IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
--"'Philosophical Intelligence Office'--novel idea! But how did you come
to dream that I wanted anything in your absurd line, eh?"
About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Girádeau, the above was growled
out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had
just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean
five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate,
inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk
obliquely behind.
"How did you come to dream that I wanted anything in your line, eh?"
"Oh, respected sir," whined the other, crouching a pace nearer, and, in
his obsequiousness, seeming to wag his very coat-tails behind him,
shabby though they were, "oh, sir, from long experience, one glance
tells me the gentleman who is in need of our humble services."
"But suppose I did want a boy--what they jocosely call a good boy--how
could your absurd office help me?--Philosophical Intelligence Office?"
"Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical and
physio----"
"Look you--come up here--how, by philosophy or physiology either, make
good boys to order? Come up here. Don't give me a crick in the neck.
Come up here, come, sir, come," calling as if to his pointer. "Tell me,
how put the requisite assortment of good qualities into a boy, as the
assorted mince into the pie?"
"Respected sir, our office----"
"You talk much of that office. Where is it? On board this boat?"
"Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office----"
"Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do you know a herb-doctor
there? Smooth scamp in a snuff-colored surtout?"
"Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Girádeau. Though, now that you
mention a snuff-colored surtout, I think I met such a man as you speak
of stepping ashore as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian sort of person, I
should say. Do you know him, respected sir?"
"Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed with your business."
With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission, the other began:
"Our office----"
"Look you," broke in the bachelor with ire, "have you the spinal
complaint? What are you ducking and groveling about? Keep still. Where's
your office?"
"The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir, in the free state
we now pass," (pointing somewhat proudly ashore).
"Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself? With those coat-tails
and that spinal complaint of servility? Free? Just cast up in your
private mind who is your master, will you?"
"Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand--indeed--indeed. But, respected sir, as
before said, our office, founded on principles wholly new----"
"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk
of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I
tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old
home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels,
chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and
waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of
your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've
lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born
cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em."
"Oh dear, dear, dear!"
"Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your boys would be to me. A
rot on your boys!"
"But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might we not, in our
small way, accommodate you with a man?"
"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a
bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate:
there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a
loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a
chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be
accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours,
the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine
to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill--does that ever steal my
cider? My mowing-machine--does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My
corn-husker--does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill,
mowing-machine, corn-husker--all faithfully attend to their business.
Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives
long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward--the only practical
Christians I know."
"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!"
"Yes, sir:--boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference, in a moral
point of view, between a corn-husker and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for
its patient continuance in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven.
Do you suppose a boy will?"
"A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites of his eyes). Respected
sir, this way of talking as if heaven were a kind of Washington
patent-office museum--oh, oh, oh!--as if mere machine-work and
puppet-work went to heaven--oh, oh, oh! Things incapable of free agency,
to receive the eternal reward of well-doing--oh, oh, oh!"
"You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning about? Did I say
anything of that sort? Seems to me, though you talk so good, you are
mighty quick at a hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
quarrel with me."
"It may be so or not, respected sir," was now the demure reply; "but if
it be, it is only because as a soldier out of honor is quick in taking
affront, so a Christian out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a
little too much so, in spying heresy."
"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."
So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
further on the subject of servants.
"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."
"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
as I ventured to observe----"
"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."
"Save us, save us!"
"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
polite he grew."
"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."
"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
are rascals."
"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
and wholly?"
Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
continued as follows:
"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."
"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--
'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--
and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."
"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
man, I may have my small share of feelings."
"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
rascals."
"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
of the subject in hand?"
"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
other way. "Oh, yes; go on."
"Well, then, respected sir," continued the other, now assuming as
genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar
suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the
strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in
dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office is
founded, has led me and my associates, in our small, quiet way, to a
careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory, and
with an unobtrusive aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting from it, I will,
by your permission, very briefly mention; such of them, I mean, as refer
to the state of boyhood scientifically viewed."
"Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied boys, eh? Why didn't
you out with that before?"
"Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed with so many
masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing. I have been taught that in this
world there is a precedence of opinions as well as of persons. You have
kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty, about to give you
mine."
