prompt:
Chapter: CHAPTER XXI. A HARD CASE.

"Yarbs, yarbs; natur, natur; you foolish old file you! He diddled you
with that hocus-pocus, did he? Yarbs and natur will cure your incurable
cough, you think."

It was a rather eccentric-looking person who spoke; somewhat ursine in
aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bear's-skin; a
high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin, the long bushy tail switching over
behind; raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a
double-barreled gun in hand--a Missouri bachelor, a Hoosier gentleman,
of Spartan leisure and fortune, and equally Spartan manners and
sentiments; and, as the sequel may show, not less acquainted, in a
Spartan way of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
and rifles.

He must have overheard some of the talk between the miser and the
herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal of the one, he made up to
the other--now at the foot of the stairs leaning against the baluster
there--with the greeting above.

"Think it will cure me?" coughed the miser in echo; "why shouldn't it?
The medicine is nat'ral yarbs, pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me."

"Because a thing is nat'ral, as you call it, you think it must be good.
But who gave you that cough? Was it, or was it not, nature?"

"Sure, you don't think that natur, Dame Natur, will hurt a body, do
you?"

"Natur is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?"

"But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?"

"What's deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain't it?"

"Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur and yarbs--ugh, ugh,
ugh!--ain't sick men sent out into the country; sent out to natur and
grass?"

"Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame
horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of
yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for
sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster
on the prairie? And who made an idiot of Peter the Wild Boy?"

"Then you don't believe in these 'ere yarb-doctors?"

"Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor I saw once on a
hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the faculty passing round and seeing who
lay there, said with professional triumph, 'Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
don't help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and the mercury now,
Dr. Green.--Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!'"

"Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?" here said a
flute-like voice, advancing.

It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in hand, he happened to be
strolling back that way.

"Pardon me," addressing the Missourian, "but if I caught your words
aright, you would seem to have little confidence in nature; which,
really, in my way of thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of
distrust pretty far."

"And who of my sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon
him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half
cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the
expression, which made its sincerity appear more or less dubious.

"One who has confidence in nature, and confidence in man, with some
little modest confidence in himself."

"That's your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence in man, eh? Pray,
which do you think are most, knaves or fools?"

"Having met with few or none of either, I hardly think I am competent to
answer."

"I will answer for you. Fools are most."

"Why do you think so?"

"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses.
Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"

"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery--ha, ha, ha!"

"But I'm in earnest."

"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest
air--knaves munching up fools as horses oats.--Faith, very droll,
indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I
was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about
having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much as I
have."

"_I_ have confidence in nature? _I?_ I say again there is nothing I am
more suspicious of. I once lost ten thousand dollars by nature. Nature
embezzled that amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars'
worth of my property; a plantation on this stream, swept clean away by
one of those sudden shiftings of the banks in a freshet; ten thousand
dollars' worth of alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters."

"But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting that soil will
come back after many days?--ah, here is my venerable friend," observing
the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you _will_ keep afoot,
don't lean against that baluster; take my arm."

It was taken; and the two stood together; the old miser leaning against
the herb-doctor with something of that air of trustful fraternity with
which, when standing, the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually
leans against the other.

The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was broken by the
herb-doctor.

"You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly take under my
protection a figure like this? But I am never ashamed of honesty,
whatever his coat."

"Look you," said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing pause, "you are a
queer sort of chap. Don't know exactly what to make of you. Upon the
whole though, you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my place."

"Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?"

"Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some kind of machine to do
the sort of work which boys are supposed to be fitted for."

"Then you have passed a veto upon boys?"

"And men, too."

"But, my dear sir, does not that again imply more or less lack of
confidence?--(Stand up a little, just a very little, my venerable
friend; you lean rather hard.)--No confidence in boys, no confidence in
men, no confidence in nature. Pray, sir, who or what may you have
confidence in?"

"I have confidence in distrust; more particularly as applied to you and
your herbs."

"Well," with a forbearing smile, "that is frank. But pray, don't forget
that when you suspect my herbs you suspect nature."

"Didn't I say that before?"

"Very good. For the argument's sake I will suppose you are in earnest.
Now, can you, who suspect nature, deny, that this same nature not only
kindly brought you into being, but has faithfully nursed you to your
present vigorous and independent condition? Is it not to nature that you
are indebted for that robustness of mind which you so unhandsomely use
to her scandal? Pray, is it not to nature that you owe the very eyes by
which you criticise her?"

"No! for the privilege of vision I am indebted to an oculist, who in my
tenth year operated upon me in Philadelphia. Nature made me blind and
would have kept me so. My oculist counterplotted her."

"And yet, sir, by your complexion, I judge you live an out-of-door life;
without knowing it, you are partial to nature; you fly to nature, the
universal mother."

"Very motherly! Sir, in the passion-fits of nature, I've known birds fly
from nature to me, rough as I look; yes, sir, in a tempest, refuge
here," smiting the folds of his bearskin. "Fact, sir, fact. Come, come,
Mr. Palaverer, for all your palavering, did you yourself never shut out
nature of a cold, wet night? Bar her out? Bolt her out? Lint her out?"

"As to that," said the herb-doctor calmly, "much may be said."

"Say it, then," ruffling all his hairs. "You can't, sir, can't." Then,
as in apostrophe: "Look you, nature! I don't deny but your clover is
sweet, and your dandelions don't roar; but whose hailstones smashed my
windows?"

