A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET
BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.
"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
moroseness.
"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair
has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a
fine fellow wears it."
"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't
you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat."
This ungentle mention of the toucan was not improbably suggested by the
parti-hued, and rather plumagy aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would
seem, but a liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
informalities, might, even to observers less critical than the bachelor,
have looked, if anything, a little out of the common; but not more so
perhaps, than, considering the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor's
own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture barred with
various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style
participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from
its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over
maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple
crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently.
Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused; all showed signs
of easy service, the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was
now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of
Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its
long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked
nations--a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing
essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something
similar of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But rosy
pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on that unrosy man, the
bachelor, who, waiting a moment till the commotion, caused by the boat's
renewed progress, had a little abated, thus continued:
"Hark ye," jeeringly eying the cap and belt, "did you ever see Signor
Marzetti in the African pantomime?"
"No;--good performer?"
"Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it. With such
naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that
of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that."
The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on one hip, his right
leg cavalierly crossed before the other, the toe of his vertical slipper
pointed easily down on the deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of
indifferent and charitable puff, betokening him more or less of the
mature man of the world, a character which, like its opposite, the
sincere Christian's, is not always swift to take offense; and then,
drawing near, still smoking, again laid his hand, this time with mild
impressiveness, on the ursine shoulder, and not unamiably said: "That in
your address there is a sufficiency of the _fortiter in re_ few unbiased
observers will question; but that this is duly attempered with the
_suaviter in modo_ may admit, I think, of an honest doubt. My dear
fellow," beaming his eyes full upon him, "what injury have I done you,
that you should receive my greeting with a curtailed civility?"
"Off hands;" once more shaking the friendly member from him. "Who in the
name of the great chimpanzee, in whose likeness, you, Marzetti, and the
other chatterers are made, who in thunder are you?"
"A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such, ties himself to no
narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume,
something of the various gallantries of men under various suns. Oh, one
roams not over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal and
fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost anybody. Warm and
confiding, you wait not for measured advances. And though, indeed,
mine, in this instance, have met with no very hilarious encouragement,
yet the principle of a true citizen of the world is still to return good
for ill.--My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."
"By dispatching yourself, Mr. Popinjay-of-the-world, into the heart of
the Lunar Mountains. You are another of them. Out of my sight!"
"Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you then? Ah, I may be
foolish, but for my part, in all its aspects, I love it. Served up à la
Pole, or à la Moor, à la Ladrone, or à la Yankee, that good dish, man,
still delights me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of comparing
and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan, a sort of
London-Dock-Vault connoisseur, going about from Teheran to Natchitoches,
a taster of races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy
creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal palates which have
a distaste even for Amontillado, so I suppose there may be teetotal
souls which relish not even the very best brands of humanity. Excuse me,
but it just occurs to me that you, my dear fellow, possibly lead a
solitary life."
"Solitary?" starting as at a touch of divination.
"Yes: in a solitary life one insensibly contracts oddities,--talking to
one's self now."
"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"
"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without
much reproach to the hearer."
"You are an eaves-dropper."
"Well. Be it so."
"Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?"
"I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing by, caught a
word or two, and, by like chance, something previous of your chat with
the Intelligence-office man;--a rather sensible fellow, by the way; much
of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake, he were of my style of
dress. Grief to good minds, to see a man of superior sense forced to
hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.--Well, from what
little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable
philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have
observed--excuse me--to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness,
of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix
in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a
good time. Life is a pic-nic _en costume_; one must take a part, assume
a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a
discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold
water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated
ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."
"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
for?"
"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured?' 'Indeed I do.'
'Go directly, then, and buy a jug of Santa Cruz.' 'Santa Cruz? my wife
drink Santa Cruz?' 'Either that or die.' 'But how much?' 'As much as she
can get down.' 'But she'll get drunk!' 'That's the cure.' Wise men, like
doctors, must be obeyed. Much against the grain, the sober deacon got
the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old
woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits,
famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this
experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept
herself a cup too low."
This story had the effect of surprising the bachelor into interest,
though hardly into approval.
"If I take your parable right," said he, sinking no little of his former
churlishness, "the meaning is, that one cannot enjoy life with gusto
unless he renounce the too-sober view of life. But since the too-sober
view is, doubtless, nearer true than the too-drunken; I, who rate truth,
though cold water, above untruth, though Tokay, will stick to my earthen
jug."
"I see," slowly spirting upward a spiral staircase of lazy smoke, "I
see; you go in for the lofty."
"How?"
