"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, Note: [24.8] a very moral old woman, who wouldn't let her shoatsNote: [24.9] 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.' Note: [24.10] "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 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 pie-man'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 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, Note: [24.11] whose book on Solitude is as vain as Hume's on Suicide, Note: [24.12] as Bacon's on Knowledge; Note: [24.13] 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." Note: [24.14]
"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and keep talking, Note: [24.15] 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 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?" Note: [24.16]
"Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, Note: [24.17] and Jeremy Taylor the divine, Note: [24.18] 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?"
"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, love-less; 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.