The confidence-man :: :: University of Virginia Library

“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

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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

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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

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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.”

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“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.”

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“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

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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

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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

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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 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?”

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“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,” snaping
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 worldlingg,

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lutton, 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

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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

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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.