“Nay, sir, I did not mean to touch you at all. I simply stated the fact in explanation of my waiting here—nothing more. Read on, sir, or you will distress me.”
This courtesy was not without effect. Removing his spectacles, and saying he had about finished his chapter, the old man kindly presented the volume, which was received with thanks equally kind. After reading for some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness into seriousness, and from that into a kind of pain, the cosmopolitan slowly laid down the book, and turning to the old man, who thus far had been watching him with benign curiosity, said: “Can you, my aged friend, resolve me a doubt—a disturbing doubt?”
“There are doubts, sir,” replied the old man, with a changed countenance, “there are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.”
“True; but look, now, what my doubt is. I am one who thinks well of man. I love man. I have confidence in man. But what was told me not a half-hour since? I was told that I would find it written—‘Believe not his many words—an enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips’—and also I was told that I would find a good deal more to the same effect, and all in this book. I could not think it; and, coming here to look for myself, what do I read? Not only just what was quoted, but also, as was engaged, more to the same purpose, such as this: ‘With much communication he will tempt thee; he will smile upon thee, and speak thee fair, and say What wantest thou? If thou be for his profit he will use thee; he will make thee bear, and will not be sorry for it. Observe and take good heed. When thou hearest these things, awake in thy sleep.’”
“Who’s that describing the confidence-man?” here came from the berth again.
“Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain’t he?” said the cosmopolitan, again looking off in surprise. “Same voice as before, ain’t it? Strange sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?”
“Never mind him, sir,” said the old man anxiously, “but tell me truly, did you, indeed, read from the book just now?”
“I did,” with changed air, “and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster in man; to me, a philanthropist.”
“Why,” moved, “you don’t mean to say, that what you repeated is really down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years, and don’t remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it,” rising earnestly, and going round to him.
“There it is; and there—and there”—turning over the leaves, and pointing to the sentences one by one; “there—all down in the ‘Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach.’”