Chapter: CHAPTER VII. A GENTLEMAN WITH GOLD SLEEVE-BUTTONS.



At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with
much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly
questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted
both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman
who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it
seemed, without being observed by him.

"Pardon me," said he, rising, "but yonder is one who I know will
contribute, and largely. Don't take it amiss if I quit you."

"Go: duty before all things," was the conscientious reply.

The stranger was a man of more than winsome aspect. There he stood apart
and in repose, and yet, by his mere look, lured the man in gray from his
story, much as, by its graciousness of bearing, some full-leaved elm,
alone in a meadow, lures the noon sickleman to throw down his sheaves,
and come and apply for the alms of its shade.

But, considering that goodness is no such rare thing among men--the
world familiarly know the noun; a common one in every language--it was
curious that what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like a
kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it make him appear more
or less unreal in this portraiture), was but the expression of so
prevalent a quality. Such goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune,
that, so far as his own personal experience could have gone, scarcely
could he have known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or
suspecting the latter in any serious degree (supposing such degree of it
to be), by observation or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by
its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly exempted. For
the rest, he might have been five and fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall,
rosy, between plump and portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the
time and place, not to hint of his years, dressed with a strangely
festive finish and elegance. The inner-side of his coat-skirts was of
white satin, which might have looked especially inappropriate, had it
not seemed less a bit of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as
it were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what seemed so good
about him was not all outside; no, the fine covering had a still finer
lining. Upon one hand he wore a white kid glove, but the other hand,
which was ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidele, like
most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked here and there,
especially about the railings, it was marvel how, under such
circumstances, these hands retained their spotlessness. But, if you
watched them a while, you noticed that they avoided touching anything;
you noticed, in short, that a certain negro body-servant, whose hands
nature had dyed black, perhaps with the same purpose that millers wear
white, this negro servant's hands did most of his master's handling for
him; having to do with dirt on his account, but not to his prejudices.
But if, with the same undefiledness of consequences to himself, a
gentleman could also sin by deputy, how shocking would that be! But it
is not permitted to be; and even if it were, no judicious moralist would
make proclamation of it.

This gentleman, therefore, there is reason to affirm, was one who, like
the Hebrew governor, knew how to keep his hands clean, and who never in
his life happened to be run suddenly against by hurrying house-painter,
or sweep; in a word, one whose very good luck it was to be a very good
man.

Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce at all; that
superior merit, probably, was not his; nothing in his manner bespoke him
righteous, but only good, and though to be good is much below being
righteous, and though there is a difference between the two, yet not, it
is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a righteous man can not be a
good man; though, conversely, in the pulpit it has been with much
cogency urged, that a merely good man, that is, one good merely by his
nature, is so far from there by being righteous, that nothing short of a
total change and conversion can make him so; which is something which no
honest mind, well read in the history of righteousness, will care to
deny; nevertheless, since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a sense with the
pulpit distinction, though not altogether in the pulpit deduction, and
also pretty plainly intimating which of the two qualities in question
enjoys his apostolic preference; I say, since St. Paul has so meaningly
said, that, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure
for a good man some would even dare to die;" therefore, when we repeat
of this gentleman, that he was only a good man, whatever else by severe
censors may be objected to him, it is still to be hoped that his
goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him. At all events,
no man, not even a righteous man, would think it quite right to commit
this gentleman to prison for the crime, extraordinary as he might deem
it; more especially, as, until everything could be known, there would be
some chance that the gentleman might after all be quite as innocent of
it as he himself.

It was pleasant to mark the good man's reception of the salute of the
righteous man, that is, the man in gray; his inferior, apparently, not
more in the social scale than in stature. Like the benign elm again, the
good man seemed to wave the canopy of his goodness over that suitor, not
in conceited condescension, but with that even amenity of true majesty,
which can be kind to any one without stooping to it.

To the plea in behalf of the Seminole widows and orphans, the gentleman,
after a question or two duly answered, responded by producing an ample
pocket-book in the good old capacious style, of fine green French
morocco and workmanship, bound with silk of the same color, not to omit
bills crisp with newness, fresh from the bank, no muckworms' grime upon
them. Lucre those bills might be, but as yet having been kept unspotted
from the world, not of the filthy sort. Placing now three of those
virgin bills in the applicant's hands, he hoped that the smallness of
the contribution would be pardoned; to tell the truth, and this at last
accounted for his toilet, he was bound but a short run down the river,
to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon wedding of his niece: so
did not carry much money with him.

