CHAPTER XXXIX. THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.
[figure description] Page 315.[end figure description]
“Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you.”
“You always have, and with reason. What is it
Frank?”
“Charlie, I am in want—urgent want of money.”
“That's not well.”
“But it will be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred
dollars. I would not ask this of you, only my
need is sore, and you and I have so long shared hearts
and minds together, however unequally on my side, that
nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the
same inequality on my side, to share pursues. You will
do me the favor, won't you?”
“Favor? What do you, mean by asking me to do
you a favor?”
“Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so.”
“Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to
talk so.”
“But won't you loan me the money?”
“No, Frank.”
“Why?”
“Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but
-- 316 --
[figure description] Page 316.[end figure description]
never loan it; and of course the man who calls himself
my friend is above receiving alms. The negotiation
of a loan is a business transaction. And I will
transact no business with a friend. What a friend is, he
is socially and intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual
friendship too high to degrade it on either
side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure there are,
and I have, what is called business friends; that is, commercial
acquaintances, very convenient persons. But
I draw a red-ink line between them and my friends
in the true sense—my friends social and intellectual.
In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such
unfriendly accommodations as are to be had from the
soulless corporation of a bank, by giving the regular
security and paying the regular discount.”
“An unfriendly accommodation? Do those words go
together handsomely?”
“Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and
a cow—not handsomely, but to the purpose. Look,
Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale of money
on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an
accommodation, but where is the friendliness? Few
men in their senses, except operators, borrow money on
interest, except upon a necessity akin to starvation.
Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
starving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of
flour upon the condition that, on a given day, he shall let
me have the money's worth of a barrel and a half of flour;
especially if I add this further proviso, that if he fail so
-- 317 --
[figure description] Page 317.[end figure description]
to do, I shall then, to secure to myself the money's
worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up
at public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families,
throw in his wife's and children's?”
“I understand,” with a pathetic shudder; “but even
did it come to that, such a step on the creditor's part,
let us, for the honor of human nature, hope, were less
the intention than the contingency.”
“But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in
the taking beforehand of due securities.”
“Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a
friend's act?”
“And the auction in the last place an enemy's act.
Don't you see? The enmity lies couched in the friendship,
just as the ruin in the relief.”
“I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really,
I can't understand this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but
it strikes me that in going into the philosophy of the
subject, you go somewhat out of your depth.”
“So said the incautious wader-out to the ocean; but
the ocean replied: `It is just the other way, my wet
friend,' and drowned him.”
“That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the
ocean, as some of Æsop's are to the animals. The ocean
is a magnanimous element, and would scorn to assassinate
a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
But I don't understand what you say about enmity
couched in friendship, and ruin in relief.”
“I will illustrate, Frank. The needy man is a train
slipped off the rail. He who loans him money on
-- 318 --
[figure description] Page 318.[end figure description]
interest is the one who, by way of accommodation, helps
get the train back where it belongs; but then, by way
of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an
agent, thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just
there, on his account, a beam across the track. Your
needy man's principle-and-interest friend is, I say
again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my
dear friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest.”
“Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me
without interest.”
“That would be alms again.”
“Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?”
“Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest.”
“Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the
alms. Seeing that it is you, Charlie, gratefully will I
accept the alms of the interest. No humiliation between
friends.”
“Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you
suffer yourself to talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me.
For though I am not of the sour mind of Solomon, that,
in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a brother;
yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his
Essay on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a
terrestrial convenience, not to his friend celestial (or
friend social and intellectual) would he go; no: for his
terrestial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or humbler
business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the
reason: Because, for the superior nature, which on no
account can ever descend to do good, to be annoyed
-- 319 --
[figure description] Page 319.[end figure description]
with requests to do it, when the inferior one, which by
no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands
always inclined to it—this is unsuitable.”
“Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial,
but as the other.”
“It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I'll
do it. We are business friends; business is business.
You want to negotiate a loan. Very good. On what
paper? Will you pay three per cent. a month? Where
is your security?”
“Surely, you will not exact those formalities from
your old schoolmate—him with whom you have so often
sauntered down the groves of Academe, discoursing of
the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in kindliness—
and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being fellowacademics,
and friends from childhood up, is security.”
“Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics
is the worst of securities; while, our having been
friends from childhood up is just no security at all.
You forget we are now business friends.”
“And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your
business friend I can give you no security; my need being
so sore that I cannot get an indorser.”
“No indorser, then, no business loan.”
“Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other
sort of friend you have defined, can I prevail with you;
how if, combining the two, I sue as both?”
“Are you a centaur?”
“When all is said then, what good have I of your
friendship, regarded in what light you will?”
-- 320 --
[figure description] Page 320.[end figure description]
“The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome,
as reduced to practice by a practical disciple.”
“And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy
of Mark Winsome do me? Ah,” turning invokingly,
“what is friendship, if it be not the helping hand
and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out
at need the purse as the vial!”
“Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through
tears never did man see his way in the dark. I should
hold you unworthy that sincere friendship I bear you,
could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank,
that you would seriously shake the foundations of our
love, if ever again you should repeat the present scene.
The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest way,
teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most
suitable time, candidly disclose certain circumstances
you seem in ignorance of. Though our friendship began
in boyhood, think not that, on my side at least, it began
injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable
points at the time; not the least of which were your good
manners, handsome dress, and your parents' rank and
repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man, boy
though I was, I went into the market and chose me my
mutton, not for its leanness, but its fatness. In other
words, there seemed in you, the schoolboy who always
had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probability that
you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if
my early impression has not been verified by the event,
-- 321 --
[figure description] Page 321.[end figure description]
it is only because of the caprice of fortune producing a
fallibility of human expectations, however discreet.”
“Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!”
“A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear
Frank, wouldn't do you any harm, let me tell you.
Cold-blooded? You say that, because my disclosure
seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not
so. My reason for choosing you in part for the points I
have mentioned, was solely with a view of preserving
inviolate the delicacy of the connection. For—do but
think of it—what more distressing to delicate friendship,
formed early, than your friend's eventually, in manhood,
dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five
dollars or so? Can delicate friendship stand that?
And, on the other side, would delicate friendship, so
long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Would you
not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry,
`I have been deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this
man; he is no true friend that, in platonic love to demand
love-tries?'”
“And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!”
“Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately
claiming those rights, as you call them, you
shake those foundations I hinted of. For though, as it
turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fair house
on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished
on that house, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I
would not lose the sweet boon of your friendship, Frank.
But beware.”
-- 322 --
[figure description] Page 322.[end figure description]
“And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie!
you talk not to a god, a being who in himself holds his
own estate, but to a man who, being a man, is the sport
of fate's wind and wave, and who mounts towards heaven
or sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough
or on crest.”
“Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that
comes to—no poor drifting sea-weed of the universe.
Man has a soul; which, if he will, puts him beyond fortune's
finger and the future's spite. Don't whine like
fortune's whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true
friend, I will cut ye.”
“Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the
quick. Call to mind the days we went nutting, the
times we walked in the woods, arms wreathed about
each other, showing trunks invined like the trees:—oh,
Charlie!”
“Pish! we were boys.”
“Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold
in the grave ere maturity struck them with a sharper
frost.—Charlie?”
“Fie! you're a girl.”
“Help, help, Charlie, I want help!”
“Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something
wrong about the man who wants help. There is
somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying
need, somewhere about that man.”
“So there is, Charlie.—Help, Help!”
“How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself
the proof of undesert of it.
-- 323 --
[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]
“Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some
ventriloquist who usurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome
that speaks, not Charlie.
“If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is
not alien but congenial to my larynx. If the philosophy
of that illustrious teacher find little response among
mankind at large, it is less that they do not possess
teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate
as not to have natures predisposed to accord with him.
“Welcome, that compliment to humanity,” exclaimed
Frank with energy, “the truer because unintended.
And long in this respect may humanity remain what
you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardly
feeling how subject it is to straits, and hence
how precious is help, will, for selfishness' sake, if no
other, long postpone ratifying a philosophy that banishes
help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie! speak as
you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case
reversed, not less freely would I loan you the money
than you would ask me to loan it.
“I ask? I ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under
no circumstances would I accept a loan, though without
asking pressed on me. The experience of China
Aster might warn me.”
“And what was that?”
“Not very unlike the experience of the man that
built himself a palace of moon-beams, and when the moon
set was surprised that his palace vanished with it. I
will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could do so
in my own words, but unhappily the original
-- 324 --
[figure description] Page 324.[end figure description]
storyteller here has so tyrannized over me, that it is quite
impossible for me to repeat his incidents without sliding
into his style. I forewarn you of this, that you may
not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story
would seem to make its narrator. It is too bad that
any intellect, expecially in so small a matter, should
have such power to impose itself upon another, against
its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to
know that the main moral, to which all tends, I fully
approve. But, to begin.”
-- --
CHAPTER XL. IN WHICH THE STORY OF CHINA ASTER IS AT SECOND-HAND TOLD BY ONE WHO, WHILE NOT DISAPPROVING THE MORAL, DISCLAIMS THE SPIRIT OF THE STYLE.
[figure description] Page 325.[end figure description]
“China Aster was a young candle-maker of Marietta,
at the mouth of the Muskingum—one whose trade would
seem a kind of subordinate branch of that parent craft
and mystery of the hosts of heaven, to be the means,
effectively or otherwise, of shedding some light through
the darkness of a planet benighted. But he made little
money by the business. Much ado had poor China
Aster and his family to live; he could, if he chose, light
up from his stores a whole street, but not so easily
could he light up with prosperity the hearts of his
household.
“Now, China Aster, it so happened, had a friend,
Orchis, a shoemaker; one whose calling it is to defend
the understandings of men from naked contact with the
substance of things: a very useful vocation, and which,
spite of all the wiseacres may prophesy, will hardly go
out of fashion so long as rocks are hard and flints will
gall. All at once, by a capital prize in a lottery, this
useful shoemaker was raised from a bench to a sofa. A
small nabob was the shoemaker now, and the understandings
of men, let them shift for themselves. Not
-- 326 --
[figure description] Page 326.[end figure description]
that Orchis was, by prosperity, elated into heartlessness
Not at all. Because, in his fine apparel, strolling one
morning into the candlery, and gayly switching about
at the candle-boxes with his gold-headed cane—while
poor China Aster, with his greasy paper cap and leather
apron, was selling one candle for one penny to a poor
orange-woman, who, with the patronizing coolness of a
liberal customer, required it to be carefully rolled up
and tied in a half sheet of paper—lively Orchis, the
woman being gone, discontinued his gay switchings and
said: `This is poor business for you, friend China
Aster; your capital is too small. You must drop this
vile tallow and hold up pure spermaceti to the world.
I tell you what it is, you shall have one thousand dollars
to extend with. In fact, you must make money,
China Aster. I don't like to see your little boy paddling
about without shoes, as he does.'
“`Heaven bless your goodness, friend Orchis,' replied
the candle-maker, `but don't take it illy if I call to
mind the word of my uncle, the blacksmith, who, when
a loan was offered him, declined it, saying: “To ply my
own hammer, light though it be, I think best, rather
than piece it out heavier by welding to it a bit off a
neighbor's hammer, though that may have some weight
to spare; otherwise, were the borrowed bit suddenly
wanted again, it might not split off at the welding, but
too much to one side or the other.'”
