University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
AT THE OUTSET OF WHICH CERTAIN PASSENGERS PROVE DEAF
TO THE CALL OF CHARITY.

—“You—pish! Why will the captain suffer these
begging fellows on board?”

These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do
gentleman in a ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored
cheek, a ruby-headed cane in his hand, to a man in
a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly after the interview
last described, had accosted him for contributions to a
Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the
Seminoles. Upon a cursory view, this last person might
have seemed, like the man with the weed, one of the less
unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a closer observation,
his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though
much of sanctity.

With added words of touchy disgust, the well-to-do
gentleman hurried away. But, though repulsed, and
rudely, the man in gray did not reproach, for a time
patiently remaining in the chilly loneliness to which he
had been left, his countenance, however, not without
token of latent though chastened reliance.

At length an old gentleman, somewhat bulky, drew
nigh, and from him also a contribution was sought.

“Look, you,” coming to a dead halt, and scowling
upon him. “Look, you,” swelling his bulk out before
him like a swaying balloon, “look, you, you on others'
behalf ask for money; you, a fellow with a face as long
as my arm. Hark ye, now: there is such a thing as
gravity, and in condemned felons it may be genuine;
but of long faces there are three sorts; that of grief's
drudge, that of the lantern-jawed man, and that of the
impostor. You know best which yours is.”

“Heaven give you more charity, sir.”

“And you less hypocrisy, sir.”

With which words, the hard-hearted old gentleman
marched off.

While the other still stood forlorn, the young clergyman,
before introduced, passing that way, catching a
chance sight of him, seemed suddenly struck by some
recollection; and, after a moment's pause, hurried up
with: “Your pardon, but shortly since I was all over
looking for you.”

“For me?” as marveling that one of so little account
should be sought for.

“Yes, for you; do you know anything about the
negro, apparently a cripple, aboard here? Is he, or is
he not, what he seems to be?”

“Ah, poor Guinea! have you, too, been distrusted?
you, upon whom nature has placarded the evidence of
your claims?”

“Then you do really know him, and he is quite

worthy? It relieves me to hear it—much relieves me.
Come, let us go find him, and see what can be done.”

“Another instance that confidence may come too
late. I am sorry to say that at the last landing I myself—just
happening to catch sight of him on the gangway-plank—assisted
the cripple ashore. No time to
talk, only to help. He may not have told you, but he
has a brother in that vicinity.”

“Really, I regret his going without my seeing him
again; regret it, more, perhaps, than you can readily think.
You see, shortly after leaving St. Louis, he was on the
forecastle, and there, with many others, I saw him, and
put trust in him; so much so, that, to convince those
who did not, I, at his entreaty, went in search of you,
you being one of several individuals he mentioned, and
whose personal appearance he more or less described,
individuals who he said would willingly speak for him.
But, after diligent search, not finding you, and catching
no glimpse of any of the others he had enumerated,
doubts were at last suggested; but doubts indirectly
originating, as I can but think, from prior distrust unfeelingly
proclaimed by another. Still, certain it is, I
began to suspect.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

A sort of laugh more like a groan than a laugh; and
yet, somehow, it seemed intended for a laugh.

Both turned, and the young clergyman started at
seeing the wooden-legged man close behind him, morosely
grave as a criminal judge with a mustard-plaster
on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster

might have been the memory of certain recent biting
rebuffs and mortifications.

“Wouldn't think it was I who laughed, would you?”

“But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to
laugh at?” demanded the young clergyman, flushing,
“me?”

“Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles
of you. But perhaps you don't believe it.”

“If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not,”
interposed the man in gray calmly, “it is one of the
imbecilities of the suspicious person to fancy that every
stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way,
is secretly making him his butt. In some moods, the
movements of an entire street, as the suspicious man
walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic jeer at
him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with
his own foot.”

“Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other
folks' sole-leather,” said the wooden-legged man with a
crusty attempt at humor. But with augmented grin
and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
“you still think it was you I was laughing at, just now.
To prove your mistake, I will tell you what I was
laughing at; a story I happened to call to mind just
then.”

Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic
details, unpleasant to repeat, he related a story, which
might, perhaps, in a good-natured version, be rendered
as follows:

A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man,
less slender in purse than limb, happening to attend
the theatre one evening, was so charmed with the
character of a faithful wife, as there represented to
the life, that nothing would do but he must marry upon
it. So, marry he did, a beautiful girl from Tennessee, who
had first attracted his attention by her liberal mould,
and was subsequently recommended to him through her
kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition.
Though large, the praise proved not too much. For,
ere long, rumor more than corroborated it, by whispering
that the lady was liberal to a fault. But though various
circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have
been deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the
old Frenchman by his friends, yet such was his confidence
that not a syllable would he credit, till, chancing
one night to return unexpectedly from a journey, upon
entering his apartment, a stranger burst from the alcove:
“Begar!” cried he, “now I begin to suspec.”

His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back
his head, and gave vent to a long, gasping, rasping sort
of taunting cry, intolerable as that of a high-pressure
engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent
satisfaction hobbled away.