"Sir," with unimpaired affability, producing one of his boxes, "I am
pained to meet with one who holds nature a dangerous character. Though
your manner is refined your voice is rough; in short, you seem to have a
sore throat. In the calumniated name of nature, I present you with this
box; my venerable friend here has a similar one; but to you, a free
gift, sir. Through her regularly-authorized agents, of whom I happen to
be one, Nature delights in benefiting those who most abuse her. Pray,
take it."

"Away with it! Don't hold it so near. Ten to one there is a torpedo in
it. Such things have been. Editors been killed that way. Take it further
off, I say."

"Good heavens! my dear sir----"

"I tell you I want none of your boxes," snapping his rifle.

"Oh, take it--ugh, ugh! do take it," chimed in the old miser; "I wish he
would give me one for nothing."

"You find it lonely, eh," turning short round; "gulled yourself, you
would have a companion."

"How can he find it lonely," returned the herb-doctor, "or how desire a
companion, when here I stand by him; I, even I, in whom he has trust.
For the gulling, tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man?
Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain, is it kind to
deprive him of what, in mere imagination, if nothing more, may help eke
out, with hope, his disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and,
thanks to your native health, can get along without it, so far, at
least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet, how cruel an argument to
use, with this afflicted one here. Is it not for all the world as if
some brawny pugilist, aglow in December, should rush in and put out a
hospital-fire, because, forsooth, he feeling no need of artificial heat,
the shivering patients shall have none? Put it to your conscience, sir,
and you will admit, that, whatever be the nature of this afflicted one's
trust, you, in opposing it, evince either an erring head or a heart
amiss. Come, own, are you not pitiless?"

"Yes, poor soul," said the Missourian, gravely eying the old man--"yes,
it _is_ pitiless in one like me to speak too honestly to one like you.
You are a late sitter-up in this life; past man's usual bed-time; and
truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast, proves to all a
supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives bad dreams."

"What, in wonder's name--ugh, ugh!--is he talking about?" asked the old
miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.

"Heaven be praised for that!" cried the Missourian.

"Out of his mind, ain't he?" again appealed the old miser.

"Pray, sir," said the herb-doctor to the Missourian, "for what were you
giving thanks just now?"

"For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a
thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded pistol found by poor devils
of savages, it raises more wonder than terror--its peculiar virtue being
unguessed, unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should happen to
go off of itself."

"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor,
after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of
pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his
state of mind, and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him to
it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your
thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them,
but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet
recant."

"Recant?"

"Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when
a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the
dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence
begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it
return to you in age."

"Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood, indeed. You are soft."

"Mercy, mercy!" cried the old miser, "what is all this!--ugh, ugh! Do
talk sense, my good friends. Ain't you," to the Missourian, "going to
buy some of that medicine?"

"Pray, my venerable friend," said the herb-doctor, now trying to
straighten himself, "don't lean _quite_ so hard; my arm grows numb;
abate a little, just a very little."

"Go," said the Missourian, "go lay down in your grave, old man, if you
can't stand of yourself. It's a hard world for a leaner."

"As to his grave," said the herb-doctor, "that is far enough off, so he
but faithfully take my medicine."

"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--He says true. No, I ain't--ugh! a going to die
yet--ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!"

"I approve your confidence," said the herb-doctor; "but your coughing
distresses me, besides being injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you
to your berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait till my
return, I know."

With which he led the old miser away, and then, coming back, the talk
with the Missourian was resumed.

"Sir," said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and more feeling, "now
that our infirm friend is withdrawn, allow me, to the full, to express
my concern at the words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to beget
deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to convey unpleasant
imputations against me, his physician."

"Suppose they did?" with a menacing air.

"Why, then--then, indeed," respectfully retreating, "I fall back upon my
previous theory of your general facetiousness. I have the fortune to be
in company with a humorist--a wag."

"Fall back you had better, and wag it is," cried the Missourian,
following him up, and wagging his raccoon tail almost into the
herb-doctor's face, "look you!"

"At what?"

"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"

"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I
flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or
pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer
that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the
kind."

"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."

"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me.
The innocence in me heals me."

"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man--a very queer
and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met."

The scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome to the diffidence of the
herb-doctor. As if at once to attest the absence of resentment, as well
as to change the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into
his air, and said: "So you are going to get some machine made to do your
work? Philanthropic scruples, doubtless, forbid your going as far as New
Orleans for slaves?"

"Slaves?" morose again in a twinkling, "won't have 'em! Bad enough to
see whites ducking and grinning round for a favor, without having those
poor devils of niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,
the niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist, ain't
you?" he added, squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for
a staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence
than if it were a target. "You are an abolitionist, ain't you?"

"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a
zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for
all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's
interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly
abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among
mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say."

"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable
understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for
wrong, but are useless for right."

"From all this," said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly, "I infer, that
you, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state, are without slave
sentiments."

"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring
and yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are
you owned by a company?"

"_My_ master?"

"Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come from a slave-state, and a
slave-pen, where the best breeds are to be bought up at any price from a
livelihood to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but expresses the
fellow-feeling of slave for slave."

