“My benefactor, I tremble to think what might have happened had you not been present.” And he ran his forefinger through his almost snowy hair.
“My kind preserver, I want to give you some little token of my friendship at parting. Will you accept as a slight token of my dethless gratitude, ‘What I know about Farming,’ and two papers of lettice seed?”
I hung back, I thought of Josiah. But Horace argued with me, says he, “I respect your constancy to Josiah, but intellect—spoken or written—scorns all the barriers of sex and circumstance, and is as free to all, as the sunshine that beats down on the just and the unjust, the Liberal Republicans and the Grant party, or the married and the single.” Says he, “take the book without any scruples, and as for the lettice seed, I can recommend it, I think Josiah would relish it.”
Says I, “On them grounds I will accept of it, and thank you.”
As we parted at the door, in the innocence of conscious rectitude, we shook hands, and says I, “Henceforth, Horace you will set up in a high chair in my mind, higher than ever before. Of course, Josiah sets first in my heart, and then his children, and then a few relations on my side, and on his’en. But next to them you will always set, for you have been weighed in the steelyards, and have been found not wantin’.”
He was to agitated to speak, I was awful agitated too. Our silver mounted spectacles met each other in a last glance of noble, firm principled sadness, and so Horace and I parted away from each other.