“Who is that scoffer,” said the man in gray, not without
warmth. “Who is he, who even were truth on his
tongue, his way of speaking it would make truth almost
offensive as falsehood. Who is he?”

“He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his
suspicion of the negro,” replied the young clergyman,

recovering from disturbance, “in short, the person
to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted
and painted up for a decoy. Yes, these were
his very words, I think.”

“Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed.
Pray, will you call him back, and let me ask him if he
were really in earnest?”

The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly
objections, prevailed upon the one-legged individual to
return for a moment. Upon which, the man in gray
thus addressed him: “This reverend gentleman tells
me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware
that there are some persons in this world, who,
unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange
delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously
read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions
of them. I hope you are not one of these. In short,
would you tell me now, whether you were not merely
joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
Would you be so kind?”

“No, I won't be so kind, I'll be so cruel.”

“As you please about that.”

“Well, he's just what I said he was.”

“A white masquerading as a black?”

“Exactly.”

The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a
moment, then quietly whispered to him, “I thought you
represented your friend here as a very distrustful sort of

person, but he appears endued with a singular credulity.
—Tell me, sir, do you really think that a white could
look the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good
acting.”

“Not much better than any other man acts.”

“How? Does all the world act? Am I, for instance,
an actor? Is my reverend friend here, too, a performer?”

“Yes, don't you both perform acts? To do, is to act;
so all doers are actors.”

“You trifle.—I ask again, if a white, how could he
look the negro so?”

“Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?”

“Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying
the old saying, not more just than charitable, that
`the devil is never so black as he is painted.' But his
limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his limbs so?”

“How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs?
Easy enough to see how they are hoisted up.”

“The sham is evident, then?”

“To the discerning eye,” with a horrible screw of his
gimlet one.

“Well, where is Guinea?” said the man in gray;
“where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond
cavil this injurious hypothesis.”

“Do so,” cried the one-eyed man, “I'm just in the
humor now for having him found, and leaving the streaks
of these fingers on his paint, as the lion leaves the
streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn't let me
touch him before. Yes, find him, I'll make wool fly,
and him after.”

“You forget,” here said the young clergyman to the
man in gray, “that yourself helped poor Guinea ashore.”

“So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look
now,” to the other, “I think that without personal proof
I can convince you of your mistake. For I put it to
you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all
that trouble, and run all that hazard, for the mere sake
of those few paltry coppers, which, I hear, was all he
got for his pains, if pains they were?”

“That puts the case irrefutably,” said the young
clergyman, with a challenging glance towards the one-legged
man.

“You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole
motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in
this world. How much money did the devil make by
gulling Eve?”

Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of
his intolerable jeer.

The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a
while, and then, turning to his companion, said: “A
bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be put down in
any Christian community.—And this was he who was
the means of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should
shut our ears to distrust, and keep them open only for its
opposite.”

“You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon
it this morning, I should have spared myself what I now
feel.—That but one man, and he with one leg, should
have such ill power given him; his one sour word

leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge,
it did) the dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous
company. But, as I hinted, with me at the time
his ill words went for nothing; the same as now; only
afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles
me.”

“It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of
distrust works something as certain potions do; it is a
spirit which may enter such minds, and yet, for a time,
longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent; but only the
more deplorable its ultimate activity.”

“An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful
man did but just now anew drop on me his bane, how
shall I be sure that my present exemption from its effects
will be lasting?”

“You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it.”

“How?”

“By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any
sort, which hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may
arise in you.”

“I will do so.” Then added as in soliloquy, “Indeed,
indeed, I was to blame in standing passive under such
influences as that one-legged man's. My conscience upbraids
me.—The poor negro: You see him occasionally,
perhaps?”

“No, not often; though in a few days, as it happens,
my engagements will call me to the neighborhood of his
present retreat; and, no doubt, honest Guinea, who is a
grateful soul, will come to see me there.”

“Then you have been his benefactor?”

“His benefactor? I did not say that. I have known
him.”

“Take this mite. Hand it to Guinea when you see
him; say it comes from one who has full belief in his
honesty, and is sincerely sorry for having indulged, however
transiently, in a contrary thought.”

“I accept the trust. And, by-the-way, since you are
of this truly charitable nature, you will not turn away
an appeal in behalf of the Seminole Widow and Orphan
Asylum?”

“I have not heard of that charity.”

“But recently founded.”

After a pause, the clergyman was irresolutely putting
his hand in his pocket, when, caught by something in his
companion's expression, he eyed him inquisitively, almost
uneasily.

“Ah, well,” smiled the other wanly, “if that subtle
bane, we were speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning
to work, in vain my appeal to you. Good-by.”

“Nay,” not untouched, “you do me injustice; instead
of indulging present suspicions, I had rather make
amends for previous ones. Here is something for your
asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course
you have papers?”

“Of course,” producing a memorandum book and
pencil. “Let me take down name and amount. We
publish these names. And now let me give you a little
history of our asylum, and the providential way in
which it was started.”