“Ah,” he said. “You’ve a proverb down your way: ‘Manners makeyth man.’ So they may, as they construe it—a fork for the fingers and a pretty trick of speech; but it’s the manners of the soul make the gentleman. Do you believe in after-life?”
“Of course I do. Where do the ghosts come from otherwise?”
He laughed pleasantly, rubbing his chin in a perplexed manner, and then I noticed that his fingers were stunted like a mechanic’s and stained with printer’s ink.
“Old Ripley would fancy you,” he said.
“Who’s he?”
“My governor—printer, binder and pamphleteer, an opponent of all governments but his own. He’s an anarchist, who’d like to transfer himself and his personal belongings to some desert satellite, after laying a train to blow up the earth with nitro-glycerin and then he’d want to overturn the heavenly system.”
“He doesn’t sound hopeful.”
“No, he isn’t, but he’s fairly original for a fanatic. I wonder if he’d give you work?”
“Oh, thanks!” I exclaimed.
“Nonsense; you needn’t mind him. He’s only gas. Unmixed with his native air he wouldn’t be explosive, you know. I can imagine him a very unprogressive angel. It’s notoriety he wants. Nothing satisfies his sort in the end like a scaffold outside of Newgate with 40,000 eyes looking on and 12 guineas paid for a window in the ‘Magpie and Stump.’”