+"Yes, that wouldn't be amiss, perhaps," said the cosmopolitan; "but, my
+fine fellow, you were about saying something to my aged friend here;
+what was it?"
+
+"Oh," with a lowered voice, coolly opening and shutting his little door,
+"only this: when I kept a toy-stand at the fair in Cincinnati last
+month, I sold more than one old man a child's rattle."
+
+"No doubt of it," said the old man. "I myself often buy such things for
+my little grandchildren."
+
+"But these old men I talk of were old bachelors."
+
+The old man stared at him a moment; then, whispering to the
+cosmopolitan: "Strange boy, this; sort of simple, ain't he? Don't know
+much, hey?"
+
+"Not much," said the boy, "or I wouldn't be so ragged."
+
+"Why, child, what sharp ears you have!" exclaimed the old man.
+
+"If they were duller, I would hear less ill of myself," said the boy.
+
+"You seem pretty wise, my lad," said the cosmopolitan; "why don't you
+sell your wisdom, and buy a coat?"
+
+"Faith," said the boy, "that's what I did to-day, and this is the coat
+that the price of my wisdom bought. But won't you trade? See, now, it
+is not the door I want to sell; I only carry the door round for a
+specimen, like. Look now, sir," standing the thing up on the table,
+"supposing this little door is your state-room door; well," opening it,
+"you go in for the night; you close your door behind you--thus. Now, is
+all safe?"
+
+"I suppose so, child," said the old man.
+
+"Of course it is, my fine fellow," said the cosmopolitan.
+
+"All safe. Well. Now, about two o'clock in the morning, say, a
+soft-handed gentleman comes softly and tries the knob here--thus; in
+creeps my soft-handed gentleman; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft
+cash?"
+
+"I see, I see, child," said the old man; "your fine gentleman is a fine
+thief, and there's no lock to your little door to keep him out;" with
+which words he peered at it more closely than before.
+
+"Well, now," again showing his white teeth, "well, now, some of you old
+folks are knowing 'uns, sure enough; but now comes the great invention,"
+producing a small steel contrivance, very simple but ingenious, and
+which, being clapped on the inside of the little door, secured it as
+with a bolt. "There now," admiringly holding it off at arm's-length,
+"there now, let that soft-handed gentleman come now a' softly trying
+this little knob here, and let him keep a' trying till he finds his head
+as soft as his hand. Buy the traveler's patent lock, sir, only
+twenty-five cents."
+
+"Dear me," cried the old man, "this beats printing. Yes, child, I will
+have one, and use it this very night."
+
+With the phlegm of an old banker pouching the change, the boy now turned
+to the other: "Sell you one, sir?"
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use such blacksmiths' things."
+
+"Those who give the blacksmith most work seldom do," said the boy,
+tipping him a wink expressive of a degree of indefinite knowingness, not
+uninteresting to consider in one of his years. But the wink was not
+marked by the old man, nor, to all appearances, by him for whom it was
+intended.
+
+"Now then," said the boy, again addressing the old man. "With your
+traveler's lock on your door to-night, you will think yourself all safe,
+won't you?"
+
+"I think I will, child."
+
+"But how about the window?"
+
+"Dear me, the window, child. I never thought of that. I must see to
+that."
+
+"Never you mind about the window," said the boy, "nor, to be honor
+bright, about the traveler's lock either, (though I ain't sorry for
+selling one), do you just buy one of these little jokers," producing a
+number of suspender-like objects, which he dangled before the old man;
+"money-belts, sir; only fifty cents."
+
+"Money-belt? never heard of such a thing."
+
+"A sort of pocket-book," said the boy, "only a safer sort. Very good for
+travelers."
+
+"Oh, a pocket-book. Queer looking pocket-books though, seems to me.
+Ain't they rather long and narrow for pocket-books?"
+
+"They go round the waist, sir, inside," said the boy "door open or
+locked, wide awake on your feet or fast asleep in your chair, impossible
+to be robbed with a money-belt."
