“I shall dine at W——,” answered Wolfe, quitting the room.
“Then our reckoning will be heavier,” said Culpepper. “It is not handsome in Wolfe to leave us, whe-w! Really I think that our brother in the great cause has of late relaxed in his attentions and zeal to the goddess of our devotions, whe-w!”
“It is human nature!” cried one of the three disputants upon the character of Wilkes.
“It is not human nature!” cried the second disputant, folding his arms doggedly, in preparation for a discussion.
“Contemptible human nature!” exclaimed the third disputant, soliloquizing with a supercilious expression of hateful disdain.
“Poor human nature!” murmured Castleton, looking upward with a sigh; and though we have not given to that gentleman other words than these, we think they are almost sufficient to let our readers into his character.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
Silvis, ubi passim
Palantes error certo de tramite pellit,
Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus.—HORACE.
[“Wandering in those woods where error evermore forces life’s
stragglers from the beaten path,—this one deflects to the left,
his fellow chooses the exact contrary. The fault is all the same
in each, but it excuses itself by a thousand different reasons.”]
As Wolfe strode away from the inn, he muttered to himself,—