University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.

At an interesting point of the narration, and at the
moment when, with much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the
narrator was being particularly questioned upon that
point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted both
from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a
gentleman who had been standing in sight from the beginning,
but, until now, as it seemed, without being
observed by him.

“Pardon me,” said he, rising, “but yonder is one
who I know will contribute, and largely. Don't take
it amiss if I quit you.”

“Go: duty before all things,” was the conscientious
reply.

The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect.
There he stood apart and in repose, and yet, by his mere
look, lured the man in gray from his story, much as, by
its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm, alone
in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down
his sheaves, and come and apply for the alms of its
shade.

But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing

among men—the world familiarly know the noun; a
common one in every language—it was curious that
what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like
a kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it
make him appear more or less unreal in this portraiture),
was but the expression of so prevailent a quality. Such
goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune, that, so
far as his own personal experience could have gone,
scarcely could he have known ill, physical or moral;
and as for knowing or suspecting the latter in any serious
degree (supposing such degree of it to be), by observation
or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly
exempted. For the rest, he might have been five and
fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall, rosy, between plump and
portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the time and
place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts
was of white satin, which might have looked
especially inappropriate, had it not seemed less a bit
of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as it
were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what
seemed so good about him was not all outside; no, the
fine covering had a still finer lining. Upon one hand he
wore a white kid glove, but the other hand, which was
ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidèle,
like most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked
here and there, especially about the railings, it was a
marvel how, under such circumstances, these hands retained
their spotlessness. But, if you watched them
a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant,
whose hands nature had dyed black, perhaps with the
same purpose that millers wear white, this negro servant's
hands did most of his master's handling for him;
having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his
prejudices. But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences
to himself, a gentleman could also sin by
deputy, how shocking would that be! But it is not
permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist
would make proclamation of it.

This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm,
was one who, like the Hebrew governor, knew how to
keep his hands clean, and who never in his life happened
to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was
to be a very good man.

Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce
at all; that superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing
in his manner bespoke him righteous, but only
good, and though to be good is much below being righteous,
and though there is a difference between the two,
yet not, it is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a
righteous man can not be a good man; though, conversely,
in the pulpit it has been with much cogency urged,
that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that
nothing short of a total change and conversion can make
him so; which is something which no honest mind,
well read in the history of righteousness, will care to

deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a
sense with the pulpit distinction, though not altogether
in the pulpit deduction, and also pretty plainly intimating
which of the two qualities in question enjoys his
apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
said, that, “scarcely for a righteous man will
one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would
even dare to die;” therefore, when we repeat of this
gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever
else by severe censors may be objected to him, it is
still to be hoped that his goodness will not at least
be considered criminal in him. At all events, no man,
not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to
commit this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary
as he might deem it; more especially, as, until
everything could be known, there would be some chance
that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent
of it as he himself.

It was pleasant to mark the good man's reception of
the salute of the righteous man, that is, the man in
gray; his inferior, apparently, not more in the social
scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness
over that suitor, not in conceited condescension, but
with that even amenity of true majesty, which can be
kind to any one without stooping to it.

To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and
orphans, the gentleman, after a question or two duly
answered, responded by producing an ample pocket-book
in the good old capacious style, of fine green

French morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of
the same color, not to omit bills crisp with newness,
fresh from the bank, no muckworms' grime upon them.
Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept
unspotted from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing
now three of those virgin bills in the applicant's
hands, he hoped that the smallness of the contribution
would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run
down the river, to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon
wedding of his niece: so did not carry much money
with him.

The other was about expressing his thanks when the
gentleman in his pleasant way checked him: the gratitude
was on the other side. To him, he said, charity
was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against too
great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had
sometimes admonished him.

In some general talk which followed, relative to organized
modes of doing good, the gentleman expressed
his regrets that so many benevolent societies as there
were, here and there isolated in the land, should not act
in concert by coming together, in the way that already
in each society the individuals composing it had done,
which would result, he thought, in like advantages upon
a larger scale. Indeed, such a confederation might, perhaps,
be attended with as happy results as politically
attended that of the states.

Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this
suggestion had an effect illustrative in a sort of that notion

of Socrates, that the soul is a harmony; for as the
sound of a flute, in any particular key, will, it is said, audibly
affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him
respond, and with animation.

Which animation, by the way, might seem more or
less out of character in the man in gray, considering his
unsprightly manner when first introduced, had he not
already, in certain after colloquies, given proof, in some
degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a soberly
continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of
stuff, is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because
unwasted, and may be used the more effectively, too,
when opportunity offers. What now follows on the
part of the man in gray will still further exemplify, perhaps
somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears
to be such, of this remark.

“Sir,” said he eagerly, “I am before you. A project,
not dissimilar to yours, was by me thrown out at the
World's Fair in London.”

“World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?”

“First, let me—”

“Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?”

“I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented.”

“Then you have not always been in the charity business?”

“Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am,
and always have been, as I always will be, I trust, in
the charity business, as you call it; but charity is not

like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
point; charity is a work to which a good workman may
be competent in all its branches. I invented my Protean
easy-chair in odd intervals stolen from meals and
sleep.”

“You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe
it.”

“My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed,
behinged, and bepadded, everyway so elastic,
springy, and docile to the airiest touch, that in some one
of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the
body most racked, nay, I had almost added the most
tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere,
find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity
to make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped
together my little means and off to the World's Fair
with it.”

“You did right. But your scheme; how did you
come to hit upon that?”

