“Regard that pure spirit,” he cried, “crushed as it has been in the whirlwind of war. Behold her standing over the sod that covers the hero of his country, the husband of her virgin affections. In vain the orphan at her side turns its tearful eye upwards, and asks for the plumes that so lately pleased its infant fancy; in vain its gentle voice inquires when he is to return, when he is to gladden their hearts with his presence—” But I can write no more. Sobs interrupted the speaker, and he took his seat in an ecstasy of godliness and benevolence.
I hurried across the house, to beg the brigadier would introduce me to this just monikin without a moment’s delay. I felt as if I could take him to my heart at once, and swear an eternal friendship with a spirit so benevolent. The brigadier was too much agitated, at first, to attend to me; but, after wiping his eyes at least a hundred times, he finally succeeded in arresting the torrents, and looked upwards with a bland smile.
“Is he not a wonderful monikin?”
“Wonderful indeed! How completely he puts us all to shame!—Such a monikin can only be influenced by the purest love for the species.”
“Yes, he is of a class that we call the third monikinity. Nothing excites our zeal like the principles of the class of which he is a member!”
“How! Have you more than one class of the humane?”
“Certainly—the Original, the Representative, and the Speculative.”
“I am devoured by the desire to understand the distinctions, my dear brigadier.”
“The Original is an every-day class, that feels under the natural impulses. The Representative is a more intellectual division, that feels chiefly by proxy. The Speculatives are those whose sympathies are excited by positive interests, like the last speaker. This person has lately bought a farm by the acre, which he is about to sell, in village lots, by the foot, and war will knock the whole thing in the head. It is this which stimulates his benevolence in so lively a manner.”
“Why, this is no more than a development of the social-stake system—”