“`Nonsense, friend China Aster, don't be so honest;
your boy is barefoot. Besides, a rich man lose by a
poor man? Or a friend be the worse by a friend?
-- 327 --
[figure description] Page 327.[end figure description]
China Aster, I am afraid that, in leaning over into your
vats here, this morning, you have spilled out your wisdom.
Hush! I won't hear any more. Where's your
desk? Oh, here.' With that, Orchis dashed off a check
on his bank, and off-handedly presenting it, said:
`There, friend China Aster, is your one thousand dollars;
when you make it ten thousand, as you soon
enough will (for experience, the only true knowledge,
teaches me that, for every one, good luck is in store),
then, China Aster, why, then you can return me the
money or not, just as you please. But, in any event,
give yourself no concern, for I shall never demand payment.
'
“Now, as kind heaven will so have it that to a
hungry man bread is a great temptation, and, therefore,
he is not too harshly to be blamed, if, when freely
offered, he take it, even though it be uncertain whether
he shall ever be able to reciprocate; so, to a poor man,
proffered money is equally enticing, and the worst that
can be said of him, if he accept it, is just what can be
said in the other case of the hungry man. In short, the
poor candle-maker's scrupulous morality succumbed to
his unscrupulous necessity, as is now and then apt to be
the case. He took the check, and was about carefully
putting it away for the present, when Orchis, switching
about again with his gold-headed cane, said: `By-the-way,
China Aster, it don't mean anything, but suppose
you make a little memorandum of this; won't do any
harm, you know.' So China Aster gave Orchis his note
for one thousand dollars on demand. Orchis took it, and
-- 328 --
[figure description] Page 328.[end figure description]
looked at it a moment, `Pooh, I told you, friend China
Aster, I wasn't going ever to make any demand.' Then
tearing up the note, and switching away again at the
candle-boxes, said, carelessly; `Put it at four years.'
So China Aster gave Orchis his note for one thousand
dollars at four years. `You see I'll never trouble you
about this,' said Orchis, slipping it in his pocket-book,
`give yourself no further thought, friend China Aster,
than how best to invest your money. And don't forget
my hint about spermaceti. Go into that, and I'll buy
all my light of you,' with which encouraging words, he,
with wonted, rattling kindness, took leave.
“China Aster remained standing just where Orchis
had left him; when, suddenly, two elderly friends,
having nothing better to do, dropped in for a chat.
The chat over, China Aster, in greasy cap and apron,
ran after Orchis, and said: `Friend Orchis, heaven
will reward you for your good intentions, but here is
your check, and now give me my note.'
“`Your honesty is a bore, China Aster,' said Orchis, not
without displeasure. `I won't take the check from you.'
“`Then you must take it from the pavement, Orchis,'
said China Aster; and, picking up a stone, he placed
the check under it on the walk.
“`China Aster,' said Orchis, inquisitively eying him,
`after my leaving the candlery just now, what asses
dropped in there to advise with you, that now you hurry
after me, and act so like a fool? Shouldn't wonder
if it was those two old asses that the boys nickname
Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence.'
-- 329 --
[figure description] Page 329.[end figure description]
“`Yes, it was those two, Orchis, but don't call them
names.'
“`A brace of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk
had a shrew for a wife, and that's made him shrewish;
and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an applestall,
and that discouraged him for life. No better sport
for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk
wheeze out his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands
by, leaning on his staff, wagging his frosty old pow, and
chiming in at every clause.'
“`How can you speak so, friend Orchis, of those who
were my father's friends?'
“`Save me from my friends, if those old croakers were
Old Honesty's friends. I call your father so, for every
one used to. Why did they let him go in his old age on
the town? Why, China Aster, I've often heard from
my mother, the chronicler, that those two old fellows,
with Old Conscience—as the boys called the crabbed old
quaker, that's dead now—they three used to go to the
poor-house when your father was there, and get round
his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes,
Job's comforters were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence,
and Old Conscience, to your poor old father.
Friends? I should like to know who you call foes?
With their everlasting croaking and reproaching they
tormented poor Old Honesty, your father, to death.'
“At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy
parent, China Aster could not restrain some tears. Upon
which Orchis said: `Why, China Aster, you are the
-- 330 --
[figure description] Page 330.[end figure description]
dolefulest creature. Why don't you, China Aster, take
a bright view of life? You will never get on in your
business or anything else, if you don't take the bright view
of life. It's the ruination of a man to take the dismal
one.' Then, gayly poking at him with his gold-headed
cane, `Why don't you, then? Why don't you be bright
and hopeful, like me? Why don't you have confidence,
China Aster?'
“`I'm sure I don't know, friend Orchis,' soberly
replied China Aster, `but may be my not having
drawn a lottery-prize, like you, may make some difference.
'
“`Nonsense! before I knew anything about the prize
I was gay as a lark, just as gay as I am now. In fact,
it has always been a principle with me to hold to the
bright view.'
“Upon this, China Aster looked a little hard at Orchis,
because the truth was, that until the lucky prize came
to him, Orchis had gone under the nickname of Doleful
Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a hypochondriac
turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars
of his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to
groan so much about.
“`I tell you what it is, now, friend China Aster,' said
Orchis, pointing down to the check under the stone, and
then slapping his pocket, `the check shall lie there if
you say so, but your note shan't keep it company. In
fact, China Aster, I am too sincerely your friend to take
advantage of a passing fit of the blues in you. You shall
reap the benefit of my friendship.' With which,
-- 331 --
[figure description] Page 331.[end figure description]
buttoning up his coat in a jiffy, away he ran, leaving the
check behind.
“At first, China Aster was going to tear it up, but
thinking that this ought not to be done except in the
presence of the drawer of the check, he mused a while,
and picking it up, trudged back to the candlery, fully
resolved to call upon Orchis soon as his day's work was
over, and destroy the check before his eyes. But it so
happened that when China Aster called, Orchis was out,
and, having waited for him a weary time in vain, China
Aster went home, still with the check, but still resolved
not to keep it another day. Bright and early next
morning he would a second time go after Orchis, and
would, no doubt, make a sure thing of it, by finding him
in his bed; for since the lottery-prize came to him, Orchis,
besides becoming more cheery, had also grown a
little lazy. But as destiny would have it, that same
night China Aster had a dream, in which a being in the
guise of a smiling angel, and holding a kind of cornucopia
in her hand, hovered over him, pouring down
showers of small gold dollars, thick as kernels of corn.
`I am Bright Future, friend China Aster,' said the angel,
`and if you do what friend Orchis would have you
do, just see what will come of it.' With which Bright
Future, with another swing of her cornucopia, poured
such another shower of small gold dollars upon him,
that it seemed to bank him up all round, and he waded
about in it like a maltster in malt.
“Now, dreams are wonderful things, as everybody
knows—so wonderful, indeed, that some people stop not
-- 332 --
[figure description] Page 332.[end figure description]
short of ascribing them directly to heaven; and China
Aster, who was of a proper turn of mind in everything,
thought that in consideration of the dream, it would be
but well to wait a little, ere seeking Orchis again. During
the day, China Aster's mind dwelling continually
upon the dream, he was so full of it, that when Old
Plain Talk dropped in to see him, just before dinnertime,
as he often did, out of the interest he took in Old
Honesty's son, China Aster told all about his vision,
adding that he could not think that so radiant an angel
could deceive; and, indeed, talked at such a rate that
one would have thought he believed the angel some
beautiful human philanthropist. Something in this sort
Old Plain Talk understood him, and, accordingly, in his
plain way, said: `China Aster, you tell me that an angel
appeared to you in a dream. Now, what does that
amount to but this, that you dreamed an angel appeared
to you? Go right away, China Aster, and return the
check, as I advised you before. If friend Prudence were
here, he would say just the same thing.' With which
words Old Plain Talk went off to find friend Prudence,
but not succeeding, was returning to the candlery himself,
when, at distance mistaking him for a dun who had
long annoyed him, China Aster in a panic barred all his
doors, and ran to the back part of the candlery, where
no knock could be heard.
“By this sad mistake, being left with no friend to argue
the other side of the question, China Aster was so
worked upon at last, by musing over his dream, that
nothing would do but he must get the check cashed, and
-- 333 --
[figure description] Page 333.[end figure description]
lay out the money the very same day in buying a good
lot of spermaceti to make into candles, by which operation
he counted upon turning a better penny than he
ever had before in his life; in fact, this he believed
would prove the foundation of that famous fortune
which the angel had promised him.
“Now, in using the money, China Aster was resolved
punctually to pay the interest every six months till the
principal should be returned, howbeit not a word about
such a thing had been breathed by Orchis; though,
indeed, according to custom, as well as law, in such
matters, interest would legitimately accrue on the loan,
nothing to the contrary having been put in the bond.
Whether Orchis at the time had this in mind or not,
there is no sure telling; but, to all appearance, he never
so much as cared to think about the matter, one way or
other.
“Though the spermaceti venture rather disappointed
China Aster's sanguine expectations, yet he made out to
pay the first six months' interest, and though his next
venture turned out still less prosperously, yet by pinching
his family in the matter of fresh meat, and, what
pained him still more, his boys' schooling, he contrived
to pay the second six months' interest, sincerely grieved
that integrity, as well as its opposite, though not in an
equal degree, costs something, sometimes.
“Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by
advice of a physician; it so happening that, since the
lottery-prize came to him, it had been discovered to Orchis
that his health was not very firm, though he had
-- 334 --
[figure description] Page 334.[end figure description]
never complained of anything before but a slight ailing
of the spleen, scarce worth talking about at the time.
So Orchis, being abroad, could not help China Aster's
paying his interest as he did, however much he might
have been opposed to it; for China Aster paid it to
Orchis's agent, who was of too business-like a turn to
decline interest regularly paid in on a loan.
“But overmuch to trouble the agent on that score was
not again to be the fate of China Aster; for, not being
of that skeptical spirit which refuses to trust customers,
his third venture resulted, through bad debts, in
almost a total loss—a bad blow for the candle-maker.
Neither did Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence neglect
the opportunity to read him an uncheerful enough lesson
upon the consequences of his disregarding their advice
in the matter of having nothing to do with borrowed
money. `It's all just as I predicted,' said Old Plain
Talk, blowing his old nose with his old bandana. `Yea,
indeed is it,' chimed in Old Prudence, rapping his staff
on the floor, and then leaning upon it, looking with
solemn forebodings upon China Aster. Low-spirited
enough felt the poor candle-maker; till all at once who
should come with a bright face to him but his bright
friend, the angel, in another dream. Again the cornucopia
poured out its treasure, and promised still more.
Revived by the vision, he resolved not to be downhearted,
but up and at it once more—contrary to the
advice of Old Plain Talk, backed as usual by his crony,
which was to the effect, that, under present circumstances,
the best thing China Aster could do, would be to
-- 335 --
[figure description] Page 335.[end figure description]
wind up his business, settle, if he could, all his liabilities,
and then go to work as a journeyman, by which
he could earn good wages, and give up, from that time
henceforth, all thoughts of rising above being a paid subordinate
to men more able than himself, for China Aster's
career thus far plainly proved him the legitimate son of
Old Honesty, who, as every one knew, had never shown
much business-talent, so little, in fact, that many said
of him that he had no business to be in business. And
just this plain saying Plain Talk now plainly applied
to China Aster, and Old Prudence never disagreed with
him. But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain
Talk, put quite other notions into the candle-maker.