+
+"I see, I see. It _would_ be hard to rob one's money-belt. And I was
+told to-day the Mississippi is a bad river for pick-pockets. How much
+are they?"
+
+"Only fifty cents, sir."
+
+"I'll take one. There!"
+
+"Thank-ee. And now there's a present for ye," with which, drawing from
+his breast a batch of little papers, he threw one before the old man,
+who, looking at it, read "_Counterfeit Detector_."
+
+"Very good thing," said the boy, "I give it to all my customers who
+trade seventy-five cents' worth; best present can be made them. Sell you
+a money-belt, sir?" turning to the cosmopolitan.
+
+"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that sort of thing; my money
+I carry loose."
+
+"Loose bait ain't bad," said the boy, "look a lie and find the truth;
+don't care about a Counterfeit Detector, do ye? or is the wind East,
+d'ye think?"
+
+"Child," said the old man in some concern, "you mustn't sit up any
+longer, it affects your mind; there, go away, go to bed."
+
+"If I had some people's brains to lie on. I would," said the boy, "but
+planks is hard, you know."
+
+"Go, child--go, go!"
+
+"Yes, child,--yes, yes," said the boy, with which roguish parody, by way
+of conge, he scraped back his hard foot on the woven flowers of the
+carpet, much as a mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
+in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat--which, like the
+rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard times, a belonging beyond his
+years, though not beyond his experience, being a grown man's cast-off
+beaver--turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the place.
+
+"That's a strange boy," said the old man, looking after him. "I wonder
+who's his mother; and whether she knows what late hours he keeps?"
+
+"The probability is," observed the other, "that his mother does not
+know. But if you remember, sir, you were saying something, when the boy
+interrupted you with his door."
+
+"So I was.--Let me see," unmindful of his purchases for the moment,
+"what, now, was it? What was that I was saying? Do _you_ remember?"
+
+"Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was something like
+this: you hoped you did not distrust the creature; for that would imply
+distrust of the Creator."
+
+"Yes, that was something like it," mechanically and unintelligently
+letting his eye fall now on his purchases.
+
+"Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?"
+
+"It's best, ain't it?" with a slight start. "Never too late to be
+cautious. 'Beware of pick-pockets' is all over the boat."
+
+"Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or some other morbid
+cynic, who put them there. But that's not to the purpose. Since you are
+minded to it, pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
+between us, we can make a secure thing of it."
+
+"Oh no, no, no!" said the old man, not unperturbed, "no, no, I wouldn't
+trouble you for the world," then, nervously folding up the belt, "and I
+won't be so impolite as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
+now that I think of it," after a pause, carefully taking a little wad
+from a remote corner of his vest pocket, "here are two bills they gave
+me at St. Louis, yesterday. No doubt they are all right; but just to
+pass time, I'll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed boy to make
+me such a present. Public benefactor, that little boy!"
+
+Laying the Detector square before him on the table, he then, with
+something of the air of an officer bringing by the collar a brace of
+culprits to the bar, placed the two bills opposite the Detector, upon
+which, the examination began, lasting some time, prosecuted with no
+small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the right hand proving
+of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out and pointing the evidence,
+whichever way it might go.
+
+After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in a formal voice,
+"Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman; guilty, or not guilty?--Not guilty,
+ain't it?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed, "there's
+so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind of uncertain.
+Here, now, is this bill," touching one, "it looks to be a three dollar
+bill on the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company. Well, the
+Detector says----"
+
+"But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and Insurance! What
+more would you have?"
+
+"No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things, that, if a good
+bill, it must have, thickened here and there into the substance of the
+paper, little wavy spots of red; and it says they must have a kind of
+silky feel, being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred up
+in the paper-maker's vat--the paper being made to order for the
+company."
+
+"Well, and is----"
+
+"Stay. But then it adds, that sign is not always to be relied on; for
+some good bills get so worn, the red marks get rubbed out. And that's
+the case with my bill here--see how old it is--or else it's a
+counterfeit, or else--I don't see right--or else--dear, dear me--I don't
+know what else to think."