"The back-woods would seem to have given you rather eccentric notions,"
now with polite superiority smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly
intrepidity forbearing each unmanly thrust, "but to return; since, for
your purpose, you will have neither man nor boy, bond nor free, truly,
then some sort of machine for you is all there is left. My desires for
your success attend you, sir.--Ah!" glancing shoreward, "here is Cape
Giradeau; I must leave you."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Once the herb-doctor is gone, a man from Missouri dressed in bearskins and tough as nails mocks the miser for believing in nature, the herbs, and the herb-doctor. The men debate about the goodness of nature, with the miser saying it's just peachy and the Missourian arguing that bad weather, hardship, and poisons also come from nature. The herb-doctor returns from grabbing his carpetbag in time to hear the tail end of the Missourian's harsh criticism. When the tough guy repeats his opinions, the herb-doctor counters with Surely you jest. The Missourian does not jest, although he is definitely getting a kick out of ripping apart the miser and the herb-doctor. The herb-doctor tries several times and fails to change the Missourian's mind. It eventually devolves into the Missourian harshly telling the miser to give up and die, before the two younger guys have a quick chat about abolitionism. The Missourian wants no hired hands to help him in his work and is sick of needy people being generally useless. Moreover, the Missourian describes the herb-doctor as a type of slave with a master that's running his life and telling him what to do. He sees the herb-doctor as a moderate sort of man whose moderation is easily a tool of evil and of very little benefit to the good. The herb-doctor gives the Missourian a condescending look then goes, Oh, look--here's my stop. By-eee.


prompt:
Chapter: CHAPTER XXII. IN THE POLITE SPIRIT OF THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

--"'Philosophical Intelligence Office'--novel idea! But how did you come
to dream that I wanted anything in your absurd line, eh?"

About twenty minutes after leaving Cape Giradeau, the above was growled
out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had
just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean
five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate,
inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk
obliquely behind.

"How did you come to dream that I wanted anything in your line, eh?"

"Oh, respected sir," whined the other, crouching a pace nearer, and, in
his obsequiousness, seeming to wag his very coat-tails behind him,
shabby though they were, "oh, sir, from long experience, one glance
tells me the gentleman who is in need of our humble services."

"But suppose I did want a boy--what they jocosely call a good boy--how
could your absurd office help me?--Philosophical Intelligence Office?"

"Yes, respected sir, an office founded on strictly philosophical and
physio----"

"Look you--come up here--how, by philosophy or physiology either, make
good boys to order? Come up here. Don't give me a crick in the neck.
Come up here, come, sir, come," calling as if to his pointer. "Tell me,
how put the requisite assortment of good qualities into a boy, as the
assorted mince into the pie?"

"Respected sir, our office----"

"You talk much of that office. Where is it? On board this boat?"

"Oh no, sir, I just came aboard. Our office----"

"Came aboard at that last landing, eh? Pray, do you know a herb-doctor
there? Smooth scamp in a snuff-colored surtout?"

"Oh, sir, I was but a sojourner at Cape Giradeau. Though, now that you
mention a snuff-colored surtout, I think I met such a man as you speak
of stepping ashore as I stepped aboard, and 'pears to me I have seen him
somewhere before. Looks like a very mild Christian sort of person, I
should say. Do you know him, respected sir?"

"Not much, but better than you seem to. Proceed with your business."

With a low, shabby bow, as grateful for the permission, the other began:
"Our office----"

"Look you," broke in the bachelor with ire, "have you the spinal
complaint? What are you ducking and groveling about? Keep still. Where's
your office?"

"The branch one which I represent, is at Alton, sir, in the free state
we now pass," (pointing somewhat proudly ashore).

"Free, eh? You a freeman, you flatter yourself? With those coat-tails
and that spinal complaint of servility? Free? Just cast up in your
private mind who is your master, will you?"

"Oh, oh, oh! I don't understand--indeed--indeed. But, respected sir, as
before said, our office, founded on principles wholly new----"

"To the devil with your principles! Bad sign when a man begins to talk
of his principles. Hold, come back, sir; back here, back, sir, back! I
tell you no more boys for me. Nay, I'm a Mede and Persian. In my old
home in the woods I'm pestered enough with squirrels, weasels,
chipmunks, skunks. I want no more wild vermin to spoil my temper and
waste my substance. Don't talk of boys; enough of your boys; a plague of
your boys; chilblains on your boys! As for Intelligence Offices, I've
lived in the East, and know 'em. Swindling concerns kept by low-born
cynics, under a fawning exterior wreaking their cynic malice upon
mankind. You are a fair specimen of 'em."

"Oh dear, dear, dear!"

"Dear? Yes, a thrice dear purchase one of your boys would be to me. A
rot on your boys!"

"But, respected sir, if you will not have boys, might we not, in our
small way, accommodate you with a man?"

"Accommodate? Pray, no doubt you could accommodate me with a
bosom-friend too, couldn't you? Accommodate! Obliging word accommodate:
there's accommodation notes now, where one accommodates another with a
loan, and if he don't pay it pretty quickly, accommodates him, with a
chain to his foot. Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be
accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours,
the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine
to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill--does that ever steal my
cider? My mowing-machine--does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My
corn-husker--does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill,
mowing-machine, corn-husker--all faithfully attend to their business.
Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives
long; shining examples that virtue is its own reward--the only practical
Christians I know."

