University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
IN THE CABIN.

Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying
them are clusters of men, old and young, wise and simple;
in their hands are cards spotted with diamonds,
spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist,
cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering
among the marble-topped tables, amused with
the scene, are the comparatively few, who, instead of
having hands in the games, for the most part keep their
hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes.
But here and there, with a curious expression,
one is reading a small sort of handbill of anonymous
poetry, rather wordily entitled:—

On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered
down from a balloon. The way they came there was
this: A somewhat elderly person, in the quaker dress,

had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in the
manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede
their proffers of sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or
indirect, of the volumes to follow, had, without speaking,
handed about the odes, which, for the most part,
after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed
aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some
wandering rhapsodist.

In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man
with the traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro,
looks animatedly about him, with a yearning sort of
gratulatory affinity and longing, expressive of the very
soul of sociality; as much as to say, “Oh, boys, would
that I were personally acquainted with each mother's
son of you, since what a sweet world, to make sweet
acquaintance in, is ours, my brothers; yea, and what
dear, happy dogs are we all!”

And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes
fraternally up to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging
with him some pleasant remark.

“Pray, what have you there?” he asked of one newly
accosted, a little, dried-up man, who looked as if he
never dined.

“A little ode, rather queer, too,” was the reply, “of
the same sort you see strewn on the floor here.”

“I did not observe them. Let me see;” picking
one up and looking it over. “Well now, this is pretty;
plaintive, especially the opening:—

—If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very
smoothly, sir. Beautiful pathos. But do you think the
sentiment just?”

“As to that,” said the little dried-up man, “I think
it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost
ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking;
yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it
were trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt
so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities;
but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness
not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my
lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to
be all alive in well-doing.”

“Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as
the doctors say. But who snowed the odes about
here?”

“I cannot say; I have not been here long.”

“Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel
genial, let us do as the rest, and have cards.”

“Thank you, I never play cards.”

“A bottle of wine?”

“Thank you, I never drink wine.”

“Cigars?”

“Thank you, I never smoke cigars.”

“Tell stories?”

“To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth
telling.”

“Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel
waked in you, is as water-power in a land without
mills. Come, you had better take a genial hand at the

cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as
you please; just enough to make it interesting.”

“Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust
cards.”

“What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for
once I join with our sad Philomel here:—

Good-bye!”

Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he
with the book at length seems fatigued, looks round
for a seat, and spying a partly-vacant settee drawn up
against the side, drops down there; soon, like his
chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant,
becoming not a little interested in the scene more immediately
before him; a party at whist; two cream-faced,
giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a red cravat,
the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave,
handsome, self-possessed men of middle age, decorously
dressed in a sort of professional black, and apparently
doctors of some eminence in the civil law.

By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new
comer next him the good merchant, sideways leaning
over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of the Ode
which he holds: “Sir, I don't like the looks of those
two, do you?”

“Hardly,” was the whispered reply; “those colored
cravats are not in the best taste, at least not to mine;
but my taste is no rule for all.”

“You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't

refer to dress, but countenance. I confess I am not
familiar with such gentry any further than reading about
them in the papers—but those two are—are sharpers,
aint they?”

“Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit,
my dear sir.”

“Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given
that way; but certainly, to say the least, these two
youths can hardly be adepts, while the opposed couple
may be even more.”

“You would not hint that the colored cravats would
be so bungling as to lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous
as to cheat?—Sour imaginations, my dear sir.
Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the
Ode you have there. Years and experience, I trust,
have not sophisticated you. A fresh and liberal construction
would teach us to regard those four players—
indeed, this whole cabin-full of players—as playing at
games in which every player plays fair, and not a player
but shall win.”

“Now, you hardly mean that; because games in
which all may win, such games remain as yet in this
world uninvented, I think.”

“Come, come,” luxuriously laying himself back, and
casting a free glance upon the players, “fares all paid;
digestion sound; care, toil, penury, grief, unknown;
lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
be cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick
holes in the blessed fate of the world?”

Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and

hard, and then rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation,
at first uneasy, but at last composed, and in the
end, once more addressed his companion: “Well, I see
it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and
then. Somehow, I don't know why, a certain misty
suspiciousness seems inseparable from most of one's private
notions about some men and some things; but
once out with these misty notions, and their mere contact
with other men's soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies
them.”

“You think I have done you good, then? may be,
I have. But don't thank me, don't thank me. If by
words, casually delivered in the social hour, I do any
good to right or left, it is but involuntary influence—
locust-tree sweetening the herbage under it; no merit
at all; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.—Don't
you see?”

Another stare from the good merchant, and both were
silent again.

Finding his book, hitherto resting on his lap, rather
irksome there, the owner now places it edgewise on the
settee, between himself and neighbor; in so doing,
chancing to expose the lettering on the back—“Black
Rapias Coal Company” — which the good merchant,
scrupulously honorable, had much ado to avoid reading,
so directly would it have fallen under his eye, had
he not conscientiously averted it. On a sudden, as if
just reminded of something, the stranger starts up, and
moves away, in his haste leaving his book; which
the merchant observing, without delay takes it up, and,

hurrying after, civilly returns it; in which act he could
not avoid catching sight by an involuntary glance of
part of the lettering.

“Thank you, thank you, my good sir,” said the other,
receiving the volume, and was resuming his retreat,
when the merchant spoke: “Excuse me, but are you
not in some way connected with the—the Coal Company
I have heard of?”

“There is more than one Coal Company that may be
heard of, my good sir,” smiled the other, pausing with
an expression of painful impatience, disinterestedly
mastered.

“But you are connected with one in particular.—
The `Black Rapids,' are you not?”

“How did you find that out?”

“Well, sir, I have heard rather tempting information
of your Company.”

“Who is your informant, pray,” somewhat coldly.

“A—a person by the name of Ringman.”

“Don't know him. But, doubtless, there are plenty
who know our Company, whom our Company does not
know; in the same way that one may know an individual,
yet be unknown to him.—Known this Ringman
long? Old friend, I suppose.—But pardon, I must
leave you.”

“Stay, sir, that—that stock.”

“Stock?”

“Yes, it's a little irregular, perhaps, but—”

“Dear me, you don't think of doing any business
with me, do you? In my official capacity I have not

been authenticated to you. This transfer-book, now,”
holding it up so as to bring the lettering in sight, “how
do you know that it may not be a bogus one? And I,
being personally a stranger to you, how can you have
confidence in me?”

“Because,” knowingly smiled thee good merchant,
“if you were other than I have confidence that you are,
hardly would you challenge distrust that way.”

“But you have not examined my book.”

“What need to, if already I believe that it is what it
is lettered to be?”

“But you had better. It might suggest doubts.”

“Doubts, may be, it might suggest, but not knowledge;
for how, by examining the book, should I think I
knew any more than I now think I do; since, if it
be the true book, I think it so already; and since if it
be otherwise, then I have never seen the true one, and
don't know what that ought to look like.”

“Your logic I will not criticize, but your confidence I
admire, and earnestly, too, jocose as was the method
I took to draw it out. Enough, we will go to yonder
table, and if there be any business which, either in my
private or official capacity, I can help you do, pray
command me.”