"Oh, nothing! but if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another
story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between
sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such
leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary,
philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather
be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen,
humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of being lone and lofty
is a sad mistake. Men I hold in this respect to be like roosters; the
one that betakes himself to a lone and lofty perch is the hen-pecked
one, or the one that has the pip."
"You are abusive!" cried the bachelor, evidently touched.
"Who is abused? You, or the race? You won't stand by and see the human
race abused? Oh, then, you have some respect for the human race."
"I have some respect for _myself_" with a lip not so firm as before.
"And what race may _you_ belong to? now don't you see, my dear fellow,
in what inconsistencies one involves himself by affecting disesteem for
men. To a charm, my little stratagem succeeded. Come, come, think better
of it, and, as a first step to a new mind, give up solitude. I fear, by
the way, you have at some time been reading Zimmermann, that old Mr.
Megrims of a Zimmermann, whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume's on
Suicide, as Bacon's on Knowledge; and, like these, will betray him who
seeks to steer soul and body by it, like a false religion. All they, be
they what boasted ones you please, who, to the yearning of our kind
after a founded rule of content, offer aught not in the spirit of
fellowly gladness based on due confidence in what is above, away with
them for poor dupes, or still poorer impostors."
His manner here was so earnest that scarcely any auditor, perhaps, but
would have been more or less impressed by it, while, possibly, nervous
opponents might have a little quailed under it. Thinking within himself
a moment, the bachelor replied: "Had you experience, you would know that
your tippling theory, take it in what sense you will, is poor as any
other. And Rabelais's pro-wine Koran no more trustworthy than Mahomet's
anti-wine one."
"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and
keep talking, and still stand where we did. What do you say for a walk?
My arm, and let's a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck
to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to save the
pieces, you hold my loose change; and following that, I propose that
you, my dear fellow, stack your gun, and throw your bearskins in a
sailor's hornpipe--I holding your watch. What do you say?"
At this proposition the other was himself again, all raccoon.
"Look you," thumping down his rifle, "are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?"
"Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor
the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted
with."
"You are his confidential clerk, ain't you?"
"_Whose_, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in,
but I don't understand."
"You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary
metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that
herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that
come after him."
"Herb-doctor? who is he?"
"Like you--another of them."
"_Who?_" Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his
left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a
ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter
into a little argument and----"
"No you don't. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little
arguments to-day."
"But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading
a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions
touching strangers?"
"Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the
controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look,
you----"
"Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for
double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say
what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society
in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace
it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny."
Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into
the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening
world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for
disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through
lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of
man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.
"Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could
abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony,
and Satire, his bosom friend."
"A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his
rifle-lock.
"Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous. But, no, no, you didn't
mean it; any way, I can make allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how
much pleasanter to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your worldling, glutton,
and coquette, though, doubtless, being such, they may have their little
foibles--as who has not?--yet not one of the three can be reproached
with that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for not seldom
it presupposes a still darker thing than itself--remorse."
"Remorse drives man away from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain,
after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it
that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?
"My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you will, I for one must have
my fellow-creatures round me. Thick, too--I must have them thick."
"The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures round him.
Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd but for his end; and the end of too
many is the same as the pick-pocket's--a purse."
"Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience to say that, when
it is as much according to natural law that men are social as sheep
gregarious. But grant that, in being social, each man has his end, do
you, upon the strength of that, do you yourself, I say, mix with man,
now, immediately, and be your end a more genial philosophy. Come, let's
take a turn."
Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor once more flung it
off, and, raising his rifle in energetic invocation, cried: "Now the
high-constable catch and confound all knaves in towns and rats in
grain-bins, and if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the
time, any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin him, thou
high rat-catcher, against this rail."
"A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And when a card's that,
little matters it whether it be spade or diamond. You are good wine
that, to be still better, only needs a shaking up. Come, let's agree
that we'll to New Orleans, and there embark for London--I staying with
my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting up at the Piazza, Covent
Garden--Piazza, Covent Garden; for tell me--since you will not be a
disciple to the full--tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes, which
led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market, better than that
of the less wise Athenian, which made him a skulking scare-crow in
pine-barrens? An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon."
"Your hand!" seizing it.
"Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we shall be brothers,
then?"
"As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be," with another and
terrific squeeze. "I had thought that the moderns had degenerated
beneath the capacity of misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one
instance, and that disguised, to be undeceived."
The other stared in blank amaze.
"Won't do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise. I say--Diogenes
masquerading as a cosmopolitan."
With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute awhile. At
length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who,
in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he
but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change
of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I
came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for
your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate
accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
I stark and stiff!"
With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
sapient.