"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear!"

"Yes, sir:--boys? Start my soul-bolts, what a difference, in a moral
point of view, between a corn-husker and a boy! Sir, a corn-husker, for
its patient continuance in well-doing, might not unfitly go to heaven.
Do you suppose a boy will?"

"A corn-husker in heaven! (turning up the whites of his eyes). Respected
sir, this way of talking as if heaven were a kind of Washington
patent-office museum--oh, oh, oh!--as if mere machine-work and
puppet-work went to heaven--oh, oh, oh! Things incapable of free agency,
to receive the eternal reward of well-doing--oh, oh, oh!"

"You Praise-God-Barebones you, what are you groaning about? Did I say
anything of that sort? Seems to me, though you talk so good, you are
mighty quick at a hint the other way, or else you want to pick a polemic
quarrel with me."

"It may be so or not, respected sir," was now the demure reply; "but if
it be, it is only because as a soldier out of honor is quick in taking
affront, so a Christian out of religion is quick, sometimes perhaps a
little too much so, in spying heresy."

"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."

So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
further on the subject of servants.

"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."

"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
as I ventured to observe----"

"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."

"Save us, save us!"

"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
polite he grew."

"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."

"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
are rascals."

"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
and wholly?"

Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
continued as follows:

"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"

"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."

"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--

    'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--

and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."

"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
man, I may have my small share of feelings."

"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
rascals."

"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
of the subject in hand?"

"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
other way. "Oh, yes; go on."

"Well, then, respected sir," continued the other, now assuming as
genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar
suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the
strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in
dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office is
founded, has led me and my associates, in our small, quiet way, to a
careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory, and
with an unobtrusive aim wholly our own. That theory I will not now at
large set forth. But some of the discoveries resulting from it, I will,
by your permission, very briefly mention; such of them, I mean, as refer
to the state of boyhood scientifically viewed."

"Then you have studied the thing? expressly studied boys, eh? Why didn't
you out with that before?"

"Sir, in my small business way, I have not conversed with so many
masters, gentlemen masters, for nothing. I have been taught that in this
world there is a precedence of opinions as well as of persons. You have
kindly given me your views, I am now, with modesty, about to give you
mine."

"Stop flunkying--go on."

"In the first place, sir, our theory teaches us to proceed by analogy
from the physical to the moral. Are we right there, sir? Now, sir, take
a young boy, a young male infant rather, a man-child in short--what sir,
I respectfully ask, do you in the first place remark?"

"A rascal, sir! present and prospective, a rascal!"

"Sir, if passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. May I
proceed? Well, then, what, in the first place, in a general view, do you
remark, respected sir, in that male baby or man-child?"

The bachelor privily growled, but this time, upon the whole, better
governed himself than before, though not, indeed, to the degree of
thinking it prudent to risk an articulate response.

"What do you remark? I respectfully repeat." But, as no answer came,
only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the
questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small
way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation;
loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or
careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected
sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir,
the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to
deny it; but, then, he _promises_ well, does he not? Yes, promises very
well indeed, I may say. (So, too, we say to our patrons in reference to
some noble little youngster objected to for being a _dwarf_.) But, to
advance one step further," extending his thread-bare leg, as he drew a
pace nearer, "we must now drop the figure of the rag-paper cartoon, and
borrow one--to use presently, when wanted--from the horticultural
kingdom. Some bud, lily-bud, if you please. Now, such points as the
new-born man-child has--as yet not all that could be desired, I am free
to confess--still, such as they are, there they are, and palpable as
those of an adult. But we stop not here," taking another step. "The
man-child not only possesses these present points, small though they
are, but, likewise--now our horticultural image comes into play--like
the bud of the lily, he contains concealed rudiments of others; that
is, points at present invisible, with beauties at present dormant."

"Come, come, this talk is getting too horticultural and beautiful
altogether. Cut it short, cut it short!"

"Respected sir," with a rustily martial sort of gesture, like a decayed
corporal's, "when deploying into the field of discourse the vanguard of
an important argument, much more in evolving the grand central forces of
a new philosophy of boys, as I may say, surely you will kindly allow
scope adequate to the movement in hand, small and humble in its way as
that movement may be. Is it worth my while to go on, respected sir?"

"Yes, stop flunkying and go on."

Thus encouraged, again the philosopher with the brass-plate proceeded:

"Supposing, sir, that worthy gentleman (in such terms, to an applicant
for service, we allude to some patron we chance to have in our eye),
supposing, respected sir, that worthy gentleman, Adam, to have been
dropped overnight in Eden, as a calf in the pasture; supposing that,
sir--then how could even the learned serpent himself have foreknown that
such a downy-chinned little innocent would eventually rival the goat in
a beard? Sir, wise as the serpent was, that eventuality would have been
entirely hidden from his wisdom."

"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the
event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who
made him."

"For God's sake, don't say that, sir! To the point. Can it now with
fairness be denied that, in his beard, the man-child prospectively
possesses an appendix, not less imposing than patriarchal; and for this
goodly beard, should we not by generous anticipation give the man-child,
even in his cradle, credit? Should we not now, sir? respectfully I put
it."

"Yes, if like pig-weed he mows it down soon as it shoots," porcinely
rubbing his stubble-chin against his coon-skins.