“He considered what he should do towards reëstablishing
himself. Doubtless, had Orchis been in the country,
he would have aided him in this strait. As it was, he
applied to others; and as in the world, much as some may
hint to the contrary, an honest man in misfortune still
can find friends to stay by him and help him, even so
it proved with China Aster, who at last succeeded in borrowing
from a rich old farmer the sum of six hundred
dollars, at the usual interest of money-lenders, upon the
security of a secret bond signed by China Aster's wife
and himself, to the effect that all such right and title to
any property that should be left her by a well-to-do
childless uncle, an invalid tanner, such property should,
in the event of China Aster's failing to return the borrowed
sum on the given day, be the lawful possession
of the money-lender. True, it was just as much as
China Aster could possibly do to induce his wife, a
-- 336 --
[figure description] Page 336.[end figure description]
careful woman, to sign this bond; because she had always
regarded her promised share in her uncle's estate as an
anchor well to windward of the hard times in which
China Aster had always been more or less involved, and
from which, in her bosom, she never had seen much
chance of his freeing himself. Some notion may be had
of China Aster's standing in the heart and head of his
wife, by a short sentence commonly used in reply to
such persons as happened to sound her on the point.
`China Aster,' she would say, `is a good husband, but
a bad business man!' Indeed, she was a connection on
the maternal side of Old Plain Talk's. But had not
China Aster taken good care not to let Old Plain Talk
and Old Prudence hear of his dealings with the old
farmer, ten to one they would, in some way, have interfered
with his success in that quarter.
“It has been hinted that the honesty of China Aster
was what mainly induced the money-lender to befriend
him in his misfortune, and this must be apparent; for,
had China Aster been a different man, the money-lender
might have dreaded lest, in the event of his failing to
meet his note, he might some way prove slippery—more
especially as, in the hour of distress, worked upon by
remorse for so jeopardizing his wife's money, his heart
might prove a traitor to his bond, not to hint that it
was more than doubtful how such a secret security and
claim, as in the last resort would be the old farmer's,
would stand in a court of law. But though one inference
from all this may be, that had China Aster been
something else than what he was, he would not have
-- 337 --
[figure description] Page 337.[end figure description]
been trusted, and, therefore, he would have been effectually
shut out from running his own and wife's head
into the usurer's noose; yet those who, when everything
at last came out, maintained that, in this view
and to this extent, the honesty of the candle-maker was
no advantage to him, in so saying, such persons said
what every good heart must deplore, and no prudent
tongue will admit.
“It may be mentioned, that the old farmer made
China Aster take part of his loan in three old dried-up
cows and one lame horse, not improved by the glanders.
These were thrown in at a pretty high figure, the old
money-lender having a singular prejudice in regard to
the high value of any sort of stock raised on his farm.
With a great deal of difficulty, and at more loss, China
Aster disposed of his cattle at public auction, no private
purchaser being found who could be prevailed
upon to invest. And now, raking and scraping in every
way, and working early and late, China Aster at last
started afresh, nor without again largely and confidently
extending himself. However, he did not try his
hand at the spermaceti again, but, admonished by experience,
returned to tallow. But, having bought a
good lot of it, by the time he got it into candles, tallow
fell so low, and candles with it, that his candles per
pound barely sold for what he had paid for the tallow.
Meantime, a year's unpaid interest had accrued on Orchis'
loan, but China Aster gave himself not so much
concern about that as about the interest now due to
the old farmer. But he was glad that the principal
-- 338 --
[figure description] Page 338.[end figure description]
there had yet some time to run. However, the skinny
old fellow gave him some trouble by coming after him
every day or two on a scraggy old white horse, furnished
with a musty old saddle, and goaded into his
shambling old paces with a withered old raw hide. All
the neighbors said that surely Death himself on the
pale horse was after poor China Aster now. And
something so it proved; for, ere long, China Aster
found himself involved in troubles mortal enough.
At this juncture Orchis was heard of. Orchis, it seemed,
had returned from his travels, and clandestinely married,
and, in a kind of queer way, was living in Pennsylvania
among his wife's relations, who, among other
things, had induced him to join a church, or rather
semi-religious school, of Come-Outers; and what was
still more, Orchis, without coming to the spot himself,
had sent word to his agent to dispose of some of his
property in Marietta, and remit him the proceeds.
Within a year after, China Aster received a letter from
Orchis, commending him for his punctuality in paying
the first year's interest, and regretting the necessity
that he (Orchis) was now under of using all his dividends;
so he relied upon China Aster's paying the
next six months' interest, and of course with the back
interest. Not more surprised than alarmed, China
Aster thought of taking steamboat to go and see Orchis,
but he was saved that expense by the unexpected
arrival in Marietta of Orchis in person, suddenly called
there by that strange kind of capriciousness lately characterizing
him. No sooner did China Aster hear of
-- 339 --
[figure description] Page 339.[end figure description]
his old friend's arrival than he hurried to call upon him
He found him curiously rusty in dress, sallow in cheek,
and decidedly less gay and cordial in manner, which
the more surprised China Aster, because, in former
days, he had more than once heard Orchis, in his light
rattling way, declare that all he (Orchis) wanted to
make him a perfectly happy, hilarious, and benignant
man, was a voyage to Europe and a wife, with a free
development of his inmost nature.
“Upon China Aster's stating his case, his rusted
friend was silent for a time; then, in an odd way, said
that he would not crowd China Aster, but still his
(Orchis') necessities were urgent. Could not China
Aster mortgage the candlery? He was honest, and
must have moneyed friends; and could he not press
his sales of candles? Could not the market be forced
a little in that particular? The profits on candles
must be very great. Seeing, now, that Orchis had
the notion that the candle-making business was a very
profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an
error was here, China Aster tried to undeceive him.
But he could not drive the truth into Orchis—Orchis
being very obtuse here, and, at the same time,
strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis
glanced off from so unpleasing a subject into the most
unexpected reflections, taken from a religious point
of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of
the human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced
something of that sort of thing, China Aster
did not take exception to his friend's observations,
-- 340 --
[figure description] Page 340.[end figure description]
but still refrained from so doing, almost as much for
the sake of sympathetic sociality as anything else.
Presently, Orchis, without much ceremony, rose, and
saying he must write a letter to his wife, bade his
friend good-bye, but without warmly shaking him by
the hand as of old.
“In much concern at the change, China Aster made
earnest inquiries in suitable quarters, as to what things,
as yet unheard of, had befallen Orchis, to bring about
such a revolution; and learned at last that, besides traveling,
and getting married, and joining the sect of
Come-Outers, Orchis had somehow got a bad dyspepsia,
and lost considerable property through a breach of
trust on the part of a factor in New York. Telling
these things to Old Plain Talk, that man of some
knowledge of the world shook his old head, and told
China Aster that, though he hoped it might prove otherwise,
yet it seemed to him that all he had communicated
about Orchis worked together for bad omens as to
his future forbearance—especially, he added with a
grim sort of smile, in view of his joining the sect of
Come-Outers; for, if some men knew what was their
inmost natures, instead of coming out with it, they
would try their best to keep it in, which, indeed, was
the way with the prudent sort. In all which sour notions
Old Prudence, as usual, chimed in.
“When interest-day came again, China Aster, by the
utmost exertions, could only pay Orchis' agent a small
part of what was due, and a part of that was made up
by his children's gift money (bright tenpenny pieces
-- 341 --
[figure description] Page 341.[end figure description]
and new quarters, kept in their little money-boxes), and
pawning his best clothes, with those of his wife and
children, so that all were subjected to the hardship of
staying away from church. And the old usurer, too,
now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid
him his interest and some other pressing debts with
money got by, at last, mortgaging the candlery.
“When next interest-day came round for Orchis, not
a penny could be raised. With much grief of heart,
China Aster so informed Orchis' agent. Meantime, the
note to the old usurer fell due, and nothing from China
Aster was ready to meet it; yet, as heaven sends its
rain on the just and unjust alike, by a coincidence not
unfavorable to the old farmer, the well-to-do uncle, the
tanner, having died, the usurer entered upon possession
of such part of his property left by will to the wife
of China Aster. When still the next interest-day for
Orchis came round, it found China Aster worse off than
ever; for, besides his other troubles, he was now weak
with sickness. Feebly dragging himself to Orchis'
agent, he met him in the street, told him just how it
was; upon which the agent, with a grave enough face,
said that he had instructions from his employer not to
crowd him about the interest at present, but to say to
him that about the time the note would mature, Orchis
would have heavy liabilities to meet, and therefore the
note must at that time be certainly paid, and, of course,
the back interest with it; and not only so, but, as Orchis
had had to allow the interest for good part of the
time, he hoped that, for the back interest, China Aster
-- 342 --
[figure description] Page 342.[end figure description]
would, in reciprocation, have no objections to allowing
interest on the interest annually. To be sure, this was
not the law; but, between friends who accommodate
each other, it was the custom.
“Just then, Old Plain Talk with Old Prudence turned
the corner, coming plump upon China Aster as the
agent left him; and whether it was a sun-stroke, or
whether they accidentally ran against him, or whether
it was his being so weak, or whether it was everything
together, or how it was exactly, there is no telling, but
poor China Aster fell to the earth, and, striking his head
sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a day in July;
such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of
the inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home
on a door; lingered a few days with a wandering mind,
and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead of night,
when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into
the other world.
“Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom
ever omitted attending any funeral, which, indeed, was
their chief exercise—these two were among the sincerest
mourners who followed the remains of the son of
their ancient friend to the grave.
“It is needless to tell of the executions that followed;
how that the candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how
Orchis never got a penny for his loan; and how, in the
case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered with
mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of
complaint, at what she impatiently called the bitterness
-- 343 --
[figure description] Page 343.[end figure description]
of her lot and the hardness of the world, so preyed upon
her, as ere long to hurry her from the obscurity of
indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.
“But though the straits in which China Aster had left
his family had, besides apparently dimming the world's
regard, likewise seemed to dim its sense of the probity
of its deceased head, and though this, as some thought,
did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this
case, as in others, that, though the world may for a time
seem insensible to that merit which lies under a cloud,
yet, sooner or later, it always renders honor where honor
is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the freemen
of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and
an expression of their conviction of his high moral
worth, passed a resolution, that, until they attained maturity,
his children should be considered the town's
guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of some
public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were
officially installed in that hospitable edifice where their
worthy grandfather, the town's guest before them, had
breathed his last breath.
“But sometimes honor may be paid to the memory of
an honest man, and still his mound remain without a
monument. Not so, however, with the candle-maker.
At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two
to place upon it, when there was discovered, in China
Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an epitaph, written,
probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended
with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent
-- 344 --
[figure description] Page 344.[end figure description]
with him for some months prior to his end. A memorandum
on the back expressed the wish that it might be
placed over his grave. Though with the sentiment of
the epitaph Plain Talk did not disagree, he himself being
at times of a hypochondriac turn—at least, so many
said—yet the language struck him as too much drawn
out; so, after consultation with Old Prudence, he decided
upon making use of the epitaph, yet not without verbal
retrenchments. And though, when these were made,
the thing still appeared wordy to him, nevertheless,
thinking that, since a dead man was to be spoken about,
it was but just to let him speak for himself, especially
when he spoke sincerely, and when, by so doing, the
more salutary lesson would be given, he had the retrenched
inscription chiseled as follows upon the stone.
