“Much too much so to be true, Charlie. Let us forget it. Come, you are my entertainer on this occasion, and yet you don’t pledge me. I have been waiting for it.”
“Pardon, pardon,” half confusedly and half ostentatiously lifting his glass. “I pledge you, Frank, with my whole heart, believe me,” taking a draught too decorous to be large, but which, small though it was, was followed by a slight involuntary wryness to the mouth.
“And I return you the pledge, Charlie, heart-warm as it came to me, and honest as this wine I drink it in,” reciprocated the cosmopolitan with princely kindliness in his gesture, taking a generous swallow, concluding in a smack, which, though audible, was not so much so as to be unpleasing.
“Talking of alleged spuriousness of wines,” said he, tranquilly setting down his glass, and then sloping back his head and with friendly fixedness eying the wine, “perhaps the strangest part of those allegings is, that there is, as claimed, a kind of man who, while convinced that on this continent most wines are shams, yet still drinks away at them; accounting wine so fine a thing, that even the sham article is better than none at all. And if the temperance people urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers, ‘And do you think I don’t know that? But health without cheer I hold a bore; and cheer, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am willing to pay.’”
“Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably bacchanalian.”
“Yes, if such a man there be, which I don’t credit. It is a fable, but a fable from which I once heard a person of less genius than grotesqueness draw a moral even more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that it illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly associate with men, though, at the same time, he believed the greater part of men false-hearted—accounting society so sweet a thing that even the spurious sort was better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in security, he answers, ‘And do you think I don’t know that? But security without society I hold a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am willing to pay.’”
“A most singular theory,” said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying his companion with some inquisitiveness, “indeed, Frank, a most slanderous thought,” he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary look almost of being personally aggrieved.
“In one sense it merits all you say, and more,” rejoined the other with wonted mildness, “but, for a kind of drollery in it, charity might, perhaps, overlook something of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm—nearly all men agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else—and in its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world, that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man capable of a good loud laugh—seem how he may in other things—can hardly be a heartless scamp.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some mason’s discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and curled up about the toe like a bassoon. “Look—ha, ha, ha!”
“I see,” said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in this case accompanied it, “I see; and the way in which it moves you, Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of. Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so. For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?”