“And for which Paul Classon pledges himself with his head? Ay, Grog Davis, that is my bond.”
“The day you come back to me with proof of success, I hand you five hundred pounds.”
“Cash?”
“Cash,—and more, if all be done to our entire satisfaction. He—” here he jerked up his thumb towards Beecher's room—“he sha'n't forget you.”
Paul closed his eyes, and muttered something to himself, ending with, “And 'five pounds for the Cruelty to Animals,—from the Reverend Paul Classon.' I shall be in funds for them all.”
“Ah, Kit!” said he at last, with a deep-drawn sigh, “what slaves are we all, and to the meanest accidents too,—the veriest trifles of our existence. Ask yourself, I beseech you, what is it that continually opposes your progress in life,—what is your rock ahead? Your name! nothing but your name!—call yourself Jones, Wilkins, Simpson, Watkins, and see what an expansion it will give your naturally fine faculties. Nobody will dare to assert that you or I are the same men we were five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, and yet you must be Davis and I must be Classon, whether we will or not. I call this hard,—very hard indeed!”
“Would it be any benefit to me if I could call myself Paul Classon?” said Grog, with an insolent grin.
“It is not for the saintly man who bears that name to speak boastfully of its responsibilities—”
“In bills of exchange, I O U's, promissory notes, and so forth,” laughed in Grog.
“I have, I own, done a little in these ways; but what gifted man ever lived who has not at some time or other committed his sorrows to paper. The misfortune in my case was that it was stamped.”