"I have hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful
of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble
quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't
you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon
us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may be) has this boy a
beard?' 'No.' 'Has he, we respectfully ask, as yet, evinced any noble
quality?' 'No, indeed.' 'Then, madam, or sir, take him back, we humbly
beseech; and keep him till that same noble quality sprouts; for, have
confidence, it, like the beard, is in him.'"

"Very fine theory," scornfully exclaimed the bachelor, yet in secret,
perhaps, not entirely undisturbed by these strange new views of the
matter; "but what trust is to be placed in it?"

"The trust of perfect confidence, sir. To proceed. Once more, if you
please, regard the man-child."

"Hold!" paw-like thrusting put his bearskin arm, "don't intrude that
man-child upon me too often. He who loves not bread, dotes not on
dough. As little of your man-child as your logical arrangements will
admit."

"Anew regard the man-child," with inspired intrepidity repeated he with
the brass-plate, "in the perspective of his developments, I mean. At
first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month--am I right,
sir?"

"Don't know anything about it."

"To proceed then: though at first deficient in teeth, about the sixth
month the man-child begins to put forth in that particular. And sweet
those tender little puttings-forth are."

"Very, but blown out of his mouth directly, worthless enough."

"Admitted. And, therefore, we say to our patrons returning with a boy
alleged not only to be deficient in goodness, but redundant in ill: 'The
lad, madam or sir, evinces very corrupt qualities, does he? No end to
them.' 'But, have confidence, there will be; for pray, madam, in this
lad's early childhood, were not those frail first teeth, then his,
followed by his present sound, even, beautiful and permanent set. And
the more objectionable those first teeth became, was not that, madam, we
respectfully submit, so much the more reason to look for their speedy
substitution by the present sound, even, beautiful and permanent ones.'
'True, true, can't deny that.' 'Then, madam, take him back, we
respectfully beg, and wait till, in the now swift course of nature,
dropping those transient moral blemishes you complain of, he
replacingly buds forth in the sound, even, beautiful and permanent
virtues.'"

"Very philosophical again," was the contemptuous reply--the outward
contempt, perhaps, proportioned to the inward misgiving. "Vastly
philosophical, indeed, but tell me--to continue your analogy--since the
second teeth followed--in fact, came from--the first, is there no chance
the blemish may be transmitted?"

"Not at all." Abating in humility as he gained in the argument. "The
second teeth follow, but do not come from, the first; successors, not
sons. The first teeth are not like the germ blossom of the apple, at
once the father of, and incorporated into, the growth it foreruns; but
they are thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the
succeeding set--an illustration, by the way, which shows more for me
than I meant, though not more than I wish."

"What does it show?" Surly-looking as a thundercloud with the inkept
unrest of unacknowledged conviction.

"It shows this, respected sir, that in the case of any boy, especially
an ill one, to apply unconditionally the saying, that the 'child is
father of the man', is, besides implying an uncharitable aspersion of
the race, affirming a thing very wide of----"

"--Your analogy," like a snapping turtle.

"Yes, respected sir."

"But is analogy argument? You are a punster."

"Punster, respected sir?" with a look of being aggrieved.

"Yes, you pun with ideas as another man may with words."

"Oh well, sir, whoever talks in that strain, whoever has no confidence
in human reason, whoever despises human reason, in vain to reason with
him. Still, respected sir," altering his air, "permit me to hint that,
had not the force of analogy moved you somewhat, you would hardly have
offered to contemn it."

"Talk away," disdainfully; "but pray tell me what has that last analogy
of yours to do with your intelligence office business?"

"Everything to do with it, respected sir. From that analogy we derive
the reply made to such a patron as, shortly after being supplied by us
with an adult servant, proposes to return him upon our hands; not that,
while with the patron, said adult has given any cause of
dissatisfaction, but the patron has just chanced to hear something
unfavorable concerning him from some gentleman who employed said adult,
long before, while a boy. To which too fastidious patron, we, taking
said adult by the hand, and graciously reintroducing him to the patron,
say: 'Far be it from you, madam, or sir, to proceed in your censure
against this adult, in anything of the spirit of an ex-post-facto law.
Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In
the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over
and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better? Madam,
or sir, take back this adult; he may have been a caterpillar, but is now
a butterfly."

"Pun away; but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount
to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The
butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there
lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped as
before."

"You reject the analogy. To the facts then. You deny that a youth of one
character can be transformed into a man of an opposite character. Now
then--yes, I have it. There's the founder of La Trappe, and Ignatius
Loyola; in boyhood, and someway into manhood, both devil-may-care
bloods, and yet, in the end, the wonders of the world for anchoritish
self-command. These two examples, by-the-way, we cite to such patrons as
would hastily return rakish young waiters upon us. 'Madam, or
sir--patience; patience,' we say; 'good madam, or sir, would you
discharge forth your cask of good wine, because, while working, it riles
more or less? Then discharge not forth this young waiter; the good in
him is working.' 'But he is a sad rake.' 'Therein is his promise; the
rake being crude material for the saint.'"

"Ah, you are a talking man--what I call a wordy man. You talk, talk."

"And with submission, sir, what is the greatest judge, bishop or
prophet, but a talking man? He talks, talks. It is the peculiar vocation
of a teacher to talk. What's wisdom itself but table-talk? The best
wisdom in this world, and the last spoken by its teacher, did it not
literally and truly come in the form of table-talk?"

