“They certainly was free,” I sez, “an’ easy too, an’ I don’t deny ’at they might ’a’ been some weight in art an’ beauty; but, confound ’em, they didn’t know as much about bears as I know about e-lectricity. I’d just like to see Zeus himself go up into the Tetons in the early spring, to hunt for Big Dippers. I’ll bet the first hungry grizzly he’d come across would set him right on the bear question.”
This was a good opener, an’ in about two shakes, the Friar an’ Horace had locked horns. Horace was a crafty, sarcastic, cold-blooded little argufier; while the Friar was warm an’ eager an’ open as the day. It was one o’ the best gabbin’ matches I have ever started.
They dealt mostly in names I had never heard of before, although once in a while they’d turn up one a little familiar on account of Horace havin’ told me some tale of it. The Friar knew as much about these things as Horace did; but he called ’em myths, an’ said while they didn’t mean anything when took literal, they had great historical value when regarded merely as symbols. He said that I-oh—the human maid which Zeus had turned into a cow—was nothin’ but the moon, an’ that Argus of the hundred eyes was simply the sky full o’ stars; and that the old god which ate up his children was nothin’ but time.
I didn’t really understand much of what they said; but I did enjoy watchin’ ’em bandy those big words about. We all use a lot o’ words we don’t understand; but as long as they sound well an’ fill out a gap it don’t much matter. These two, though, seemed to understand all the words they used, an’ I was highly edified.
As they talked, an’ I kept watchin’ the Friar’s face, I learned somethin’: the Friar had been mighty lonesome with only us rough fellers to talk with, an’ had been hungerin’ for just such a confab as this to loosen up his subsoil a little.
Every now an’ again, I’d cast an eye up to the stars; an’ while I didn’t know the religious names of ’em, I knew how to tell time by ’em; an’ I knew ’at those two would have a turn when they remembered to look at their watches. It was full one o’clock when the conversation came to its first rest, an’ then the Friar recalled what I had said when I had dismounted; so he up an’ asked Horace point-blank what he had had to do with makin’ Horace quit the church.
Horace was minded to sidestep this at first by intimatin’ that I was not responsible for what I said; but he finally came across and told the Friar that he had give up that church for about the same reason that the Friar himself had. This set the Friar back purty well on his haunches, an’ put him on the defensive. He had hammered Horace freely before, but now when he conscientiously tried to defend the gang he had left, and also excuse himself for leavin’, he had some job on his hands.
I thought Horace had him when he compared the Golden Age of Greece an’ Plato’s Republic with the Dark Ages, which was a stretch of years when the Christian religion about had its own way; but the Friar admitted that what he called economical interests had put a smirch on the church durin’ the Dark Ages, an’ then he sailed into the Golden Age of Greece, showin’ that slavery was the lot of most o’ the decent people durin’ that period. When I fell asleep, they were shakin’ their fists friendly at one another, about Plato’s Republic, which I found out afterwards was only a made-up story.
Bein’ edicated is a good deal like bein’ a good shot in a quiet community—once in a long while it’s mighty comfortin’, but for the most part it’s nothin’ but shootin’ at a target.