LITMIR.BIZ

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what can be finer, grander, or freer than a vagabond?” I cried, with enthusiasm. “Who, I would ask you, sees life with such philosophy? Who views the wiles, the snares, the petty conflicts of the world with such a reflective calm as his? Caring little for personal indulgence, not solicitous for self-gratification, he has both the spirit and the leisure for observation. Diogenes was the type of the vagabond, and see how successive ages have acknowledged his wisdom.”

      “If I had lived in his day, I’d have set him picking oakum, for all that!” he replied.

      “And probably, too, would have sent the ‘blind old bard to the crank,’” said I.

      “I’m not quite sure of whom you are talking,” said he; “but if he was a good ballad-singer, I’d not be hard on him.”

      “O! Menin aeide Thea Peleiadeo Achilleos!” spouted I out, in rapture.

      “That ain’t high Dutch,” asked he, “is it?”

      “No,” said I, proudly. “It is ancient Greek, – the godlike tongue of an immortal race.”

      “Immortal rascals!” he broke in. “I was in the fruit trade up in the Levant there, and such scoundrels as these Greek fellows I never met in my life.”

      “By what and whom made so?” I exclaimed eagerly. “Can you point to a people in the world who have so long resisted the barbarizing influence of a base oppression? Was there ever a nation so imbued with high civilization as to be enabled for centuries of slavery to preserve the traditions of its greatness? Have we the record of any race but this, who could rise from the slough of degradation to the dignity of a people?”

      “You ‘ve been a play-actor, I take it?” asked he, dryly.

      “No, sir, never!” replied I, with some indignation.

      “Well, then, in the Methody line? You’ve done a stroke of preaching, I ‘ll be sworn.”

      “You would be perjured in that case, sir,” I rejoined, as haughtily.

      “At all events, an auctioneer,” said he, fairly puzzled in his speculations.

      “Equally mistaken there,” said I, calmly; “bred in the midst of abundance, nurtured in affluence, and educated with all the solicitous care that a fond parent could bestow – ”

      “Gammon!” said he, bluntly. “You are one of the swell mob in distress!”

      “Is this like distress?” said I, drawing forth my purse in which were seventy-five sovereigns, and handing it to him. “Count over that, and say how just and how generous are your suspicions.”

      He gravely took the purse from me, and, stooping down to the binnacle light, counted over the money, scrutinizing carefully the pieces as he went.

      “And who is to say this isn’t ‘swag’?” said he, as he closed the purse.

      “The easiest answer to that,” said I, “is, would it be likely for a thief to show his booty, not merely to a stranger, but to a stranger who suspected him?”

      “Well, that is something, I confess,” said he, slowly.

      “It ought to be more, – it ought to be everything. If distrust were not a debasing sentiment, obstructing the impulses of generosity, and even invading the precincts of justice, you would see far more reason to confide in than to disbelieve me.”

      “I ‘ve been done pretty often afore now,” he muttered, half to himself.

      “What a fallacy that is!” cried I, contemptuously. “Was not the pittance that some crafty impostor wrung from your compassion well repaid to you in the noble self-consciousness of your generosity? Did not your venison on that day taste better when you thought of his pork chop? Had not your Burgundy gained flavor by the memory of the glass of beer that was warming the half-chilled heart in his breast? Oh, the narrow mockery of fancying that we are not better by being deceived!”

      “How long is it since you had your head shaved?” he asked dryly.

      “I have never been the inmate of an asylum for lunatics,” said I, divining and answering the impertinent insinuation.

      “Well, I own you are a rum un,” said he, half musingly.

      “I accept even this humble tribute to my originality,” said I, with a sort of proud defiance. “I am well aware how he must be regarded who dares to assert his own individuality.”

      “I’d be very curious to know,” said he, after a pause of several minutes, “how a fellow of your stamp sets to work about gaining his livelihood? What’s his first step? how does he go about it?”

      I gave no other answer than a smile of scornful meaning.

      “I meant nothing offensive,” resumed he, “but I really have a strong desire to be enlightened on this point.”

      “You are doubtless impressed with the notion,” said I, boldly, “that men possessed of some distinct craft or especial profession are alone needed by the world of their fellows. That one must be doctor or lawyer or baker or shoemaker, to gain his living, as if life had no other wants than to be clothed and fed and physicked and litigated. As if humanity had not its thousand emotional moods, its wayward impulses, its trials and temptations, all of them more needing guidance, support, direction, and counsel, than the sickest patient needs a physician. It is on this world that I throw myself; I devote myself to guide infancy, to console age, to succor the orphan, and support the widow, – morally, I mean.”

      “I begin to suspect you are a most artful vagabond,” said he half angrily.

      “I have long since reconciled myself to the thought of an unjust appreciation,” said I. “It is the consolation dull men accept when confronted with those of original genius. You can’t help confessing that all your distrust of me has grown out of the superiority of my powers, and the humble figure you have presented in comparison with me.”

      “Do you rank modesty amongst these same powers?” he asked slyly.

      “Modesty I reject,” said I, “as being a conventional form of hypocrisy.”

      “Come down below,” said he, “and take a glass of brandy and water. It ‘s growing chilly here, and we shall be the better of something to cheer us.”

      Seated in his comfortable little cabin, and with a goodly array of liquors before me to choose from, I really felt a self-confidence in the fact that, if I were not something out of the common, I could not then be there. “There must be in my nature,” thought I, “that element which begets success, or I could not always find myself in situations so palpably beyond the accidents of my condition.”

      My host was courtesy itself; no sooner was I his guest than he adopted towards me a manner of perfect politeness. No more allusions to my precarious mode of life, never once a reference to my adventurous future. Indeed, with an almost artful exercise of good breeding, he turned the conversation towards himself, and gave me a sketch of his own life.

      It was not in any respects a remarkable one; though it had its share of those mishaps and misfortunes which every sailor must have confronted. He was wrecked in the Pacific, and robbed in the Havannah; had his crew desert him at San Francisco, and was boarded by Riff pirates, and sold in Barbary just as every other blue jacket used to be; and I listened to the story, only marvelling what a dreary sameness pervades all these narratives. Why, for one trait of the truthful to prove his tale, I could have invented fifty. There were no little touches of sentiment or feeling, no relieving lights of human emotion, in his story. I never felt, as I listened, any wish that he should be saved from shipwreck, baffle his persecutors, or escape his captors; and I thought to myself, “This fellow has certainly got no narrative gusto.” Now for my turn: we had each of us partaken freely of the good liquor before us. The Captain in his quality of talker, I in my capacity of listener, had filled and refilled several times. There was not anything like inebriety, but there was that amount of exultation, a stage higher than mere excitement, which prompts men, at least men of temperaments like mine, not to suffer themselves to occupy rear rank positions, but at any cost

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