"You, you, you!" rattling down his rifle.

"To shift the subject, since we cannot agree. Pray, what is your
opinion, respected sir, of St. Augustine?"

"St. Augustine? What should I, or you either, know of him? Seems to me,
for one in such a business, to say nothing of such a coat, that though
you don't know a great deal, indeed, yet you know a good deal more than
you ought to know, or than you have a right to know, or than it is safe
or expedient for you to know, or than, in the fair course of life, you
could have honestly come to know. I am of opinion you should be served
like a Jew in the middle ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."

"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
suppose."

"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
altogether unexampled and extraordinary."

"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"

"Excellent genius!"

"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
dog?"

"A saint a sad dog?"

"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
boy."

"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."

"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
than in nature herself."

"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
five and thirty boys of mine."

"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
corn."

"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how often
I've sadly watched my Indian corn in May, wondering whether such sickly,
half-eaten sprouts, could ever thrive up into the stiff, stately spear
of August."

"A most admirable reflection, sir, and you have only, according to the
analogical theory first started by our office, to apply it to that
thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that
thirtieth boy--been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them,
hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when
at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler."

"Really, really--well, I am glad I didn't send him to jail, as at first
I intended."

"Oh that would have been too bad. Grant he was vicious. The petty vices
of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.
Some boys know not virtue only for the same reason they know not French;
it was never taught them. Established upon the basis of parental
charity, juvenile asylums exist by law for the benefit of lads convicted
of acts which, in adults, would have received other requital. Why?
Because, do what they will, society, like our office, at bottom has a
Christian confidence in boys. And all this we say to our patrons."

"Your patrons, sir, seem your marines to whom you may say anything,"
said the other, relapsing. "Why do knowing employers shun youths from
asylums, though offered them at the smallest wages? I'll none of your
reformado boys."

"Such a boy, respected sir, I would not get for you, but a boy that
never needed reform. Do not smile, for as whooping-cough and measles are
juvenile diseases, and yet some juveniles never have them, so are there
boys equally free from juvenile vices. True, for the best of boys'
measles may be contagious, and evil communications corrupt good manners;
but a boy with a sound mind in a sound body--such is the boy I would get
you. If hitherto, sir, you have struck upon a peculiarly bad vein of
boys, so much the more hope now of your hitting a good one."

"That sounds a kind of reasonable, as it were--a little so, really. In
fact, though you have said a great many foolish things, very foolish and
absurd things, yet, upon the whole, your conversation has been such as
might almost lead one less distrustful than I to repose a certain
conditional confidence in you, I had almost added in your office, also.
Now, for the humor of it, supposing that even I, I myself, really had
this sort of conditional confidence, though but a grain, what sort of a
boy, in sober fact, could you send me? And what would be your fee?"

"Conducted," replied the other somewhat loftily, rising now in eloquence
as his proselyte, for all his pretenses, sunk in conviction, "conducted
upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is
usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is
forced to charge somewhat higher than customary. Briefly, our fee is
three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a
very promising little fellow now in my eye--a very likely little fellow,
indeed."

"Honest?"

"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at
least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his
head, submitted to me by the mother."

"How old?"

"Just fifteen."

"Tall? Stout?"

"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."

"Industrious?"

"The busy bee."

The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy,
he spoke:

"Do you think now, candidly, that--I say candidly--candidly--could I
have some small, limited--some faint, conditional degree of confidence
in that boy? Candidly, now?"

"Candidly, you could."

"A sound boy? A good boy?"

"Never knew one more so."

The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well,
now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too.
Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine.
Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try
that boy. I don't think him an angel, mind. No, no. But I'll try him.
There are my three dollars, and here is my address. Send him along this
day two weeks. Hold, you will be wanting the money for his passage.
There," handing it somewhat reluctantly.

"Ah, thank you. I had forgotten his passage;" then, altering in manner,
and gravely holding the bills, continued: "Respected sir, never
willingly do I handle money not with perfect willingness, nay, with a
certain alacrity, paid. Either tell me that you have a perfect and
unquestioning confidence in me (never mind the boy now) or permit me
respectfully to return these bills."

"Put 'em up, put 'em-up!"

"Thank you. Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of
business transactions. Without it, commerce between man and man, as
between country and country, would, like a watch, run down and stop. And
now, supposing that against present expectation the lad should, after
all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Missourian, who we learn in this chapter is called "Pitch"--if you're keeping count, that's four whole names we've got so far for this novel's cornucopia of characters--is met by a man wearing a brass plate with the initials "P.I.O." inscribed on it. It stands for Philosophical Intelligence Office, which is a counterintuitive name for an agency that places servants in jobs. This man in a shabby suit is trying to get Pitch to hire one of his boys. Pitch is not into it: he's hired 30 boys from various backgrounds, and they've all been scoundrels of all kinds. PIO is horrified that Pitch has such a dismal view of human nature and makes an argument that boys are lily buds with baby teeth who will grow into big plants with perma teeth that can bite through steel . He says he knows this scientifically, as a studier of human nature. Pitch is doubtful. Pitch is so doubtful that PIO brings out the big guns. He plays the St. Augustine card. Pitch hearts St. Augustine and begins to soften his stance. PIO then low-blows an insult to Pitch's animal-skin outfit as an outward example of his disordered mind--and that seems to be enough to break him. Pitch agrees to try out one of PIO's boys for a job instead of getting a machine like a cedar mill to do the work. Pitch asks about the price, and PIO says his is pricier than other agencies, and he needs to be paid upfront. Pitch gives PIO the money and extra for the boy's transportation. PIO: Oh, yes, I forgot about that. Very good, thanks. Before the transaction is over, though, PIO stops Pitch and says that he'll accept Pitch's money if and only if he declares that he Pitch has 100% confidence in him. Pitch: Oh. Heck, yes. Just then, the boat pulls up against a bluff that PIO says is called the Devil's Joke. Ha ha.


prompt:
Chapter: CHAPTER XXIII. IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.

