University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.
UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE
BARBER'S SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.

“Bless you, barber!”

Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber
had been all alone until within the ten minutes last
passed; when, finding himself rather dullish company to
himself, he thought he would have a good time with
Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus
and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one
was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain,
who, though much listened to by some, no wise
man would believe under oath.

In short, with back presented to the glare of his
lamps, and so to the door, the honest barber was taking
what are called cat-naps, and dreaming in his chair; so
that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction above, pronounced
in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake,
he stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger
stood behind. What with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments,
therefore, the voice seemed a sort of spiritual
manifestation to him; so that, for the moment,

he stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the
air.

“Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds
there with salt?”

“Ah!” turning round disenchanted, “it is only a
man, then.”

“Only a man? As if to be but man were nothing.
But don't be too sure what I am. You call me man,
just as the townsfolk called the angels who, in man's
form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs.
You can conclude nothing absolute from the human
form, barber.”

“But I can conclude something from that sort of
talk, with that sort of dress,” shrewdly thought the
barber, eying him with regained self-possession, and not
without some latent touch of apprehension at being
alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed
divined by the other, who now, more rationally and
gravely, and as if he expected it should be attended to,
said: “Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave,”
at the same time loosening his neck-cloth. “Are you
competent to a good shave, barber?”

“No broker more so, sir,” answered the barber, whom
the business-like proposition instinctively made confine
to business-ends his views of the visitor.

“Broker? What has a broker to do with lather?
A broker I have always understood to be a worthy dealer
in certain papers and metals.”

“He, he!” taking him now for some dry sort of joker,
whose jokes, he being a customer, it might be as well
to appreciate, “he, he! You understand well enough,
sir. Take this seat, sir,” laying his hand on a great
stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered,
and raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed
but to lack a canopy and quarterings, to make it in
aspect quite a throne, “take this seat, sir.”

“Thank you,” sitting down; “and now, pray, explain
that about the broker. But look, look—what's
this?” suddenly rising, and pointing, with his long pipe,
towards a gilt notification swinging among colored fly-papers
from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, “No Trust?”
“No trust means distrust; distrust means no confidence.
Barber,” turning upon him excitedly, “what fell suspiciousness
prompts this scandalous confession? My
life!” stamping his foot, “if but to tell a dog that you
have no confidence in him be matter for affront to the
dog, what an insult to take that way the whole haughty
race of man by the beard! By my heart, sir! but at
least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites
with the pluck of Agamemnon.”

“Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line,”
said the barber, rather ruefully, being now again hopeless
of his customer, and not without return of uneasiness;
“not in my line, sir,” he emphatically repeated.

“But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit,
barber, which I sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a
disrespect for man. For how, indeed, may respectful
conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual habit of

taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too,
clearly see the import of your notification, I do not, as
yet, perceive the object. What is it?”

“Now you speak a little in my line, sir,” said the
barber, not unrelieved at this return to plain talk;
“that notification I find very useful, sparing me much
work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good deal,
off and on, before putting that up,” gratefully glancing
towards it.

“But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to
say, in so many words, that you have no confidence?
For instance, now,” flinging aside his neck-cloth, throwing
back his blouse, and reseating himself on the tonsorial
throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber
mechanically filled a cup with hot water from a copper
vessel over a spirit-lamp, “for instance, now, suppose I
say to you, `Barber, my dear barber, unhappily I have
no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
depend upon your money to-morrow'—suppose I should
say that now, you would put trust in me, wouldn't
you? You would have confidence?”

“Seeing that it is you, sir,” with complaisance
replied the barber, now mixing the lather, “seeing that
it is you, sir, I won't answer that question. No need to.”

“Of course, of course—in that view. But, as a supposition—you
would have confidence in me, wouldn't
you?”

“Why—yes, yes.”

“Then why that sign?”

“Ah, sir, all people ain't like you,” was the smooth

reply, at the same time, as if smoothly to close the
debate, beginning smoothly to apply the lather, which
operation, however, was, by a motion, protested against
by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which
was done in these words:

“All people ain't like me. Then I must be either
better or worse than most people. Worse, you could
not mean; no, barber, you could not mean that; hardly
that. It remains, then, that you think me better than
most people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe;
though, from vanity, I confess, I could never yet, by my
best wrestlings, entirely free myself; nor, indeed, to be
frank, am I at bottom over anxious to—this same vanity,
barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
pleasingly preposterous a passion.”

“Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk
very well. But the lather is getting a little cold, sir.”

“Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why
that cold sign? Ah, I don't wonder you try to shirk
the confession. You feel in your soul how ungenerous
a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
your eyes—which somehow speak to me of the mother
that must have so often looked into them before me—I
dare say, though you may not think it, that the spirit of
that notification is not one with your nature. For look
now, setting business views aside, regarding the thing
in an abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber;
supposing, I say, you see a stranger, his face accidentally
averted, but his visible part very respectable-looking;
what now, barber—I put it to your conscience, to your

charity—what would be your impression of that man,
in a moral point of view? Being in a signal sense a
stranger, would you, for that, signally set him down for
a knave?”

“Certainly not, sir; by no means,” cried the barber,
humanely resentful.

“You would upon the face of him—”

“Hold, sir,” said the barber, “nothing about the face;
you remember, sir, that is out of sight.”

“I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the
back of him, conclude him to be, not improbably, some
worthy sort of person; in short, an honest man; wouldn't
you?”

“Not unlikely I should, sir.”

“Well now—don't be so impatient with your brush,
barber—suppose that honest man meet you by night in
some dark corner of the boat where his face would still
remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave—
how then?”

“Wouldn't trust him, sir.”

“But is not an honest man to be trusted?”

“Why—why—yes, sir.”

“There! don't you see, now?”

“See what?” asked the disconcerted barber, rather
vexedly.

“Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't
you?”

“No,” doggedly.

“Barber,” gravely, and after a pause of concern,
“the enemies of our race have a saying that insincerity

is the most universal and inveterate vice of man—the
lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of individuals
or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?”

“Hity-tity!” cried the barber, losing patience, and
with it respect; “stubbornness?” Then clattering
round the brush in the cup, “Will you be shaved, or
won't you?”

“Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but,
pray, don't raise your voice that way. Why, now, if
you go through life gritting your teeth in that fashion,
what a comfortless time you will have.”

“I take as much comfort in this world as you or any
other man,” cried the barber, whom the other's sweetness
of temper seemed rather to exasperate than soothe.

“To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness
I have often observed to be peculiar to certain
orders of men,” said the other pensively, and half to
himself, “just as to be indifferent to that imputation,
from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to
other kinds of men. Pray, barber,” innocently looking
up, “which think you is the superior creature?”

“All this sort of talk,” cried the barber, still unmollified,
“is, as I told you once before, not in my line. In
a few minutes I shall shut up this shop. Will you be
shaved?”

“Shave away, barber. What hinders?” turning up
his face like a flower.

The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at
length it became necessary to prepare to relather a
little—affording an opportunity for resuming the subject,
which, on one side, was not let slip.

“Barber,” with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling
his way, “barber, now have a little patience with me;
do; trust me, I wish not to offend. I have been thinking
over that supposed case of the man with the averted
face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that,
by your opposite replies to my questions at the time,
you showed yourself much of a piece with a good many
other men—that is, you have confidence, and then again,
you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you
think it sensible standing for a sensible man, one foot
on confidence and the other on suspicion? Don't you
think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
think consistency requires that you should either say `I
have confidence in all men,' and take down your notification;
or else say, `I suspect all men,' and keep it up.”

This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting
the case, did not fail to impress the barber, and proportionately
conciliate him. Likewise, from its pointedness,
it served to make him thoughtful; for, instead of going
to the copper vessel for more water, as he had purposed,
he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
hand, said: “Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice.
I don't say, and can't say, and wouldn't say, that
I suspect all men; but I do say that strangers are not
to be trusted, and so,” pointing up to the sign, “no
trust.”

“But look, now, I beg, barber,” rejoined the other
deprecatingly, not presuming too much upon the barber's
changed temper; “look, now; to say that strangers
are not to be trusted, does not that imply something
like saying that mankind is not to be trusted;
for the mass of mankind, are they not necessarily
strangers to each individual man? Come, come,
my friend,” winningly, “you are no Timon to hold
the mass of mankind untrustworthy. Take down
your notification; it is misanthropical; much the same
sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of
a skull stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber;
take it down to-night. Trust men. Just try the experiment
of trusting men for this one little trip. Come
now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against
losing a cent.”

The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, “Sir,
you must excuse me. I have a family.”