"Stop flunkying--go on."
"In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed by analogy
from the physical to the moral. Are we right there, sir? Now, sir, take
a young boy, a young male infant rather, a man-child in short--what sir,
I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?"
"A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!"
"Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. May I
proceed? Well, then, what, in the first place, in a general view, do you
remark, respected sir, in that male baby or man-child?"
The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the whole, better
governed himself than before, though not, indeed, to the degree of
thinking it prudent to risk an articulate response.
"What do you remark? I respectfully repeat." But, as no answer came,
only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the
questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small
way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation;
loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or
careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected
sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir,
the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to
deny it; but, then, he _promises_ well, does he not? Yes, promises very
well indeed, I may say. (So, too, we say to our patrons in reference to
some noble little youngster objected to for being a _dwarf_.) But, to
advance one step further," extending his thread-bare leg, as he drew a
pace nearer, "we must now drop the figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and
borrow one--to use presently, when wanted--from the horticultural
kingdom. Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such points as the
new-born man-child has--as yet not all that could be desired, I am free
to confess--still, such as they are, there they are, and palpable as
those of an adult. But we stop not here," taking another step. "The
man-child not only possesses these present points, small though they
are, but, likewise--now our horticultural image comes into play--like
the bud of the lily, he contains concealed rudiments of others; that
is, points at present invisible, with beauties at present dormant."
"Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural and beautiful
altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!"
"Respected sir," with a rustily martial sort of gesture, like a decayed
corporal's, "when deploying into the field of discourse the vanguard of
an important argument, much more in evolving the grand central forces of
a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you will kindly allow
scope adequate to the movement in hand, small and humble in its way as
that movement may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected sir?"
"Yes, stop flunkying and go on."
Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate proceeded:
"Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such terms, to an applicant
for service, we allude to some patron we chance to have in our eye),
supposing, respected sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture; supposing that,
sir--then how could even the learned serpent himself have foreknown that
such a downy-chinned little innocent would eventually rival the goat in
a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality would have been
entirely hidden from his wisdom."
"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the
event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who
made him."
"For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point. Can it now with
fairness be denied that, in his beard, the man-child prospectively
possesses an appendix, not less imposing than patriarchal; and for this
goodly beard, should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now, sir? respectfully I put
it."
"Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it shoots," porcinely
rubbing his stubble-chin against his coon-skins.
"I have hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful
of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble
quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't
you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon
us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may be) has this boy a
beard?' 'No.' 'Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
quality?' 'No, indeed.' 'Then, madam, or sir, take him back, we humbly
beseech; and keep him till that same noble quality sprouts; for, have
confidence, it, like the beard, is in him.'"
"Very fine theory," scornfully exclaimed the bachelor, yet in secret,
perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by these strange new views of the
matter; "but what trust is to be placed in it?"
"The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed. Once more, if you
please, regard the man-child."
"Hold!" paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm, "don't intrude that
man-child upon me too often. He who loves not bread, dotes not on
dough. As little of your man-child as your logical arrangements will
admit."
"Anew regard the man-child," with inspired intrepidity repeated he with
the brass-plate, "in the perspective of his developments, I mean. At
first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month--am I right,
sir?"
"Don't know anything about it."
"To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth, about the sixth
month the man-child begins to put forth in that particular. And sweet
those tender little puttings-forth are."
"Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless enough."
"Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning with a boy
alleged not only to be deficient in goodness, but redundant in ill: 'The
lad, madam or sir, evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
them.' 'But, have confidence, there will be; for pray, madam, in this
lad's early childhood, were not those frail first teeth, then his,
followed by his present sound, even, beautiful and permanent set. And
the more objectionable those first teeth became, was not that, madam, we
respectfully submit, so much the more reason to look for their speedy
substitution by the present sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.'
'True, true, can't deny that.' 'Then, madam, take him back, we
respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift course of nature,
dropping those transient moral blemishes you complain of, he
replacingly buds forth in the sound, even, beautiful and permanent
virtues.'"
"Very philosophical again," was the contemptuous reply--the outward
contempt, perhaps, proportioned to the inward misgiving. "Vastly
philosophical, indeed, but tell me--to continue your analogy--since the
second teeth followed--in fact, came from--the first, is there no chance
the blemish may be transmitted?"