`HERE LIE
THE REMAINS OF
CHINA ASTER THE CANDLE-MAKER,
WHOSE CAREER
WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE, AS FOUND
IN THE
SOBER PHILOSOPHY
OF
SOLOMON THE WISE;
FOR HE WAS RUINED BY ALLOWING HIMSELF TO BE PERSUADED,
AGAINST HIS BETTER SENSE,
INTO THE FREE INDULGENCE OF CONFIDENCE,
AND
AN ARDENTLY BRIGHT VIEW OF LIFE,
TO THE EXCLUSION
OF
THAT COUNSEL WHICH COMES BY HEEDING
THE
OPPOSITE VIEW.'
“This inscription raised some talk in the town, and
was rather severely criticised by the capitalist—one of a
-- 345 --
[figure description] Page 345.[end figure description]
very cheerful turn—who had secured his loan to China
Aster by the mortgage; and though it also proved
obnoxious to the man who, in town-meeting, had first
moved for the compliment to China Aster's memory,
and, indeed, was deemed by him a sort of slur upon the
candle-maker, to ihat degree that he refused to believe
that the candle-maker himself had composed it, charging
Old Plain Talk with the authorship, alleging that
the internal evidence showed that none but that veteran
old croaker could have penned such a jeremiade—yet,
for all this, the stone stood. In everything, of course,
Old Plain Talk was seconded by Old Prudence; who,
one day going to the grave-yard, in great-coat and overshoes—
for, though it was a sunshiny morning, he
thought that, owing to heavy dews, dampness might
lurk in the ground—long stood before the stone, sharply
leaning over on his staff, spectacles on nose, spelling out
the epitaph word by word; and, afterwards meeting Old
Plain Talk in the street, gave a great rap with his stick,
and said: `Friend, Plain Talk, that epitaph will do
very well. Nevertheless, one short sentence is wanting.
' Upon which, Plain Talk said it was too late, the
chiseled words being so arranged, after the usual manner
of such inscriptions, that nothing could be interlined.
`Then,' said Old Prudence, `I will put it in
the shape of a postscript.' Accordingly, with the
approbation of Old Plain Talk, he had the following
words chiseled at the left-hand corner of the stone, and
pretty low down:
`The root of all was a friendly loan.'”
-- --
CHAPTER XLI. ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.
[figure description] Page 346.[end figure description]
“With what heart,” cried Frank, still in character,
“have you told me this story? A story I can no way
approve; for its moral, if accepted, would drain me of
all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my last
courage in life. For, what was that bright view of
China Aster but a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up
a brave heart, worked hard, and ever hoped for the best,
all at last would go well? If your purpose, Charlie, in
telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you
have succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence,
I praise God you have not.”
“Confidence?” cried Charlie, who, on his side,
seemed with his whole heart to enter into the spirit of
the thing, “what has confidence to do with the matter?
That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping
a friend. For was not that loan of Orchis to China
Aster the first step towards their estrangement? And
did it not bring about what in effect was the enmity of
Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And
-- 347 --
[figure description] Page 347.[end figure description]
what more meddlesome between friends than a loan?
A regular marplot. For how can you help that the
helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most
lenient case; since, out of lenity to forego one's claim,
is less to be a friendly creditor than to cease to be a
creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon this
lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the
worst, is subject to all mortal contingencies. He may
travel, he may marry, he may join the Come-Outers,
or some equally untoward school or sect, not to speak of
other things that more or less tend to new-cast the
character. And were there nothing else, who shall
answer for his digestion, upon which so much depends?”
“But Charlie, dear Charlie—”
“Nay, wait.—You have hearkened to my story in
vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and
right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no
guarantee for the future. And into the power of
that uncertain personality which, through the mutability
of my humanity, I may hereafter become,
should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in
your present need, be willing to accept a loan from a
friend, securing him by a mortgage on your homestead,
and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel satisfied
that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred
into the hands of a foe? Yet the difference
between this man and that man is not so great as the
difference between what the same man be to-day and
-- 348 --
[figure description] Page 348.[end figure description]
what he may be in days to come. For there is no bent
of heart or turn of thought which any man holds by
virtue of an unalterable nature or will. Even those
feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal
persuasions, they may in reality be but the result
of some chance tip of Fate's elbow in throwing her dice.
For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and passing
by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that
habit of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you
change this man's experiences or that man's books, will
wisdom go surety for his unchanged convictions? As
particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I
will hear nothing of that fine babble about development
and its laws; there is no development in opinion and
feeling but the developments of time and tide. You
may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids
me show you how fundamental the reasons for treating
you as I do.”
“But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are
these? I thought that man was no poor drifting weed
of the universe, as you phrased it; that, if so minded,
he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of
his own? But now you have turned everything upside
down again, with an inconsistency that amazes and
shocks me.”
“Inconsistency? Bah!”
“There speaks the ventriloquist again,” sighed
Frank, in bitterness.
-- 349 --
[figure description] Page 349.[end figure description]
Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion
little flattering to his originality, however much so
to his docility, the disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming:
“Yes, I turn over day and night, with
indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master,
and unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing
there that leads me to think otherwise than I do. But
enough: in this matter the experience of China Aster
teaches a moral more to the point than anything Mark
Winsome can offer, or I either.”
“I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China
Aster, nor do I stand in his position. The loan to China
Aster was to extend his business with; the loan I seek
is to relieve my necessities.”
“Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your
cheek is not gaunt. Why talk of necessities when
nakedness and starvation beget the only real necessities?”
“But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now
conjure you to forget that I was ever your friend, while
I apply to you only as a fellow-being, whom, surely,
you will not turn away.”
“That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to
the ground, and supplicate an alms of me in the way of
London streets, and you shall not be a sturdy beggar in
vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for
the honor of noble friendship, I turn stranger.”
“Enough,” cried the other, rising, and with a toss of
his shoulders seeming disdainfully to throw off the
-- 350 --
[figure description] Page 350.[end figure description]
character he had assumed. “Enough. I have had my fill
of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put into action.
And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself
engaged I should find. But, miserable for my race
should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when he
claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that
the study of it tended to much the same formation of
character with the experiences of the world.—Apt disciple!
Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil both
of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool
by the under ice of the heart? What your illustrious
magian has taught you, any poor, old, broken-down,
heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray, leave
me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman
philosophy. And here, take this shilling, and at the
first wood-landing buy yourself a few chips to warm the
frozen natures of you and your philosopher by.”
With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan
turned on his heel, leaving his companion at a loss to
determine where exactly the fictitious character had
been dropped, and the real one, if any, resumed. If
any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to
him, as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar
lines:
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
Who have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
-- --
CHAPTER XLII. UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.
[figure description] Page 351.[end figure description]
“Bless you, barber!”
Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber
had been all alone until within the ten minutes last
passed; when, finding himself rather dullish company to
himself, he thought he would have a good time with
Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus
and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one
was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain,
who, though much listened to by some, no wise
man would believe under oath.
In short, with back presented to the glare of his
lamps, and so to the door, the honest barber was taking
what are called cat-naps, and dreaming in his chair; so
that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction above, pronounced
in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake,
he stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger
stood behind. What with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments,
therefore, the voice seemed a sort of spiritual
manifestation to him; so that, for the moment,
-- 352 --
[figure description] Page 352.[end figure description]
he stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the
air.
“Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds
there with salt?”
“Ah!” turning round disenchanted, “it is only a
man, then.”
“Only a man? As if to be but man were nothing.
But don't be too sure what I am. You call me man,
just as the townsfolk called the angels who, in man's
form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs.
You can conclude nothing absolute from the human
form, barber.”
“But I can conclude something from that sort of
talk, with that sort of dress,” shrewdly thought the
barber, eying him with regained self-possession, and not
without some latent touch of apprehension at being
alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed
divined by the other, who now, more rationally and
gravely, and as if he expected it should be attended to,
said: “Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave,”
at the same time loosening his neck-cloth. “Are you
competent to a good shave, barber?”
“No broker more so, sir,” answered the barber, whom
the business-like proposition instinctively made confine
to business-ends his views of the visitor.
“Broker? What has a broker to do with lather?
A broker I have always understood to be a worthy dealer
in certain papers and metals.”
-- 353 --
[figure description] Page 353.[end figure description]
“He, he!” taking him now for some dry sort of joker,
whose jokes, he being a customer, it might be as well
to appreciate, “he, he! You understand well enough,
sir. Take this seat, sir,” laying his hand on a great
stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimsoncovered,
and raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed
but to lack a canopy and quarterings, to make it in
aspect quite a throne, “take this seat, sir.”
“Thank you,” sitting down; “and now, pray, explain
that about the broker. But look, look—what's
this?” suddenly rising, and pointing, with his long pipe,
towards a gilt notification swinging among colored flypapers
from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, “No Trust?”
“No trust means distrust; distrust means no confidence.
Barber,” turning upon him excitedly, “what fell suspiciousness
prompts this scandalous confession? My
life!” stamping his foot, “if but to tell a dog that you
have no confidence in him be matter for affront to the
dog, what an insult to take that way the whole haughty
race of man by the beard! By my heart, sir! but at
least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites
with the pluck of Agamemnon.”
“Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line,”
said the barber, rather ruefully, being now again hopeless
of his customer, and not without return of uneasiness;
“not in my line, sir,” he emphatically repeated.
“But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit,
barber, which I sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a
disrespect for man. For how, indeed, may respectful
conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual habit of
-- 354 --
[figure description] Page 354.[end figure description]
taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too,
clearly see the import of your notification, I do not, as
yet, perceive the object. What is it?”
“Now you speak a little in my line, sir,” said the
barber, not unrelieved at this return to plain talk;
“that notification I find very useful, sparing me much
work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good deal,
off and on, before putting that up,” gratefully glancing
towards it.
“But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to
say, in so many words, that you have no confidence?
For instance, now,” flinging aside his neck-cloth, throwing
back his blouse, and reseating himself on the tonsorial
throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber
mechanically filled a cup with hot water from a copper
vessel over a spirit-lamp, “for instance, now, suppose I
say to you, `Barber, my dear barber, unhappily I have
no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
depend upon your money to-morrow'—suppose I should
say that now, you would put trust in me, wouldn't
you? You would have confidence?”
“Seeing that it is you, sir,” with complaisance
replied the barber, now mixing the lather, “seeing that
it is you, sir, I won't answer that question. No need to.”
“Of course, of course—in that view. But, as a supposition—
you would have confidence in me, wouldn't
you?”
“Why—yes, yes.”
“Then why that sign?”
“Ah, sir, all people ain't like you,” was the smooth
-- 355 --
[figure description] Page 355.[end figure description]
reply, at the same time, as if smoothly to close the
debate, beginning smoothly to apply the lather, which
operation, however, was, by a motion, protested against
by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which
was done in these words:
“All people ain't like me. Then I must be either
better or worse than most people. Worse, you could
not mean; no, barber, you could not mean that; hardly
that. It remains, then, that you think me better than
most people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe;
though, from vanity, I confess, I could never yet, by my
best wrestlings, entirely free myself; nor, indeed, to be
frank, am I at bottom over anxious to—this same vanity,
barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
pleasingly preposterous a passion.”
“Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk
very well. But the lather is getting a little cold, sir.”
“Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why
that cold sign? Ah, I don't wonder you try to shirk
the confession. You feel in your soul how ungenerous
a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
your eyes—which somehow speak to me of the mother
that must have so often looked into them before me—I
dare say, though you may not think it, that the spirit of
that notification is not one with your nature. For look
now, setting business views aside, regarding the thing
in an abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber;
supposing, I say, you see a stranger, his face accidentally
averted, but his visible part very respectable-looking;
what now, barber—I put it to your conscience, to your
-- 356 --
[figure description] Page 356.[end figure description]
charity—what would be your impression of that man,
in a moral point of view? Being in a signal sense a
stranger, would you, for that, signally set him down for
a knave?”
“Certainly not, sir; by no means,” cried the barber,
humanely resentful.
“You would upon the face of him—”
“Hold, sir,” said the barber, “nothing about the face;
you remember, sir, that is out of sight.”
“I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the
back of him, conclude him to be, not improbably, some
worthy sort of person; in short, an honest man; wouldn't
you?”
“Not unlikely I should, sir.”
“Well now—don't be so impatient with your brush,
barber—suppose that honest man meet you by night in
some dark corner of the boat where his face would still
remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave—
how then?”
“Wouldn't trust him, sir.”
“But is not an honest man to be trusted?”
“Why—why—yes, sir.”
“There! don't you see, now?”
“See what?” asked the disconcerted barber, rather
vexedly.
“Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't
you?”
“No,” doggedly.
“Barber,” gravely, and after a pause of concern,
“the enemies of our race have a saying that insincerity
-- 357 --
[figure description] Page 357.[end figure description]
is the most universal and inveterate vice of man—the
lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of individuals
or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?”
“Hity-tity!” cried the barber, losing patience, and
with it respect; “stubbornness?” Then clattering
round the brush in the cup, “Will you be shaved, or
won't you?”
“Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but,
pray, don't raise your voice that way. Why, now, if
you go through life gritting your teeth in that fashion,
what a comfortless time you will have.”
“I take as much comfort in this world as you or any
other man,” cried the barber, whom the other's sweetness
of temper seemed rather to exasperate than soothe.
“To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness
I have often observed to be peculiar to certain
orders of men,” said the other pensively, and half to
himself, “just as to be indifferent to that imputation,
from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to
other kinds of men. Pray, barber,” innocently looking
up, “which think you is the superior creature?”
“All this sort of talk,” cried the barber, still unmollified,
“is, as I told you once before, not in my line. In
a few minutes I shall shut up this shop. Will you be
shaved?”
“Shave away, barber. What hinders?” turning up
his face like a flower.
-- 358 --
[figure description] Page 358.[end figure description]
The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at
length it became necessary to prepare to relather a
little—affording an opportunity for resuming the subject,
which, on one side, was not let slip.
“Barber,” with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling
his way, “barber, now have a little patience with me;
do; trust me, I wish not to offend. I have been thinking
over that supposed case of the man with the averted
face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that,
by your opposite replies to my questions at the time,
you showed yourself much of a piece with a good many
other men—that is, you have confidence, and then again,
you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you
think it sensible standing for a sensible man, one foot
on confidence and the other on suspicion? Don't you
think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
think consistency requires that you should either say `I
have confidence in all men,' and take down your notification;
or else say, `I suspect all men,' and keep it up.”
This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting
the case, did not fail to impress the barber, and proportionately
conciliate him. Likewise, from its pointedness,
it served to make him thoughtful; for, instead of going
to the copper vessel for more water, as he had purposed,
he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
hand, said: “Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice.
I don't say, and can't say, and wouldn't say, that
I suspect all men; but I do say that strangers are not
to be trusted, and so,” pointing up to the sign, “no
trust.”
-- 359 --
[figure description] Page 359.[end figure description]
“But look, now, I beg, barber,” rejoined the other
deprecatingly, not presuming too much upon the barber's
changed temper; “look, now; to say that strangers
are not to be trusted, does not that imply something
like saying that mankind is not to be trusted;
for the mass of mankind, are they not necessarily
strangers to each individual man? Come, come,
my friend,” winningly, “you are no Timon to hold
the mass of mankind untrustworthy. Take down
your notification; it is misanthropical; much the same
sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of
a skull stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber;
take it down to-night. Trust men. Just try the experiment
of trusting men for this one little trip. Come
now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against
losing a cent.”
The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, “Sir,
you must excuse me. I have a family.”
-- --
CHAPTER XLIII. VERY CHARMING.
[figure description] Page 360.[end figure description]
“So you are a philanthropist, sir,” added the barber
with an illuminated look; “that accounts, then, for all.
Very odd sort of man the philanthropist. You are the
second one, sir, I have seen. Very odd sort of man,
indeed, the philanthropist. Ah, sir,” again meditatively
stirring in the shaving-cup, “I sadly fear, lest you
philanthropists know better what goodness is, than
what men are.” Then, eying him as if he were some
strange creature behind cage-bars, “So you are a philanthropist,
sir.”
“I am Philanthropos, and love mankind. And, what
is more than you do, barber, I trust them.”
Here the barber, causally recalled to his business,
would have replenished his shaving-cup, but finding
now that on his last visit to the water-vessel he had not
replaced it over the lamp, he did so now; and, while
waiting for it to heat again, became almost as sociable
as if the heating water were meant for whisky-punch;
and almost as pleasantly garrulous as the pleasant barbers
in romances.
“Sir,” said he, taking a throne beside his customer
-- 361 --
[figure description] Page 361.[end figure description]
(for in a row there were three thrones on the dais, as
for the three kings of Cologne, those patron saints of the
barber), “sir, you say you trust men. Well, I suppose
I might share some of your trust, were it not for
this trade, that I follow, too much letting me in behind
the scenes.”
“I think I understand,” with a saddened look; “and
much the same thing I have heard from persons in
pursuits different from yours—from the lawyer, from
the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others,
each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming
for his vocation the distinction of affording the
surest inlets to the conviction that man is no better
than he should be. All of which testimony, if reliable,
would, by mutual corroboration, justify some disturbance
in a good man's mind. But no, no; it is a mistake—all
a mistake.”
“True, sir, very true,” assented the barber.
“Glad to hear that,” brightening up.
“Not so fast, sir,” said the barber; “I agree with you
in thinking that the lawyer, and the congressman, and
the editor, are in error, but only in so far as each claims
peculiar facilities for the sort of knowledge in question;
because, you see, sir, the truth is, that every trade or
pursuit which brings one into contact with the facts,
sir, such trade or pursuit is equally an avenue to those
facts.”
“How exactly is that?”
“Why, sir, in my opinion—and for the last twenty
years I have, at odd times, turned the matter over some in
-- 362 --
[figure description] Page 362.[end figure description]
my mind—he who comes to know man, will not remain
in ignorance of man. I think I am not rash in saying
that; am I, sir?”
“Barber, you talk like an oracle—obscurely, barber,
obscurely.”
“Well, sir,” with some self-complacency, “the barber
has always been held an oracle, but as for the obscurity,
that I don't admit.”
“But pray, now, by your account, what precisely
may be this mysterious knowledge gained in your trade?
I grant you, indeed, as before hinted, that your trade,
imposing on you the necessity of functionally tweaking
the noses of mankind, is, in that respect, unfortunate,
very much so; nevertheless, a well-regulated
imagination should be proof even to such a provocation
to improper conceits. But what I want to
learn from you, barber, is, how does the mere handling
of the outside of men's heads lead you to distrust the
inside of their hearts?
“What, sir, to say nothing more, can one be forever
dealing in macassar oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches,
wigs, and toupees, and still believe that men are
wholly what they look to be? What think you, sir, are a
thoughtful barber's reflections, when, behind a careful
curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and
then dismisses it to the world, radiant in curling auburn?
To contrast the shamefaced air behind the
curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly
discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the
cheerful assurance and challenging pride with which
-- 363 --
[figure description] Page 363.[end figure description]
the same man steps forth again, a gay deception, into
the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow
humbly gives him the wall. Ah, sir, they may talk of
the courage of truth, but my trade teaches me that
truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies, lies, sir, brave lies
are the lions!”
“You twist the moral, barber; you sadly twist it.
Look, now; take it this way: A modest man thrust out
naked into the street, would he not be abashed? Take
him in and clothe him; would not his confidence be
restored? And in either case, is any reproach involved?
Now, what is true of the whole, holds proportionably
true of the part. The bald head is a nakedness which
the wig is a coat to. To feel uneasy at the possibility
of the exposure of one's nakedness at top, and to feel
comforted by the consciousness of having it clothed—
these feelings, instead of being dishonorable to a bold
man, do, in fact, but attest a proper respect for himself
and his fellows. And as for the deception, you may as
well call the fine roof of a fine chateau a deception,
since, like a fine wig, it also is an artificial cover to the
head, and equally, in the common eye, decorates the
wearer.—I have confuted you, my dear barber; I have
confounded you.”
“Pardon,” said the barber, “but I do not see that you
have. His coat and his roof no man pretends to palm
off as a part of himself, but the bald man palms off hair,
not his, for his own.”
“Not his, barber? If he have fairly purchased his
hair, the law will protect him in its ownership, even
-- 364 --
[figure description] Page 364.[end figure description]
against the claims of the head on which it grew. But
it cannot be that you believe what you say, barber;
you talk merely for the humor. I could not think so
of you as to suppose that you would contentedly deal
in the impostures you condemn.”
“Ah, sir, I must live.”
“And can't you do that without sinning against your
conscience, as you believe? Take up some other calling.”
“Wouldn't mend the matter much, sir.”
“Do you think, then, barber, that, in a certain point,
all the trades and callings of men are much on a par?
Fatal, indeed,” raising his hand, “inexpressibly dreadful,
the trade of the barber, if to such conclusions it
necessarily leads. Barber,” eying him not without
emotion, “you appear to me not so much a misbeliever,
as a man misled. Now, let me set you on the right
track; let me restore you to trust in human nature, and
by no other means than the very trade that has brought
you to suspect it.”
“You mean, sir, you would have me try the experiment
of taking down that notification,” again pointing
to it with his brush; “but, dear me, while I sit chatting
here, the water boils over.”
With which words, and such a well-pleased, sly, snug,
expression, as they say some men have when they think
their little stratagem has succeeded, he hurried to the
copper vessel, and soon had his cup foaming up with
white bubbles, as if it were a mug of new ale.
Meantime, the other would have fain gone on with
-- 365 --
[figure description] Page 365.[end figure description]
the discourse; but the cunning barber lathered him with
so generous a brush, so piled up the foam on him, that
his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and vain
to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in
the sea to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing
would do, but he must keep his mouth shut. Doubtless,
the interval was not, in a meditative way, unimproved;
for, upon the traces of the operation being at last removed,
the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment,
washed his face and hands; and having generally
readjusted himself, began, at last, addressing the barber
in a manner different, singularly so, from his previous
one. Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any
more than to hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign
way, not wholly unlike the manner, fabled or otherwise,
of certain creatures in nature, which have the power of
persuasive fascination—the power of holding another
creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite
the serious disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest,
of the victim. With this manner the conclusion of the
matter was not out of keeping; for, in the end, all argument
and expostulation proved vain, the barber being
irresistibly persuaded to agree to try, for the remainder
of the present trip, the experiment of trusting men, as
both phrased it. True, to save his credit as a free agent,
he was loud in averring that it was only for the novelty
of the thing that he so agreed, and he required the other,
as before volunteered, to go security to him against any
loss that might ensue; but still the fact remained, that
he engaged to trust men, a thing he had before said he
-- 366 --
[figure description] Page 366.[end figure description]
would not do, at least not unreservedly. Still the more
to save his credit, he now insisted upon it, as a last point,
that the agreement should be put in black and white,
especially the security part. The other made no demur;
pen, ink, and paper were provided, and grave as any
notary the cosmopolitan sat down, but, ere taking the
pen, glanced up at the notification, and said: “First
down with that sign, barber—Timon's sign, there; down
with it.”