The other was about expressing his thanks when the gentleman in his
pleasant way checked him: the gratitude was on the other side. To him,
he said, charity was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against
too great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had sometimes
admonished him.

In some general talk which followed, relative to organized modes of
doing good, the gentleman expressed his regrets that so many benevolent
societies as there were, here and there isolated in the land, should not
act in concert by coming together, in the way that already in each
society the individuals composing it had done, which would result, he
thought, in like advantages upon a larger scale. Indeed, such a
confederation might, perhaps, be attended with as happy results as
politically attended that of the states.

Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this suggestion had an
effect illustrative in a sort of that notion of Socrates, that the soul
is a harmony; for as the sound of a flute, in any particular key, will,
it is said, audibly affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him respond, and
with animation.

Which animation, by the way, might seem more or less out of character in
the man in gray, considering his unsprightly manner when first
introduced, had he not already, in certain after colloquies, given
proof, in some degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a
soberly continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of stuff,
is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because unwasted, and may
be used the more effectively, too, when opportunity offers. What now
follows on the part of the man in gray will still further exemplify,
perhaps somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears to be such, of
this remark.

"Sir," said he eagerly, "I am before you. A project, not dissimilar to
yours, was by me thrown out at the World's Fair in London."

"World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?"

"First, let me----"

"Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?"

"I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented."

"Then you have not always been in the charity business?"

"Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am, and always have been,
as I always will be, I trust, in the charity business, as you call it;
but charity is not like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
point; charity is a work to which a good workman may be competent in all
its branches. I invented my Protean easy-chair in odd intervals stolen
from meals and sleep."

"You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe it."

"My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and
bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch,
that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,
nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and
somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to
make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little
means and off to the World's Fair with it."

"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"

"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and
placed, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt
upon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and
reflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass
house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed
me. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot
supply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired
by the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my
prospectus of the World's Charity."

"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it."

"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise
deputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the
society to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which
end, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be
done away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to
levy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in
Augustus Caesar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax
which, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in
England, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all
possible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the
county-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors
rolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,
would result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and
in such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general
congress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I
estimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven
thousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of
the society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen
could remain the round world over."

"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,
as it were."

"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a
philanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a
finance which are practicable."

"Practicable?"

"Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a
retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of
fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions--what is that, to average it,
but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? And who
will refuse, what Turk or Dyak even, his own little dollar for sweet
charity's sake? Eight hundred millions! More than that sum is yearly
expended by mankind, not only in vanities, but miseries. Consider that
bloody spendthrift, War. And are mankind so stupid, so wicked, that,
upon the demonstration of these things they will not, amending their
ways, devote their superfluities to blessing the world instead of
cursing it? Eight hundred millions! They have not to make it, it is
theirs already; they have but to direct it from ill to good. And to
this, scarce a self-denial is demanded. Actually, they would not in the
mass be one farthing the poorer for it; as certainly would they be all
the better and happier. Don't you see? But admit, as you must, that
mankind is not mad, and my project is practicable. For, what creature
but a madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is plain that,
good or ill, it must return upon himself?"

"Your sort of reasoning," said the good gentleman, adjusting his gold
sleeve-buttons, "seems all reasonable enough, but with mankind it wont
do."

"Then mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason wont do with them."

"That is not to the purpose. By-the-way, from the manner in which you
alluded to the world's census, it would appear that, according to your
world-wide scheme, the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute
to the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than the Christian
to the conversion of heathenism. How is that?"

"Why, that--pardon me--is quibbling. Now, no philanthropist likes to be
opposed with quibbling."

"Well, I won't quibble any more. But, after all, if I understand your
project, there is little specially new in it, further than the
magnifying of means now in operation."

"Magnifying and energizing. For one thing, missions I would thoroughly
reform. Missions I would quicken with the Wall street spirit."

"The Wall street spirit?"

