University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.

“Charity, charity!” exclaimed the cosmopolitan,
“never a sound judgment without charity. When man
judges man, charity is less a bounty from our mercy
than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of human
fallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should
be what you hint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly.
His outside deceived you; at first it came
near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,
owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself
a little open; I seized that lucky chance, I say, to
inspect his heart, and found it an inviting oyster in a forbidding
shell. His outside is but put on. Ashamed of his
own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange old
uncles in romances do their nephews—snapping at them
all the time and yet loving them as the apple of their
eye.”

“Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is
not what I took him for. Yes, for aught I know, you
may be right.”

“Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be
cultivated, if only for its being graceful. And now, since

you have renounced your notion, I should be happy
would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too. That
story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder.
To me some parts don't hang together. If the
man of hate, how could John Moredock be also the
man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulous
as Hercules'; or else, those being true, what was
thrown in about his geniality is but garnish. In short,
if ever there was such a man as Moredock, he, in my
way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;
and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused
on one race of men. Though, like suicide, man-hatred
would seem peculiarly a Roman and a Grecian
passion—that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome
nor Greece can produce the equal in man-hatred of
Colonel Moredock, as the judge and you have painted
him. As for this Indian-hating in general, I can only
say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbon
earthquake: `Sir, I don't believe it.'”

“Didn't believe it? Why not? Clashed with any
little prejudice of his?”

“Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain
other person,” with an ingenuous smile, “he had
sensibilities, and those were pained.”

“Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn't he?”

“He was.”

“Suppose he had been something else.”

“Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake.”

“Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?”

“Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders
alleged to have been perpetrated under the pall of
smoke and ashes. The infidels of the time were quick
to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,
while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies,
in certain cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent,
infidelity, which claims to despise credulity, is sometimes
swift to it.”

“You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity.”

“I do not jumble them; they are coördinates. For
misanthropy, springing from the same root with disbelief
of religion, is twin with that. It springs from
the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and
what is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not,
see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and
what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will
not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't
you see? In either case the vice consists in a want of
confidence.”

“What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?”

“Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is
hydrophobia. Don't know; never had it. But I have
often wondered what it can be like. Can a misanthrope
feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable
with himself? Can a misanthrope smoke
a cigar and muse? How fares he in solitude? Has
the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a
peach refresh him? The effervescence of champagne,
with what eye does he behold it? Is summer good to

him? Of long winters how much can he sleep? What
are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, when
suddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades
of thunder?”

“Like you,” said the stranger, “I can't understand the
misanthrope. So far as my experience goes, either mankind
is worthy one's best love, or else I have been lucky.
Never has it been my lot to have been wronged, though
but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting, superciliousness,
disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that
brood, I know but by report. Cold regards tossed over
the sinister shoulder of a former friend, ingratitude in
a beneficiary, treachery in a confidant—such things may
be; but I must take somebody's word for it. Now the
bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not
praise it?”

“Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so.
Man is a noble fellow, and in an age of satirists, I am
not displeased to find one who has confidence in him,
and bravely stands up for him.”

“Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what
is more, am always ready to do a good deed for
him.”

“You are a man after my own heart,” responded the
cosmopolitan, with a candor which lost nothing by its
calmness. “Indeed,” he added, “our sentiments agree
so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,
few but the nicest critics might determine.”

“Since we are thus joined in mind,” said the stranger,
“why not be joined in hand?”

“My hand is always at the service of virtue,” frankly
extending it to him as to virtue personified.

“And now,” said the stranger, cordially retaining his
hand, “you know our fashion here at the West. It may
be a little low, but it is kind. Briefly, we being newly-made
friends must drink together. What say you?”

“Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me.”

“Why?”

“Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so
many old friends, all free-hearted, convivial gentlemen,
that really, really, though for the present I succeed in
mastering it, I am at bottom almost in the condition of
a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, ere
night reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity
than his heart.”

At the allusion to old friends, the stranger's countenance
a little fell, as a jealous lover's might at hearing
from his sweetheart of former ones. But rallying, he
said: “No doubt they treated you to something strong;
but wine—surely, that gentle creature, wine; come, let
us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables
here. Come, come.” Then essaying to roll about like
a full pipe in the sea, sang in a voice which had had more
of good-fellowship, had there been less of a latent squeak
to it:

The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood
as sorely tempted and wavering a moment; then, abruptly

stepping towards him, with a look of dissolved surrender,
said: “When mermaid songs move figure-heads,
then may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments
on me. But a good fellow, singing a good song,
he woos forth my every spike, so that my whole hull,
like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with
acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain
sort, it is in vain trying to be resolute.”