“`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 selfblame.
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 for
titude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases

[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]

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 backswoods' 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 doubledealing,
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

[figure description] Page 228.[end figure description]

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 treatybreaker
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

[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]

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
it 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,

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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 restingplace
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 Cæsar 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,

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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?—

[figure description] Page 232.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 234.[end figure description]

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 leavetakings
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 excel
lence, any more than one of a sword-fish, or other deepsea
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 becomes news.

“`But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely

[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 236.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 237.[end figure description]

“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,

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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

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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

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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

[figure description] Page 241.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 242.[end figure description]

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, ands 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 contingency
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

[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 244.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 245.[end figure description]

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?”

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“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 coördinates. 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

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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?”

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“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 newlymade
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:

The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood
as sorely tempted and wavering a moment; then,

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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.

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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?”

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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;

[figure description] Page 256.[end figure description]

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!”

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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!”

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“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.”

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“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

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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.

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“`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;

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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

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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 cigarstand,
“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 tobaccoplant
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.”

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“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

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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 fellew,” 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

[figure description] Page 266.[end figure description]

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 principal 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.”

[figure description] Page 267.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 268.[end figure description]

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

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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 rattingly 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

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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,

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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.

[figure description] Page 272.[end figure description]

“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

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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 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

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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

[figure description] Page 275.[end figure description]

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
everwhere—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.”

[figure description] Page 276.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 277.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 278.[end figure description]

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,”

[figure description] Page 279.[end figure description]

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?”

[figure description] Page 280.[end figure description]

“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 SUPRISING THAN ANY IN OVID.

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“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.

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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.'”

[figure description] Page 283.[end figure description]

“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?”

[figure description] Page 284.[end figure description]

“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.

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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

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customhouse 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

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all such readers as may think they perceive something
inharmonious 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 GENTLEMANMADMAN.

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“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

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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
assigness 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

[figure description] Page 290.[end figure description]

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

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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.

[figure description] Page 292.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 293.[end figure description]

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.

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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

[figure description] Page 295.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 296.[end figure description]

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 care-free, 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,

[figure description] Page 297.[end figure description]

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

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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

[figure description] Page 299.[end figure description]

rattlesnake 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 reënter 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

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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

[figure description] Page 301.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 302.[end figure description]

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 defition
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.”

[figure description] Page 303.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 304.[end figure description]

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 shatter-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

[figure description] Page 305.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 306.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 307.[end figure description]

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.”

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