+
+"What a peck of trouble that Detector makes for you now; believe me, the
+bill is good; don't be so distrustful. Proves what I've always thought,
+that much of the want of confidence, in these days, is owing to these
+Counterfeit Detectors you see on every desk and counter. Puts people up
+to suspecting good bills. Throw it away, I beg, if only because of the
+trouble it breeds you."
+
+"No; it's troublesome, but I think I'll keep it.--Stay, now, here's
+another sign. It says that, if the bill is good, it must have in one
+corner, mixed in with the vignette, the figure of a goose, very small,
+indeed, all but microscopic; and, for added precaution, like the figure
+of Napoleon outlined by the tree, not observable, even if magnified,
+unless the attention is directed to it. Now, pore over it as I will, I
+can't see this goose."
+
+"Can't see the goose? why, I can; and a famous goose it is. There"
+(reaching over and pointing to a spot in the vignette).
+
+"I don't see it--dear me--I don't see the goose. Is it a real goose?"
+
+"A perfect goose; beautiful goose."
+
+"Dear, dear, I don't see it."
+
+"Then throw that Detector away, I say again; it only makes you purblind;
+don't you see what a wild-goose chase it has led you? The bill is good.
+Throw the Detector away."
+
+"No; it ain't so satisfactory as I thought for, but I must examine this
+other bill."
+
+"As you please, but I can't in conscience assist you any more; pray,
+then, excuse me."
+
+So, while the old man with much painstakings resumed his work, the
+cosmopolitan, to allow him every facility, resumed his reading. At
+length, seeing that he had given up his undertaking as hopeless, and was
+at leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravely interesting
+remarks to him about the book before him, and, presently, becoming more
+and more grave, said, as he turned the large volume slowly over on the
+table, and with much difficulty traced the faded remains of the gilt
+inscription giving the name of the society who had presented it to the
+boat, "Ah, sir, though every one must be pleased at the thought of the
+presence in public places of such a book, yet there is something that
+abates the satisfaction. Look at this volume; on the outside, battered
+as any old valise in the baggage-room; and inside, white and virgin as
+the hearts of lilies in bud."
+
+"So it is, so it is," said the old man sadly, his attention for the
+first directed to the circumstance.
+
+"Nor is this the only time," continued the other, "that I have observed
+these public Bibles in boats and hotels. All much like this--old
+without, and new within. True, this aptly typifies that internal
+freshness, the best mark of truth, however ancient; but then, it speaks
+not so well as could be wished for the good book's esteem in the minds
+of the traveling public. I may err, but it seems to me that if more
+confidence was put in it by the traveling public, it would hardly be
+so."
+
+With an expression very unlike that with which he had bent over the
+Detector, the old man sat meditating upon his companions remarks a
+while; and, at last, with a rapt look, said: "And yet, of all people,
+the traveling public most need to put trust in that guardianship which
+is made known in this book."
+
+"True, true," thoughtfully assented the other. "And one would think they
+would want to, and be glad to," continued the old man kindling; "for,
+in all our wanderings through this vale, how pleasant, not less than
+obligatory, to feel that we need start at no wild alarms, provide for no
+wild perils; trusting in that Power which is alike able and willing to
+protect us when we cannot ourselves."
+
+His manner produced something answering to it in the cosmopolitan, who,
+leaning over towards him, said sadly: "Though this is a theme on which
+travelers seldom talk to each other, yet, to you, sir, I will say, that
+I share something of your sense of security. I have moved much about the
+world, and still keep at it; nevertheless, though in this land, and
+especially in these parts of it, some stories are told about steamboats
+and railroads fitted to make one a little apprehensive, yet, I may say
+that, neither by land nor by water, am I ever seriously disquieted,
+however, at times, transiently uneasy; since, with you, sir, I believe
+in a Committee of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an
+invisible patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose beat lies
+as much through forests as towns, along rivers as streets. In short, I
+never forget that passage of Scripture which says, 'Jehovah shall be thy
+confidence.' The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable
+misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted care must he take
+of himself."