This, being in the agreement, was done—though a little
reluctantly—with an eye to the future, the sign being
carefully put away in a drawer.
“Now, then, for the writing,” said the cosmopolitan,
squaring himself. “Ah,” with a sigh, “I shall make a
poor lawyer, I fear. Ain't used, you see, barber, to a
business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds no
nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber,” taking up the
blank paper, “that such flimsy stuff as this should make
such strong hawsers; vile hawsers, too. Barber,”
starting up, “I won't put it in black and white. It
were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your
word, and you shall take mine.”
“But your memory may be none of the best, sir. Well
for you, on your side, to have it in black and white, just
for a memorandum like, you know.”
“That, indeed! Yes, and it would help your memory,
too, wouldn't it, barber? Yours, on your side, being a
little weak, too, I dare say. Ah, barber! how ingenious
we human beings are; and how kindly we reciprocate
each other's little delicacies, don't we? What better
-- 367 --
[figure description] Page 367.[end figure description]
proof, now, that we are kind, considerate fellows, with
responsive fellow-feelings—eh, barber? But to business.
Let me see. What's your name, barber?”
“William Cream, sir.”
Pondering a moment, he began to write; and, after
some corrections, leaned back, and read aloud the following:
“Agreement
“Between
“Frank Goodman, Philanthropist, and Citizen of the World,
“and
“William Cream, Barber of the Mississippi steamer, Fidèle.
“The first hereby agrees to make good to the last any loss that may
come from his trusting mankind, in the way of his vocation, for the residue
of the present trip; PROVIDED that William Cream keep out of
sight, for the given term, his notification of `No Trust,' and by no other
mode convey any, the least hint or intimation, tending to discourage
men from soliciting trust from him, in the way of his vocation, for the
time above specified; but, on the contrary, he do, by all proper and
reasonable words, gestures, manners, and looks, evince a perfect confidence
in all men, especially strangers; otherwise, this agreement to be
void.
“Done, in good faith, this 1st day of April, 18—, at a quarter to
twelve o'clock, P. M., in the shop of said William Cream, on board the
said boat, Fidèle.”
“There, barber; will that do?”
“That will do,” said the barber, “only now put down
your name.”
Both signatures being affixed, the question was started
by the barber, who should have custody of the instrument;
which point, however, he settled for himself, by
proposing that both should go together to the captain,
-- 368 --
[figure description] Page 368.[end figure description]
and give the document into his hands—the barber hinting
that this would be a safe proceeding, because the
captain was necessarily a party disinterested, and, what
was more, could not, from the nature of the present
case, make anything by a breach of trust. All of which
was listened to with some surprise and concern.
“Why, barber,” said the cosmopolitan, “this don't
show the right spirit; for me, I have confidence in the
captain purely because he is a man; but he shall have
nothing to do with our affair; for if you have no confidence
in me, barber, I have in you. There, keep the
paper yourself,” handing it magnanimously.
“Very good,” said the barber, “and now nothing remains
but for me to receive the cash.”
Though the mention of that word, or any of its singularly
numerous equivalents, in serious neighborhood
to a requisition upon one's purse, is attended with a
more or less noteworthy effect upon the human countenance,
producing in many an abrupt fall of it—in others,
a writhing and screwing up of the features to a point
not undistressing to behold, in some, attended with a
blank pallor and fatal consternation—yet no trace of
any of these symptoms was visible upon the countenance
of the cosmopolitan, notwithstanding nothing could be
more sudden and unexpected than the barber's demand.
“You speak of cash, barber; pray in what connection?”
“In a nearer one, sir,” answered the barber, less
blandly, “than I thought the man with the sweet voice
-- 369 --
[figure description] Page 369.[end figure description]
stood, who wanted me to trust him once for a shave, on
the score of being a sort of thirteenth cousin.”
“Indeed, and what did you say to him?”
“I said, `Thank you, sir, but I don't see the connection.
'”
“How could you so unsweetly answer one with a
sweet voice?”
“Because, I recalled what the son of Sirach says in
the True Book: `An enemy speaketh sweetly with his
lips;' and so I did what the son of Sirach advises in such
cases: `I believed not his many words.'”
“What, barber, do you say that such cynical sort of
things are in the True Book, by which, of course, you
mean the Bible?”
“Yes, and plenty more to the same effect. Read the
Book of Proverbs.”
“That's strange, now, barber; for I never happen to
have met with those passages you cite. Before I go
to bed this night, I'll inspect the Bible I saw on the
cabin-table, to-day. But mind, you mustn't quote the
True Book that way to people coming in here; it would
be impliedly a violation of the contract. But you don't
know how glad I feel that you have for one while signed
off all that sort of thing.”
“No, sir; not unless you down with the cash.”
“Cash again! What do you mean?”
“Why, in this paper here, you engage, sir, to insure
me against a certain loss, and—”
“Certain? Is it so certain you are going to lose?”
“Why, that way of taking the word may not be
-- 370 --
[figure description] Page 370.[end figure description]
amiss, but I didn't mean it so. I meant a certain loss;
you understand, a CERTAIN loss; that is to say, a certain
loss. Now then, sir, what use your mere writing
and saying you will insure me, unless beforehand you
place in my hands a money-pledge, sufficient to that
end?”
“I see; the material pledge.”
“Yes, and I will put it low; say fifty dollars.”
“Now what sort of a beginning is this? You, barber,
for a given time engage to trust man, to put confidence
in men, and, for your first step, make a demand
implying no confidence in the very man you engage
with. But fifty dollars is nothing, and I would let you
have it cheerfully, only I unfortunately happen to have
but little change with me just now.”
“But you have money in your trunk, though?”
“To be sure. But you see—in fact, barber, you
must be consistent. No, I won't let you have the money
now; I won't let you violate the inmost spirit of our
contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you
again.”
“Stay, sir”—humming and hawing—“you have forgotten
something.”
“Handkerchief?—gloves? No, forgotten nothing.
Good-night.”
“Stay, sir—the—the shaving.”
“Ah, I did forget that. But now that it strikes me,
I shan't pay you at present. Look at your agreement;
you must trust. Tut! against loss you hold the guarantee.
Good-night, my dear barber.”
-- 371 --
[figure description] Page 371.[end figure description]
With which words he sauntered off, leaving the barber
in a maze, staring after.
But it holding true in fascination as in natural philosophy,
that nothing can act where it is not, so the
barber was not long now in being restored to his self-possession
and senses; the first evidence of which perhaps
was, that, drawing forth his notification from the drawer,
he put it back where it belonged; while, as for the
agreement, that he tore up; which he felt the more free
to do from the impression that in all human probability
he would never again see the person who had drawn it.
Whether that impression proved well-founded or not,
does not appear. But in after days, telling the night's
adventure to his friends, the worthy barber always
spoke of his queer customer as the man-charmer—as
certain East Indians are called snake-charmers—and all
his friends united in thinking him quite an Original.
-- --
CHAPTER XLIV. IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE THE TEXT OF DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION FROM THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
[figure description] Page 372.[end figure description]
una
“Quite an Original:” A phrase, we fancy, rather
oftener used by the young, or the unlearned, or the untraveled,
than by the old, or the well-read, or the man
who has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense of
originality exists at its highest in an infant, and probably
at its lowest in him who has completed the circle
of the sciences.
As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader
will, on meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that
day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who, at
one creation, produces some two or three score such
characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly
be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote,
or Milton's Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a
thorough sense, original at all. They are novel, or
singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at
once.
More likely, they are what are called odd characters;
but for that, are no more original, than what is called
-- 373 --
[figure description] Page 373.[end figure description]
an odd genius, in his way, is. But, if original, whence
came they? Or where did the novelist pick them
up?
Where does any novelist pick up any character?
For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great
town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for
his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattleshow
for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds
are hardly more rare, than in the other are new
species of characters—that is, original ones. Their
rarity may still the more appear from this, that, while
characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms,
so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original
instincts.
In short, a due conception of what is to be held for
this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost
as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new
law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder
of a new religion.
In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted
such in works of invention, there is discernible
something prevailingly local, or of the age; which circumstance,
of itself, would seem to invalidate the claim,
judged by the principles here suggested.
Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held
to entitle characters in fiction to being deemed original,
is but something personal—confined to itself. The character
sheds not its characteristic on its surroundings,
whereas, the original character, essentially such, is like
a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself
-- 374 --
[figure description] Page 374.[end figure description]
all round it—everything is lit by it, everything starts
up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet), so that, in certain
minds, there follows upon the adequate conception
of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that
which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of
things.
For much the same reason that there is but one
planet to one orbit, so can there be but one such original
character to one work of invention. Two would
conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are
more than one to a book, is good presumption there is
none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric,
and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters,
a good fiction may be full of them. To produce
such characters, an author, beside other things, must
have seen much, and seen through much: to produce
but one original character, he must have had much
luck.
There would seem but one point in common between
this sort of phenomenon in fiction and all other sorts:
it cannot be born in the author's imagination—it being
as true in literature as in zoology, that all life is from
the egg.
In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety
of the phrase, Quite an Original, as applied by the barber's
friends, we have, at unawares, been led into a
dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the
smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned
to, will be, by retiring under cover of it, in good trim
as may be, to the story.
-- --
CHAPTER XLV. THE COSMOPOLITAN INCREASES IN SERIOUSNESS.
[figure description] Page 375.[end figure description]
In the middle of the gentlemen's cabin burned a solar
lamp, swung from the ceiling, and whose shade of
ground glass was all round fancifully variegated, in
transparency, with the image of a horned altar, from
which flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed
man, his head encircled by a halo. The light of this
lamp, after dazzlingly striking on marble, snow-white
and round—the slab of a centre-table beneath—on all
sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness,
till, like circles from a stone dropped in water, the
rays died dimly away in the furthest nook of the
place.
Here and there, true to their place, but not to their
function, swung other lamps, barren planets, which
had either gone out from exhaustion, or been extinguished
by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
or who wanted to sleep, not see.
By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining
lamp would have been extinguished as well, had
not a steward forbade, saying that the commands of the
captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
-- 376 --
[figure description] Page 376.[end figure description]
light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who,
like many in his vocation, was apt to be a little freespoken
at times, had been provoked by the man's pertinacity
to remind him, not only of the sad consequences
which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being
left in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that,
in a place full of strangers, to show one's self anxious to
produce darkness there, such an anxiety was, to say the
least, not becoming. So the lamp—last survivor of
many—burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some
berths, and inwardly execrated by those in others.
Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which
lighted his book on the table, sat a clean, comely, old
man, his head snowy as the marble, and a countenance
like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed
him and departed in peace. From his hale look of
greenness in winter, and his hands ingrained with the
tan, less, apparently, of the present summer, than of
accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do
farmer, happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity,
from the fields to the fireside—one of those who,
at three-score-and-ten, are fresh-hearted as at fifteen;
to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed than
knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted
by the world, because ignorant of it; just as a countryman
putting up at a London inn, and never stirring out
of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last without
once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.
Redolent from the barber's shop, as any bridegroom
-- 377 --
[figure description] Page 377.[end figure description]
tripping to the bridal chamber might come, and by his
look of cheeriness seeming to dispense a sort of morning
through the night, in came the cosmopolitan; but marking
the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned
himself down, and trod softly, and took a seat on the
other side of the table, and said nothing. Still, there
was a kind of waiting expression about him.
“Sir,” said the old man, after looking up puzzled at
him a moment, “sir,” said he, “one would think this
was a coffee-house, and it was war-time, and I had
a newspaper here with great news, and the only copy
to be had, you sit there looking at me so eager.”
“And so you have good news there, sir—the very
best of good news.”
“Too good to be true,” here came from one of the
curtained berths.
“Hark!” said the cosmopolitan. “Some one talks
in his sleep.”
“Yes,” said the old man, “and you—you seem to be
talking in a dream. Why speak you, sir, of news, and
all that, when you must see this is a book I have here—
the Bible, not a newspaper?”
“I know that; and when you are through with it—
but not a moment sooner—I will thank you for it. It
belongs to the boat, I believe—a present from a society.”
“Oh, take it, take it!”
“Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I
simply stated the fact in explanation of my waiting here—
nothing more. Read on, sir, or you will distress me.”
-- 378 --
[figure description] Page 378.[end figure description]
This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his
spectacles, and saying he had about finished his chapter,
the old man kindly presented the volume, which was
received with thanks equally kind. After reading for
some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness
into seriousness, and from that into a kind of
pain, the cosmopolitan slowly laid down the book, and
turning to the old man, who thus far had been watching
him with benign curiosity, said: “Can you, my aged
friend, resolve me a doubt—a disturbing doubt?”
“There are doubts, sir,” replied the old man, with a
changed countenance, “there are doubts, sir, which,
if man have them, it is not man that can solve
them.”
“True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one
who thinks well of man. I love man. I have confidence
in man. But what was told me not a half-hour
since? I was told that I would find it written—`Believe
not his many words—an enemy speaketh sweetly
with his lips'—and also I was told that I would find a
good deal more to the same effect, and all in this book.
I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself,
what do I read? Not only just what was quoted,
but also, as was engaged, more to the same purpose,
such as this: `With much communication he will
tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair,
and say What wantest thou? If thou be for his profit
he will use thee; he will make thee bear, and will not
be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed. When
thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.'”
-- 379 --
[figure description] Page 379.[end figure description]
“Who's that describing the confidence-man?” here
came from the berth again.
“Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?” said the
cosmopolitan, again looking off in surprise. “Same
voice as before, ain't it? Strange sort of dreamy man,
that. Which is his berth, pray?”
“Never mind him, sir,” said the old man anxiously,
“but tell me truly, did you, indeed, read from the book
just now?”
“I did,” with changed air, “and gall and wormwood
it is to me, a truster in man; to me, a philanthropist.”
“Why,” moved, “you don't mean to say, that what
you repeated is really down there? Man and boy, I
have read the good book this seventy years, and don't
remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it,”
rising earnestly, and going round to him.
“There it is; and there—and there”—turning over
the leaves, and pointing to the sentences one by one;
“there—all down in the `Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of
Sirach.'”
“Ah!” cried the old man, brightening up, “now I
know. Look,” turning the leaves forward and back, till
all the Old Testament lay flat on one side, and all the
New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers he
supported vertically the portion between, “look, sir, all
this to the right is certain truth, and all this to the left
is certain truth, but all I hold in my hand here is
apocrypha.”
“Apocrypha?”
“Yes; and there's the word in black and white,'
-- 380 --
[figure description] Page 380.[end figure description]
pointing to it. “And what says the word? It says as
much as `not warranted;' for what do college men say
of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal.
The word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies
something of uncertain credit. So if your disturbance
be raised from aught in this apocrypha,” again taking
up the pages, “in that case, think no more of it, for it's
apocrypha.”
“What's that about the Apocalypse?” here, a third
time, came from the berth.
“He's seeing visions now, ain't he?” said the cosmopolitan,
once more looking in the direction of the interruption.
“But, sir,” resuming, “I cannot tell you how
thankful I am for your reminding me about the apocrypha
here. For the moment, its being such escaped me.
Fact is, when all is bound up together, it's sometimes
confusing. The uncanonical part should be bound distinct.
And, now that I think of it, how well did those
learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of
Sirach. I never read anything so calculated to destroy
man's confidence in man. This son of Sirach even says—
I saw it but just now: `Take heed of thy friends;' not,
observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends,
thy false friends, but thy friends, thy real friends—that
is to say, not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly
trusted. Can Rochefoucault equal that? I
should not wonder if his view of human nature, like
Machiavelli's, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And
to call it wisdom—the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach!
Wisdom, indeed! What an ugly thing wisdom must
-- 381 --
[figure description] Page 381.[end figure description]
be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek, say I,
rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But
no, no; it ain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir.
For how can that be trustworthy that teaches distrust?”
“I tell you what it is,” here cried the same voice as
before, only more in less of mockery, “if you two don't
know enough to sleep, don't be keeping wiser men
awake. And if you want to know what wisdom is, go
find it under your blankets.”
“Wisdom?” cried another voice with a borgue;
“arrah, and is't wisdom the two geese are gabbling
about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils, and
don't be after burning your fingers with the likes of
wisdom.
“We must talk lower,” said the old man; “I fear we
have annoyed these good people.”
“I should be sorry if wisdom annoyed any one,” said
the other; “but we will lower our voices, as you say.
To resume: taking the thing as I did, can you be surprised
at my uneasiness in reading passages so charged
with the spirit of distrust?”
“No, sir, I am not surprised,” said the old man; then
added: “from what you say, I see you are something
of my way of thinking—you think that to distrust the
creature, is a kind of distrusting of the Creator. Well,
my young friend, what is it? This is rather late for you
to be about. What do you want of me?”
These questions were put to a boy in the fragment of
an old linen coat, bedraggled and yellow, who, coming
-- 382 --
[figure description] Page 382.[end figure description]
in from the deck barefooted on the soft carpet, had been
unheard. All pointed and fluttering, the rags of the
little fellow's red-flannel shirt, mixed with those of his
yellow coat, flamed about him like the painted flames in
the robes of a victim in auto-da-fe. His face, too, wore
such a polish of seasoned grime, that his sloe-eyes
sparkled from out it like lustrous sparks in fresh coal.
He was a juvenile peddler, or marchand, as the polite
French might have called him, of travelers' conveniences;
and, having no allotted sleeping-place, had, in
his wanderings about the boat, spied, through glass
doors, the two in the cabin; and, late though it was,
thought it might never be too much so for turning a
penny.
Among other things, he carried a curious affair—a
miniature mahogany door, hinged to its frame, and suitably
furnished in all respects but one, which will shortly
appear. This little door he now meaningly held before
the old man, who, after staring at it a while, said: “Go
thy ways with thy toys, child.”
“Now, may I never get so old and wise as that comes
to,” laughed the boy through his grime; and, by so
doing, disclosing leopard-like teeth, like those of Murillo's
wild beggar-boy's.
“The divils are laughing now, are they?” here came
the brogue from the berth. “What do the divils find to
laugh about in wisdom, begorrah? To bed with ye, ye
divils, and no more of ye.”
“You see, child, you have disturbed that person,”
said the old man; “you mustn't laugh any more.”
-- 383 --
[figure description] Page 383.[end figure description]
“Ah, now,” said the cosmopolitan, “don't, pray, say
that; don't let him think that poor Laughter is persecuted
for a fool in this world.”
“Well,” said the old man to the boy, “you must, at
any rate, speak very low.”
“Yes, that wouldn't be amiss, perhaps,” said the
cosmopolitan; “but, my fine fellow, you were about
saying something to my aged friend here; what was
it?”
“Oh,” with a lowered voice, coolly opening and shutting
his little door, “only this: when I kept a toystand
at the fair in Cincinnati last month, I sold more
than one old man a child's rattle.”
“No doubt of it,” said the old man. “I myself often
buy such things for my little grandchildren.”
“But these old men I talk of were old bachelors.”
The old man stared at him a moment; then, whispering
to the cosmopolitan: “Strange boy, this; sort of
simple, ain't he? Don't know much, hey?”
“Not much,” said the boy, “or I wouldn't be so
ragged.”
“Why, child, what sharp ears you have!” exclaimed
the old man.
“If they were duller, I would hear less ill of myself,”
said the boy.
“You seem pretty wise, my lad,” said the cosmopolitan;
“why don't you sell your wisdom, and buy a
coat?”
“Faith,” said the boy, “that's what I did to-day, and
this is the coat that the prince of my wisdom bought.
-- 384 --
[figure description] Page 384.[end figure description]
But won't you trade? See, now, it is not the door I
want to sell; I only carry the door round for a specimen,
like. Look now, sir,” standing the thing up on the
table, “supposing this little door is your state-room
door; well,” opening it, “you go in for the night;
you close your door behind you—thus. Now, is all
safe?”
“I suppose so, child,” said the old man.
“Of course it is, my fine fellow,” said the cosmopolitan.
“All safe. Well. Now, about two o'clock in the
morning, say, a soft-handed gentleman comes softly and
tries the knob here—thus; in creeps my soft-handed
gentleman; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft
cash?”
“I see, I see, child,” said the old man; “your fine
gentleman is a fine thief, and there's no lock to your
little door to keep him out;” with which words he
peered at it more closely than before.
“Well, now,” again showing his white teeth, “well,
now, some of you old folks are knowing 'uns, sure
enough; but now comes the great invention,” producing
a small steel contrivance, very simple but ingenious,
and which, being clapped on the inside of the little
door, secured it as with a bolt. “There now,” admiringly
holding it off at arm's-length, “there now, let
that soft-handed gentleman come now a' softly trying
this little knob here, and let him keep a' trying till he
finds his head as soft as his hand. Buy the traveler's
patent lock, sir, only twenty-five cents.”
-- 385 --
[figure description] Page 385.[end figure description]
“Dear me,” cried the old man, “this beats printing.
Yes, child, I will have one, and use it this very
night.”
With the phlegm of an old banker pouching the
change, the boy now turned to the other: “Sell you
one, sir?”
“Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use such
blacksmiths' things.”
“Those who give the blacksmith most work seldom
do,” said the boy, tipping him a wink expressive of a
degree of indefinite knowingness, not uninteresting to
consider in one of his years. But the wink was not
marked by the old man, nor, to all appearances, by him
for whom it was intended.
“Now then,” said the boy, again addressing the old
man. “With your traveler's lock on your door to-night,
you will think yourself all safe, won't you?”
“I think I will, child.”
“But how about the window?”
“Dear me, the window, child. I never thought of
that. I must see to that.”
“Never you mind about the window,” said the boy,
nor, to be honor bright, about the traveler's lock either,
(though I ain't sorry for selling one), do you just buy
one of these little jokers,” producing a number of suspender-like
objects, which he dangled before the old
man; “money-belts, sir; only fifty cents.”