"Yes; for if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but
through the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer
gaining of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly
projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human
effort, would, by the world's charity, be let out on contract. So much
by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa.
Competition allowed, stimulus would be given. There would be no
lethargy of monopoly. We should have no mission-house or tract-house of
which slanderers could, with any plausibility, say that it had
degenerated in its clerkships into a sort of custom-house. But the main
point is the Archimedean money-power that would be brought to bear."

"You mean the eight hundred million power?"

"Yes. You see, this doing good to the world by driblets amounts to just
nothing. I am for doing good to the world with a will. I am for doing
good to the world once for all and having done with it. Do but think, my
dear sir, of the eddies and maelstroms of pagans in China. People here
have no conception of it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper
pagans are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin
of peas. To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to
be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of
missionaries to such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken. I am for
sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and converting the Chinese
_en masse_ within six months of the debarkation. The thing is then done,
and turn to something else."

"I fear you are too enthusiastic."

"A philanthropist is necessarily an enthusiast; for without enthusiasm
what was ever achieved but commonplace? But again: consider the poor in
London. To that mob of misery, what is a joint here and a loaf there? I
am for voting to them twenty thousand bullocks and one hundred thousand
barrels of flour to begin with. They are then comforted, and no more
hunger for one while among the poor of London. And so all round."

"Sharing the character of your general project, these things, I take it,
are rather examples of wonders that were to be wished, than wonders that
will happen."

"And is the age of wonders passed? Is the world too old? Is it barren?
Think of Sarah."

"Then I am Abraham reviling the angel (with a smile). But still, as to
your design at large, there seems a certain audacity."

"But if to the audacity of the design there be brought a commensurate
circumspectness of execution, how then?"

"Why, do you really believe that your world's charity will ever go into
operation?"

"I have confidence that it will."

"But may you not be over-confident?"

"For a Christian to talk so!"

"But think of the obstacles!"

"Obstacles? I have confidence to remove obstacles, though mountains.
Yes, confidence in the world's charity to that degree, that, as no
better person offers to supply the place, I have nominated myself
provisional treasurer, and will be happy to receive subscriptions, for
the present to be devoted to striking off a million more of my
prospectuses."

The talk went on; the man in gray revealed a spirit of benevolence
which, mindful of the millennial promise, had gone abroad over all the
countries of the globe, much as the diligent spirit of the husbandman,
stirred by forethought of the coming seed-time, leads him, in March
reveries at his fireside, over every field of his farm. The master chord
of the man in gray had been touched, and it seemed as if it would never
cease vibrating. A not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with gestures
that were a Pentecost of added ones, and persuasiveness before which
granite hearts might crumble into gravel.

Strange, therefore, how his auditor, so singularly good-hearted as he
seemed, remained proof to such eloquence; though not, as it turned out,
to such pleadings. For, after listening a while longer with pleasant
incredulity, presently, as the boat touched his place of destination,
the gentleman, with a look half humor, half pity, put another bank-note
into his hands; charitable to the last, if only to the dreams of
enthusiasm.

 While Grey-and-white is telling the clergyman about the history of his charity, he notices a fancy man dressed to the nines. He's got a manservant who does nearly everything for him, so he doesn't ever have to get his hands dirty. Grey-and-white pegs this guy as a generous donor and excuses himself to go get it. Fancy-pants is a good dude. At least that's his major vibe, though the narrator makes a distinction between being good and being righteous. Basically, people would be willing to die for a good man, but not so much for a righteous one. That's too bad for Grey-and-white, who's described as pretty darn righteous by the narrator. Grey-and-white has surmised correctly, at any rate, and the good guy drops some hefty cash money on him. In an offhand comment, he mentions to Grey-and-white that it would just be easier if all the charities teamed up to form one big charity. Grey-and-white's response: Shut up. No way. That's totally what I said at the world's fair. They laughed at me, though. Good guy: Whoa, really? Why were you there? Grey-and-white: I invented a special wheelchair. Good guy: That's awesome. Grey-and-white: Yeah. I'm really awesome. But when I said we should have a one-world-order kind of tax to raise enough money and pay for all the things--including converting everybody to Christianity--nobody was on my side. At this point the good guy gives Grey-and-white his best "What even?" stare and starts with the whole "Let's be logical" thing. He still admires Grey-and-white's enthusiasm, though, and hands him another crisp bill.