At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up
its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand
at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three
undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.

In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with
fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain
passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over
the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his
cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.
He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this
villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.
Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform
treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,
had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To
what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the
mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with
Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the
morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere
bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake
up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and
for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally
little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.

But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,
experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but
unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its
genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished
by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse
henceforth.

He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he
fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a
fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.
He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the
operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the
lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And
yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the
person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,
that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems
him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make
out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough
doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of
cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples
the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast
in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by
the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the
insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky
beast that windeth his way on his belly.

From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the
shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which
came a voice, sweet as a seraph's:

"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Taking in the scenery of Cairo, Illinois, Pitch considers it a hotbed of disease and corruption. PIO had mentioned this was his stop. This makes Pitch associate disease and corruption with PIO. The association makes Pitch suspect that he was swindled. Pitch muses over how this occurred and thinks about PIO's threadbare outfit, jovial but slippery words, and sly facial expressions. In the throes of these unhappy thoughts, a stranger comes up to Pitch and offers the metaphorical penny to know what his thoughts are.


prompt:
Chapter: CHAPTER XXIV. A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.

"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
moroseness.

"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 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 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 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 a la
Pole, or a la Moor, a la Ladrone, or a 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."

"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."

"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 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 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 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 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?"

"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," snapping 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 worldling, glutton,
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 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 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Hooooo, we thought the previous chapter was full of philosophical musings. We don't know what hit us with this one, and neither does the cosmopolitan after he encounters Pitch. Pitch immediately distrusts the cosmopolitan and mocks his attire, a multi-colored mix of patterns and textures over crisp white pants. The cosmopolitan retorts with a sort of pot-kettle response--remember that Pitch is wearing a bunch of animal skins. Pitch: Fair, but stop touching me. The men engage in a debate over whether it's better to distrust mankind and live a solitary life or live in the world, tasting everyone . The cosmopolitan tries a few tactics. First, he argues that while not all partying will make you a drunkard, too much sobriety will ruin a person. He then tells a story of a respectable old woman who suddenly didn't want anything to do with anybody, stopped eating, and was generally mopey. She was "cured" by getting tipsy. Pitch says if you need alcohol to like people, he'll stick with the truth available in water and be alone. The cosmopolitan guilts Pitch: So, you think you're better than everyone, huh? Well, you're like a noble boot in the truth of the sun, but you're warped. I'm like the honest well-worn slipper that walks among the people. Or, you're like the sick chicken that no one wants to hang out with. Pitch finds this insulting. The cosmopolitan is glad, because if Pitch is insulted, then he must think humans are good after all, since Pitch is also human. See what he did there? Pitch accuses the cosmopolitan of being the third crook he's come across today. The cosmopolitan tries to get Pitch to go party with him because he sees him as a good wine. Besides, he argues, didn't Diogenes have more fun than Timon of Athens? Pitch is super excited about the Diogenes reference and gives the cosmopolitan a strong handshake. He's so glad the cosmopolitan hates people, too, but was just playing. The cosmopolitan freezes up. He's like, No. That's not what I meant at all. The cosmopolitan gives up and walks away.


prompt:
Chapter: CHAPTER XXV. THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.

In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
stranger.

"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
should think."

It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.

A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
habit.

But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might have hinted that
they were too good to be true; or rather, were not so good as they might
be; since the best false teeth are those made with at least two or three
blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately for better
constructions, no such critics had the stranger now in eye; only the
cosmopolitan, who, after, in the first place, acknowledging his advances
with a mute salute--in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably
because of the saddening sequel of that late interview--thus now
replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly;
"that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he
anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock Hall, Northamptonshire,
England?"

"I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall than of the Burdocks
of Burdock Hut," returned the other, with the air somehow of one whose
fortunes had been of his own making; "all I know is, that the late
Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time; eye like Lochiel's;
finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount's; and with but two little
oddities--seldom stirred without his rifle, and hated Indians like
snakes."

"Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of Misanthrope Hall--the
Woods. No very sleek creature, the colonel, I fancy."

"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly
headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians--how the
late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians,
to be sure!"

"Never heard of such a thing. Hate Indians? Why should he or anybody
else hate Indians? _I_ admire Indians. Indians I have always heard to be
one of the finest of the primitive races, possessed of many heroic
virtues. Some noble women, too. When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready
to love Indians. Then there's Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and
Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan--all heroes; and there's the Five
Nations, and Araucanians--federations and communities of heroes. God
bless me; hate Indians? Surely the late Colonel John Moredock must have
wandered in his mind."