"Not at all." Abating in humility as he gained in the argument. "The
second teeth follow, but do not come from, the first; successors, not
sons. The first teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it foreruns; but
they are thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the
succeeding set--an illustration, by the way, which shows more for me
than I meant, though not more than I wish."
"What does it show?" Surly-looking as a thundercloud with the inkept
unrest of unacknowledged conviction.
"It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any boy, especially
an ill one, to apply unconditionally the saying, that the 'child is
father of the man', is, besides implying an uncharitable aspersion of
the race, affirming a thing very wide of----"
"--Your analogy," like a snapping turtle.
"Yes, respected sir."
"But is analogy argument? You are a punster."
"Punster, respected sir?" with a look of being aggrieved.
"Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with words."
"Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever has no confidence
in human reason, whoever despises human reason, in vain to reason with
him. Still, respected sir," altering his air, "permit me to hint that,
had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you would hardly have
offered to contemn it."
"Talk away," disdainfully; "but pray tell me what has that last analogy
of yours to do with your intelligence office business?"
"Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that analogy we derive
the reply made to such a patron as, shortly after being supplied by us
with an adult servant, proposes to return him upon our hands; not that,
while with the patron, said adult has given any cause of
dissatisfaction, but the patron has just chanced to hear something
unfavorable concerning him from some gentleman who employed said adult,
long before, while a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking
said adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to the patron,
say: 'Far be it from you, madam, or sir, to proceed in your censure
against this adult, in anything of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law.
Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In
the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over
and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better? Madam,
or sir, take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar, but is now
a butterfly."
"Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount
to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The
butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped as
before."
"You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You deny that a youth of one
character can be transformed into a man of an opposite character. Now
then--yes, I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care
bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish
self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as
would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or
sir--patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you
discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles
more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
him is working.' 'But he is a sad rake.' 'Therein is his promise; the
rake being crude material for the saint.'"
"Ah, you are a talking man--what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."
"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or
prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation
of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best
wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?"
"You, you, you!" rattling down his rifle.
"To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray, what is your
opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?"
"St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know of him? Seems to me,
for one in such a business, to say nothing of such a coat, that though
you don't know a great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
you ought to know, or than you have a right to know, or than it is safe
or expedient for you to know, or than, in the fair course of life, you
could have honestly come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."
"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
suppose."
"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
altogether unexampled and extraordinary."
"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"
"Excellent genius!"
"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
dog?"
"A saint a sad dog?"
"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
boy."
"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."
"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
than in nature herself."
"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
five and thirty boys of mine."
"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
corn."
"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how often
I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
of August."
"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."
"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
I intended."
"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."
"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
reformado boys."
"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."
"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
this sort of conditional confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a
boy, in sober fact, could you send me? And what would be your fee?"
"Conducted," replied the other somewhat loftily, rising now in eloquence
as his proselyte, for all his pretenses, sunk in conviction, "conducted
upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is
forced to charge somewhat higher than customary. Briefly, our fee is
three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a
very promising little fellow now in my eye--a very likely little fellow,
indeed."
"Honest?"
"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at
least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his
head, submitted to me by the mother."
"How old?"
"Just fifteen."
"Tall? Stout?"
"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."
"Industrious?"
"The busy bee."
The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy,
he spoke:
"Do you think now, candidly, that--I say candidly--candidly--could I
have some small, limited--some faint, conditional degree of confidence
in that boy? Candidly, now?"
"Candidly, you could."
"A sound boy? A good boy?"
"Never knew one more so."
The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well,
now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too.
Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try
that boy. I don't think him an angel, mind. No, no. But I'll try him.
There are my three dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money for his passage.
There," handing it somewhat reluctantly.
"Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;" then, altering in manner,
and gravely holding the bills, continued: "Respected sir, never
willingly do I handle money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a
certain alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect and
unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy now) or permit me
respectfully to return these bills."
"Put 'em up, put 'em-up!"
"Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of
business transactions. Without it, commerce between man and man, as
between country and country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
now, supposing that against present expectation the lad should, after
all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."