The travellers accordingly led their horses a few yards into the wood, and soon met, as they had expected, with a small green glade. It was surrounded, except at the slight opening by which they had entered it, with fine Spanish chestnut trees, which now, loaded with their large brown fruit, rich and ripe, clustered in the starry foliage, afforded a retreat as beautiful to the eye as its shade was grateful to their senses. Vivian dismounted, and, stretching out his legs, leant back against the trunk of a tree: and Essper, having fastened Max and his own horse to some branches, proceeded to display his stores. Vivian was silent, thoughtful, and scarcely tasted anything: Essper George, on the contrary, was in unusual and even troublesome spirits, and had not his appetite necessarily produced a few pauses in his almost perpetual rattle, the patience of his master would have been fairly worn out. At length Essper had devoured the whole supply; and as Vivian not only did not encourage his remarks, but even in a peremptory manner had desired his silence, he was fain to amuse himself by trying to catch in his mouth a large brilliant fly which every instant was dancing before him. Two individuals more singularly contrasting in their appearance than the master and the servant could scarcely be conceived; and Vivian, lying with his back against a tree, with his legs stretched out, his arms folded, and his eyes fixed on the ground; and Essper, though seated, in perpetual motion, and shifting his posture with feverish restlessness, now looking over his shoulder for the fly, then making an unsuccessful bite at it, and then, wearied with his frequent failures, amusing himself with acting Punch with his thumbs; altogether presenting two figures, which might have been considered as not inapt personifications of the rival systems of Ideality and Materialism.
At length Essper became silent for the sake of variety, and imagining, from his master’s example, that there must be some sweets in meditation hitherto undiscovered by him, he imitated Vivian’s posture! So perverse is human nature, that the moment Vivian was aware that Essper was perfectly silent, he began to feel an inclination to converse with him.
“Why, Essper!” said he, looking up and smiling, “this is the first time during our acquaintance that I have ever seen thought upon your brow. What can now be puzzling your wild brain?”
“I was thinking, sir,” said Essper, with a very solemn look, “that if there were a deceased field-mouse here I would moralise on death.”
“What! turned philosopher!”
“Ay! sir, it appears to me,” said he, taking up a husk which lay on the turf, “that there is not a nutshell in Christendom which may not become matter for very grave meditation!”
“Can you expound that?”
“Verily, sir, the whole philosophy of life seems to me to consist in discovering the kernel. When you see a courtier out of favour or a merchant out of credit, when you see a soldier without pillage, a sailor without prize money, and a lawyer without paper, a bachelor with nephews, and an old maid with nieces, be assured the nut is not worth the cracking, and send it to the winds, as I do this husk at present.”
“Why, Essper!” said Vivian, laughing, “Considering that you have taken your degree so lately, you wear the Doctor’s cap with authority! Instead of being in your noviciate, one would think that you had been a philosopher long enough to have outlived your system.”
“Bless you, sir, for philosophy, I sucked it in with my mother’s milk. Nature then gave me the hint, which I have ever since acted on, and I hold that the sum of all learning consists in milking another man’s cow. So much for the recent acquisition of my philosophy! I gained it, you see, sir, with the first wink of my eye; and though I lost a great portion of it by sea-sickness in the Mediterranean, nevertheless, since I served your Lordship, I have resumed my old habits, and do opine that this vain globe is but a large football to be kicked and cuffed about by moody philosophers!”