‘Alas for man, he hath small sense
Of genial trust and confidence.’
—If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir. Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?”
“As to that,” said the little dried-up man, “I think it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial. I don’t know that ever I felt so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in well-doing.”
“Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who snowed the odes about here?”
“I cannot say; I have not been here long.”
“Wasn’t an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as the rest, and have cards.”
“Thank you, I never play cards.”
“A bottle of wine?”
“Thank you, I never drink wine.”
“Cigars?”