“I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention
duly catalogued and placed, I gave myself up to pondering
the scene about me. As I dwelt upon that shining
pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and reflected
that here was the pride of the world glorying in
a glass house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur
profoundly impressed me. And I said to myself,
I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot supply a hint
toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done.

In short, inspired by the scene, on the fourth day I issued
at the World's Fair my prospectus of the World's
Charity.”

“Quite a thought. But, pray explain it.”

“The World's Charity is to be a society whose members
shall comprise deputies from every charity and mission
extant; the one object of the society to be the methodization
of the world's benevolence; to which end,
the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution
to be done away, and the Society to be
empowered by the various governments to levy, annually,
one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as
in Augustus Cæsar's time, the whole world to come up
to be taxed; a tax which, for the scheme of it, should
be something like the income-tax in England, a tax, also,
as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all possible
benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax,
and the county-tax, and the town-tax, and the
poll-tax, are by the assessors rolled into one. This tax,
according to my tables, calculated with care, would result
in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to
such objects, and in such modes, as the various charities
and missions, in general congress represented, might
decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I estimate, there
would have been devoted to good works the sum of
eleven thousand two hundred millions; which would
warrant the dissolution of the society, as that fund judiciously
expended, not a pauper or heathen could remain
the round world over.”

“Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all
by passing round a hat, as it were.”

“Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible
scheme, but a philanthropist and a financier setting forth
a philanthropy and a finance which are practicable.”

“Practicable?”

“Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it
will frighten none but a retail philanthropist. What is
it but eight hundred millions for each of fourteen years?
Now eight hundred millions—what is that, to average
it, but one little dollar a head for the population of the
planet? And who will refuse, what Turk or Dyak
even, his own little dollar for sweet charity's sake?
Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries.
Consider that bloody spendthrift, War. And are
mankind so stupid, so wicked, that, upon the demonstration
of these things they will not, amending their ways,
devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead
of cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have
not to make it, it is theirs already; they have but to
direct it from ill to good. And to this, scarce a self-denial
is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would
they be all the better and happier. Don't you see?
But admit, as you must, that mankind is not mad, and
my project is practicable. For, what creature but a
madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is
plain that, good or ill, it must return upon himself?”

“Your sort of reasoning,” said the good gentleman,

adjusting his gold sleeve-buttons, “seems all reasonable
enough, but with mankind it wont do.”

“Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason
wont do with them.”

“That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the
manner in which you alluded to the world's census, it
would appear that, according to your world-wide scheme,
the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute to
the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than
the Christian to the conversion of heathenism. How is
that?”

“Why, that—pardon me—is quibbling. Now, no
philanthropist likes to be opposed with quibbling.”

“Well, I won't quibble any more. But, after all, if
I understand your project, there is little specially new
in it, further than the magnifying of means now in
operation.”

“Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions
I would thoroughly reform. Missions I would
quicken with the Wall street spirit.”

“The Wall street spirit?”

“Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to
be gained but through the auxiliary agency of worldly
means, then, to the surer gaining of such spiritual ends,
the example of worldly policy in worldly projects should
not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending
on human effort, would, by the world's charity, be let
out on contract. So much by bid for converting India,
so much for Borneo, so much for Africa. Competition

allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house
or tract-house of which slanderers could, with any
plausibility, say that it had degenerated in its clerkships
into a sort of custom-house. But the main point is the
Archimedean money-power that would be brought to
bear.”

“You mean the eight hundred million power?”

“Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by
driblets amounts to just nothing. I am for doing good
to the world with a will. I am for doing good to the
world once for all and having done with it. Do but
think, my dear sir, of the eddies and maëlstroms of
pagans in China. People here have no conception of
it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper pagans
are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas
in a bin of peas. To be an immortal being in China is
no more distinction than to be a snow-flake in a snow-squall.
What are a score or two of missionaries to
such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am
for sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and
converting the Chinese en masse within six months of
the debarkation. The thing is then done, and turn to
something else.”

“I fear you are too enthusiastic.”

“A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for
without enthusiasm what was ever achieved but commonplace?
But again: consider the poor in London.
To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf
there? I am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks

and one hundred thousand barrels of flour to begin
with. They are then comforted, and no more hunger
for one while among the poor of London. And so all
round.”

“Sharing the character of your general project, these
things, I take it, are rather examples of wonders that
were to be wished, than wonders that will happen.”

“And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world
too old? Is it barren? Think of Sarah.”

“Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a
smile). But still, as to your design at large, there
seems a certain audacity.”

“But if to the audacity of the design there be brought
a commensurate circumspectness of execution, how
then?”

“Why, do you really believe that your world's
charity will ever go into operation?”

“I have confidence that it will.”

“But may you not be over-confident?”

“For a Christian to talk so!”

“But think of the obstacles!”

“Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles,
though mountains. Yes, confidence in the world's
charity to that degree, that, as no better person offers to
supply the place, I have nominated myself provisional
treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
the present to be devoted to striking off a million more
of my prospectuses.”

The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit
of benevolence which, mindful of the millennial promise,

had gone abroad over all the countries of the globe,
much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman, stirred
by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in
March reveries at his fireside, over every field of his
farm. The master chord of the man in gray had been
touched, and it seemed as if it would never cease
vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with
gestures that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness
before which granite hearts might crumble
into gravel.

Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly
good-hearted as he seemed, remained proof to such eloquence;
though not, as it turned out, to such pleadings.
For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of
destination, the gentleman, with a look half humor, half
pity, put another bank-note into his hands; charitable
to the last, if only to the dreams of enthusiasm.