+
+"Even so," said the old man, lowly.
+
+"There is a chapter," continued the other, again taking the book,
+"which, as not amiss, I must read you. But this lamp, solar-lamp as it
+is, begins to burn dimly."
+
+"So it does, so it does," said the old man with changed air, "dear me,
+it must be very late. I must to bed, to bed! Let me see," rising and
+looking wistfully all round, first on the stools and settees, and then
+on the carpet, "let me see, let me see;--is there anything I have
+forgot,--forgot? Something I a sort of dimly remember. Something, my
+son--careful man--told me at starting this morning, this very morning.
+Something about seeing to--something before I got into my berth. What
+could it be? Something for safety. Oh, my poor old memory!"
+
+"Let me give a little guess, sir. Life-preserver?"
+
+"So it was. He told me not to omit seeing I had a life-preserver in my
+state-room; said the boat supplied them, too. But where are they? I
+don't see any. What are they like?"
+
+"They are something like this, sir, I believe," lifting a brown stool
+with a curved tin compartment underneath; "yes, this, I think, is a
+life-preserver, sir; and a very good one, I should say, though I don't
+pretend to know much about such things, never using them myself."
+
+"Why, indeed, now! Who would have thought it? _that_ a life-preserver?
+That's the very stool I was sitting on, ain't it?"
+
+"It is. And that shows that one's life is looked out for, when he ain't
+looking out for it himself. In fact, any of these stools here will float
+you, sir, should the boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But,
+since you want one in your room, pray take this one," handing it to him.
+"I think I can recommend this one; the tin part," rapping it with his
+knuckles, "seems so perfect--sounds so very hollow."
+
+"Sure it's _quite_ perfect, though?" Then, anxiously putting on his
+spectacles, he scrutinized it pretty closely--"well soldered? quite
+tight?"
+
+"I should say so, sir; though, indeed, as I said, I never use this sort
+of thing, myself. Still, I think that in case of a wreck, barring
+sharp-pointed timbers, you could have confidence in that stool for a
+special providence."
+
+"Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have both of us in its
+good keeping."
+
+"Be sure it will," eying the old man with sympathy, as for the moment he
+stood, money-belt in hand, and life-preserver under arm, "be sure it
+will, sir, since in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.
+But, bless me, we are being left in the dark here. Pah! what a smell,
+too."
+
+"Ah, my way now," cried the old man, peering before him, "where lies my
+way to my state-room?"
+
+"I have indifferent eyes, and will show you; but, first, for the good of
+all lungs, let me extinguish this lamp."
+
+The next moment, the waning light expired, and with it the waning flames
+of the horned altar, and the waning halo round the robed man's brow;
+while in the darkness which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old
+man away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note and Errata                                |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following words were seen in both hyphenated and         |
+  | un-hyphenated forms:                                         |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |church-yard (2) |churchyard (1) |                           |
+  | |cross-wise (1)  |crosswise (1)  |                           |
+  | |thread-bare (1) |threadbare (1) |                           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following typographical errors were corrected:           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | |Error               |Correction          |                  |
+  | |                    |                    |                  |
+  | |ACQUANTANCE         |ACQUAINTANCE        |                  |
+  | |prevailent          |prevalent           |                  |
+  | |the the             |the                 |                  |
+  | |tranquillity        |tranquility         |                  |
+  | |abox                |a box               |                  |
+  | |acommodates         |accommodates        |                  |
+  | |have have           |have                |                  |
+  | |worldlingg, lutton, |worldling, glutton, |                  |
+  | |backswoods'         |backwoods'          |                  |
+  | |it it               |it is               |                  |
+  | |fellew              |fellow              |                  |
+  | |principal           |principle           |                  |
+  | |it it               |it                  |                  |
+  | |everwhere           |everywhere          |                  |
+  | |SUPRISING           |SURPRISING          |                  |
+  | |freind              |friend              |                  |
+  |                                                              |
+  | One 'oe' ligature was replaced with oe.                      |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville
+
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