"Wandered in the woods considerably, but never wandered elsewhere, that
I ever heard."

"Are you in earnest? Was there ever one who so made it his particular
mission to hate Indians that, to designate him, a special word has been
coined--Indian-hater?"

"Even so."

"Dear me, you take it very calmly.--But really, I would like to know
something about this Indian-hating, I can hardly believe such a thing to
be. Could you favor me with a little history of the extraordinary man
you mentioned?"

"With all my heart," and immediately stepping from the porch, gestured
the cosmopolitan to a settee near by, on deck. "There, sir, sit you
there, and I will sit here beside you--you desire to hear of Colonel
John Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with a white
stone--the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached, hanging
in a cabin on the West bank of the Wabash river. I was going westward a
long journey through the wilderness with my father. It was nigh noon,
and we had stopped at the cabin to unsaddle and bait. The man at the
cabin pointed out the rifle, and told whose it was, adding that the
colonel was that moment sleeping on wolf-skins in the corn-loft above,
so we must not talk very loud, for the colonel had been out all night
hunting (Indians, mind), and it would be cruel to disturb his sleep.
Curious to see one so famous, we waited two hours over, in hopes he
would come forth; but he did not. So, it being necessary to get to the
next cabin before nightfall, we had at last to ride off without the
wished-for satisfaction. Though, to tell the truth, I, for one, did not
go away entirely ungratified, for, while my father was watering the
horses, I slipped back into the cabin, and stepping a round or two up
the ladder, pushed my head through the trap, and peered about. Not much
light in the loft; but off, in the further corner, I saw what I took to
be the wolf-skins, and on them a bundle of something, like a drift of
leaves; and at one end, what seemed a moss-ball; and over it,
deer-antlers branched; and close by, a small squirrel sprang out from a
maple-bowl of nuts, brushed the moss-ball with his tail, through a hole,
and vanished, squeaking. That bit of woodland scene was all I saw. No
Colonel Moredock there, unless that moss-ball was his curly head, seen
in the back view. I would have gone clear up, but the man below had
warned me, that though, from his camping habits, the colonel could sleep
through thunder, he was for the same cause amazing quick to waken at the
sound of footsteps, however soft, and especially if human."

"Excuse me," said the other, softly laying his hand on the narrator's
wrist, "but I fear the colonel was of a distrustful nature--little or no
confidence. He _was_ a little suspicious-minded, wasn't he?"

"Not a bit. Knew too much. Suspected nobody, but was not ignorant of
Indians. Well: though, as you may gather, I never fully saw the man,
yet, have I, one way and another, heard about as much of him as any
other; in particular, have I heard his history again and again from my
father's friend, James Hall, the judge, you know. In every company being
called upon to give this history, which none could better do, the judge
at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke
less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking
for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an
equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you
the judge upon the colonel almost word for word."

"Do so, by all means," said the cosmopolitan, well pleased.

"Shall I give you the judge's philosophy, and all?"

"As to that," rejoined the other gravely, pausing over the pipe-bowl he
was filling, "the desirableness, to a man of a certain mind, of having
another man's philosophy given, depends considerably upon what school of
philosophy that other man belongs to. Of what school or system was the
judge, pray?"

"Why, though he knew how to read and write, the judge never had much
schooling. But, I should say he belonged, if anything, to the
free-school system. Yes, a true patriot, the judge went in strong for
free-schools."

"In philosophy? The man of a certain mind, then, while respecting the
judge's patriotism, and not blind to the judge's capacity for narrative,
such as he may prove to have, might, perhaps, with prudence, waive an
opinion of the judge's probable philosophy. But I am no rigorist;
proceed, I beg; his philosophy or not, as you please."

"Well, I would mostly skip that part, only, to begin, some
reconnoitering of the ground in a philosophical way the judge always
deemed indispensable with strangers. For you must know that
Indian-hating was no monopoly of Colonel Moredock's; but a passion, in
one form or other, and to a degree, greater or less, largely shared
among the class to which he belonged. And Indian-hating still exists;
and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do.
Indian-hating, then, shall be my first theme, and Colonel Moredock, the
Indian-hater, my next and last."

With which the stranger, settling himself in his seat, commenced--the
hearer paying marked regard, slowly smoking, his glance, meanwhile,
steadfastly abstracted towards the deck, but his right ear so disposed
towards the speaker that each word came through as little atmospheric
intervention as possible. To intensify the sense of hearing, he seemed
to sink the sense of sight. No complaisance of mere speech could have
been so flattering, or expressed such striking politeness as this mute
eloquence of thoroughly digesting attention.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A guy in a bad suit with an even worse pukey violet vest speaks to the now-gloomy cosmopolitan. He comments on Pitch's misanthropy and compares him to the "Indian-hating" Colonel John Moredock of Illinois. The cosmopolitan doesn't know who that is, but he's shocked that anyone would hate Indians. He has a moment of fetishizing the other with his Pocahontas was super-cool opinions. The new guy says he knows all about Moredock; plus, when he was a kid, he and his dad rested their horses at the dude's cabin once. He peeked into the Colonel's room but only found a squirrel instead of the napping man who was supposed to be there. The cosmopolitan agrees to hear more about this Indian-hating man with a rifle. That'll be in the next chapter, though.