“Money-belt? never heard of such a thing.”
“A sort of pocket-book,” said the boy, “only a safer
sort. Very good for travelers.”
-- 386 --
[figure description] Page 386.[end figure description]
“Oh, a pocket-book. Queer looking pocket-books
though, seems to me. Ain't they rather long and narrow
for pocket-books?”
“They go round the waist, sir, inside,” said the boy
“door open or locked, wide awake on your feet or fast
asleep in your chair, impossible to be robbed with a
money-belt.”
“I see, I see. It would be hard to rob one's money-belt.
And I was told to-day the Mississippi is a bad
river for pick-pockets. How much are they?”
“Only fifty cents, sir.”
“I'll take one. There!”
“Thank-ee. And now there's a present for ye,” with
which, drawing from his breast a batch of little papers,
he threw one before the old man, who, looking at it, read
“Counterfeit Detector.”
“Very good thing,” said the boy, “I give it to all my
customers who trade seventy-five cents' worth; best
present can be made them. Sell you a money-belt,
sir?” turning to the cosmopolitan.
“Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that
sort of thing; my money I carry loose.”
“Loose bait ain't bad,” said the boy, “look a lie and
find the truth; don't care about a Counterfeit Detector,
do ye? or is the wind East, d'ye think?”
“Child,” said the old man in some concern, “you
mustn't sit up any longer, it affects your mind; there, go
away, go to bed.”
“If I had some people's brains to lie on, I would,”
said the boy, “but planks is hard, you know.”
-- 387 --
[figure description] Page 387.[end figure description]
“Go, child—go, go!”
“Yes, child,—yes, yes,” said the boy, with which
roguish parody, by way of congé, he scraped back his
hard foot on the woven flowers of the carpet, much as a
mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat—
which, like the rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard
times, a belonging beyond his years, though not beyond
his experience, being a grown man's cast-off beaver—
turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the
place.
“That's a strange boy,” said the old man, looking
after him. “I wonder who's his mother; and whether
she knows what late hours he keeps?”
“The probability is,” observed the other, “that his
mother does not know. But if you remember, sir, you
were saying something, when the boy interrupted you
with his door.”
“So I was.—Let me see,” unmindful of his purchases
for the moment, “what, now, was it? What was that
I was saying? Do you remember?”
“Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was
something like this: you hoped you did not distrust the
creature; for that would imply distrust of the Creator.”
“Yes, that was something like it,” mechanically and
unintelligently letting his eye fall now on his purchases.
“Pray, will you put your money in your belt to-night?”
“It's best, ain't it?” with a slight start. “Never
-- 388 --
[figure description] Page 388.[end figure description]
too late to be cautious. `Beware of pick-pockets' is
all over the boat.”
“Yes, and it must have been the Son of Sirach, or
some other morbid cynic, who put them there. But
that's not to the purpose. Since you are minded to it,
pray, sir, let me help you about the belt. I think that,
between us, we can make a secure thing of it.”
“Oh no, no, no!” said the old man, not unperturbed,
“no, no, I wouldn't trouble you for the world,” then,
nervously folding up the belt, “and I won't be so impolite
as to do it for myself, before you, either. But,
now that I think of it,” after a pause, carefully taking
a little wad from a remote corner of his vest pocket,
“here are two bills they gave me at St. Louis, yesterday.
No doubt they are all right; but just to pass
time, I'll compare them with the Detector here. Blessed
boy to make me such a present. Public benefactor,
that little boy!”
Laying the Detector square before him on the table,
he then, with something of the air of an officer bringing
by the collar a brace of culprits to the bar, placed the
two bills opposite the Detector, upon which, the examination
began, lasting some time, prosecuted with
no small research and vigilance, the forefinger of the
right hand proving of lawyer-like efficacy in tracing out
and pointing the evidence, whichever way it might go.
After watching him a while, the cosmopolitan said in
a formal voice, “Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman;
guilty, or not guilty?—Not guilty, ain't it?”
“I don't know, I don't know,” returned the old man,
-- 389 --
[figure description] Page 389.[end figure description]
perplexed, “there's so many marks of all sorts to go by,
it makes it a kind of uncertain. Here, now, is this bill,”
touching one, “it looks to be a three dollar bill on
the Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance Banking Company.
Well, the Detector says—”
“But why, in this case, care what it says? Trust and
Insurance! What more would you have?”
“No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things,
that, if a good bill, it must have, thickened here and
there into the substance of the paper, little wavy spots
of red; and it says they must have a kind of silky feel,
being made by the lint of a red silk handkerchief stirred
up in the paper-maker's vat—the paper being made to
order for the company.”
“Well, and is—”
“Stay. But then it adds, that sign is not always to
be relied on; for some good bills get so worn, the red
marks get rubbed out. And that's the case with my
bill here—see how old it is—or else it's a counterfeit, or
else—I don't see right—or else—dear, dear me—I don't
know what else to think.”
“What a peck of trouble that Detector makes for you
now; believe me, the bill is good; don't be so distrustful.
Proves what I've always thought, that much of
the want of confidence, in these days, is owing to these
Counterfeit Detectors you see on every desk and counter.
Puts people up to suspecting good bills. Throw it
away, I beg, if only because of the trouble it breeds
you.”
“No; it's troublesome, but I think I'll keep it.—Stay,
-- 390 --
[figure description] Page 390.[end figure description]
now, here's another sign. It says that, if the bill is good, it
must have in one corner, mixed in with the vignette, the
figure of a goose, very small, indeed, all but microscopic;
and, for added precaution, like the figure of Napoleon
outlined by the tree, not observable, even if magnified,
unless the attention is directed to it. Now, pore over it
as I will, I can't see this goose.”
“Can't see the goose? why, I can; and a famous
goose it is. There” (reaching over and pointing to
a spot in the vignette).
“I don't see it—dear me—I don't see the goose. Is
it a real goose?”
“A perfect goose; beautiful goose.”
“Dear, dear, I don't see it.”
“Then throw that Detector away, I say again; it
only makes you purblind; don't you see what a wildgoose
chase it has led you? The bill is good. Throw
the Detector away.”
“No; it ain't so satisfactory as I thought for, but
I must examine this other bill.”
“As you please, but I can't in conscience assist you
any more; pray, then, excuse me.”
So, while the old man with much painstakings resumed
his work, the cosmopolitan, to allow him every
facility, resumed his reading. At length, seeing that he
had given up his undertaking as hopeless, and was at
leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravely
interesting remarks to him about the book before him,
and, presently, becoming more and more grave, said, as
he turned the large volume slowly over on the table,
-- 391 --
[figure description] Page 391.[end figure description]
and with much difficulty traced the faded remains of the
gilt inscription giving the name of the society who had
presented it to the boat, “Ah, sir, though every one
must be pleased at the thought of the presence in public
places of such a book, yet there is something that
abates the satisfaction. Look at this volume; on the
outside, battered as any old valise in the baggage-room;
and inside, white and virgin as the hearts of lilies in
bud.”
“So it is, so it is,” said the old man sadly, his attention
for the first directed to the circumstance.
“Nor is this the only time,” continued the other,
“that I have observed these public Bibles in boats and
hotels. All much like this—old without, and new
within. True, this aptly typifies that internal freshness,
the best mark of truth, however ancient; but then,
it speaks not so well as could be wished for the good
book's esteem in the minds of the traveling public. I
may err, but it seems to me that if more confidence
was put in it by the traveling public, it would hardly
be so.”
With an expression very unlike that with which he
had bent over the Detector, the old man sat meditating
upon his companion's remarks a while; and, at last, with
a rapt look, said: “And yet, of all people, the traveling
public most need to put trust in that guardianship which
is made known in this book.”
“True, true,” thoughtfully assented the other.
“And one would think they would want to, and
be glad to,” continued the old man kindling; “for, in
-- 392 --
[figure description] Page 392.[end figure description]
all our wanderings through this vale, how pleasant, not
less than obligatory, to feel that we need start at no
wild alarms, provide for no wild perils; trusting in that
Power which is alike able and willing to protect us
when we cannot ourselves.”
His manner produced something answering to it in
the cosmopolitan, who, leaning over towards him, said
sadly: “Though this is a theme on which travelers
seldom talk to each other, yet, to you, sir, I will say,
that I share something of your sense of security. I have
moved much about the world, and still keep at it; nevertheless,
though in this land, and especially in these
parts of it, some stories are told about steamboats and
railroads fitted to make one a little apprehensive, yet, I
may say that, neither by land nor by water, am I ever
seriously disquieted, however, at times, transiently uneasy;
since, with you, sir, I believe in a Committee
of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an invisible
patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose
beat lies as much through forests as towns, along rivers
as streets. In short, I never forget that passage of
Scripture which says, `Jehovah shall be thy confidence.'
The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable
misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted
care must he take of himself.”
“Even so,” said the old man, lowly.
“There is a chapter,” continued the other, again
taking the book, “which, as not amiss, I must read you.
But this lamp, solar-lamp as it is, begins to burn dimly.”
“So it does, so it does,” said the old man with
-- 393 --
[figure description] Page 393.[end figure description]
changed air, “dear me, it must be very late. I must to
bed, to bed! Let me see,” rising and looking wistfully all
round, first on the stools and settees, and then on the
carpet, “let me see, let me see;—is there anything I
have forgot,—forgot? Something I a sort of dimly remember.
Something, my son—careful man—told me at
starting this morning, this very morning. Something
about seeing to—something before I got into my berth.
What could it be? Something for safety. Oh, my poor
old memory!”
“Let me give a little guess, sir. Life-preserver?”
“So it was. He told me not to omit seeing I had a
life-preserver in my state-room; said the boat supplied
them, too. But where are they? I don't see any.
What are they like?”
“They are something like this, sir, I believe,” lifting
a brown stool with a curved tin compartment underneath;
“yes, this, I think, is a life-preserver, sir; and
a very good one, I should say, though I don't pretend to
know much about such things, never using them myself.”
“Why, indeed, now! Who would have thought it?
that a life-preserver? That's the very stool I was sitting
on, ain't it?”
“It is. And that shows that one's life is looked out
for, when he ain't looking out for it himself. In fact,
any of these stools here will float you, sir, should the
boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But, since
you want one in your room, pray take this one,” handing
it to him. “I think I can recommend this one; the
-- 394 --
[figure description] Page 394.[end figure description]
tin part,” rapping it with his knuckles, “seems so perfect—
sounds so very hollow.”
“Sure it's quite perfect, though?” Then, anxiously
putting on his spectacles, he scrutinized it pretty
closely—“well soldered? quite tight?”
“I should say so, sir; though, indeed, as I said, I
never use this sort of thing, myself. Still, I think that
in case of a wreck, barring sharp-pointed timbers, you
could have confidence in that stool for a special providence.”
“Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have
both of us in its good keeping.”
“Be sure it will,” eying the old man with sympathy,
as for the moment he stood, money-belt in hand, and
life-preserver under arm, “be sure it will, sir, since
in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.
But, bless me, we are being left in the dark here. Pah!
what a smell, too.”
“Ah, my way now,” cried the old man, peering before
him, “where lies my way to my state-room?”
“I have indifferent eyes, and will show you; but, first,
for the good of all lungs, let me extinguish this lamp.”
The next moment, the waning light expired, and with
it the waning flames of the horned altar, and the waning
halo round the robed man's brow; while in the darkness
which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old man
away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.
