"On the Andromeda?" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to say you've got that baby Cunarder with you down here in these waters?"
"Yea, verily, and for a fact," was the smiling reply. "I came up the big river in her this afternoon. Been knocking about a bit among the islands to dodge the country-house invitations up home."
"Out of tune with the little social gods and goddesses?" I ventured.
"Out of tune with a good many things, Dick. This is a sorry old world, and the people in it are sorrier—most of 'em. Everything's a bore."
I laughed.
"Since when have you been soaking Diogenes and the later Cynics?"
"Chortle if you want to," he returned. "Old Man Socrates had it about right when he said that virtue is knowledge, and Antisthenes went him one better when he said, 'Let men gain wisdom—or buy a rope.' Another time he says, 'A horse I can see, but horsehood I can not see.' That applies to humanity, as well."
"Meaning that things—and people—are not always what they seem?"
"Meaning that people are so seldom what they seem that you can ignore the exceptions. Somebody has said that there are two distinct entities in the ego; the man as he sees himself, and the man as God sees him. That is only a fraction of a great truth. There are as many entities as the man has human contacts; he is not precisely the same man to any two of his acquaintances, and he is a hypocrite with most."
"Bosh!" said I, thinking I had the key to all this hard-bitted, and lately acquired, philosophy. "You have too much money, Bonteck; that is all that is the matter with you."