He went on showin’ that swearin’ was foolish because it wasn’t givin’ a man’s thought on things in a man’s way; but merely howlin’ it out the way wolves and wild-cats had to, on account o’ their not havin’ a civilized language with which to express the devilment which was in ’em. He showed how it made a feller lazy; because instead of tryin’ to sort out words which would tell exactly what he meant, he made a lot of noises which had no more real meanin’ than a bunch o’ fire-crackers.
Then his voice got low and serious, and he said ’at the worst thing about cussin’ was, that it led a feller into speakin’ lightly about the sacred things of life. “When you speak the word ‘son,’” he said, “you are bound to also call up the thought of ‘mother’; and I want to say to you right now that any one who can be coarse and nasty in thinkin’ or speakin’ about maternity, is not a man at all—or even a decent brute—but has some sort of soul-sickness which is more horrible than insanity. Always be square with women—all women, good and bad. I know your temptations, and I know theirs. Woman has a heavy cross to carry, and the least we can do, is to play fair.”
Then he sprang some of his curious theories on us: told us how the body was full of poisons and remedies; and it depended on our plan of livin’, whether we used the one or the other. He said he allus cut out food and tobacco on Fridays, and if he didn’t feel bright and clear and bubblin’ over with vitality, he fasted until he felt able to eat a rubber boot, and then he knew he had cleaned all the waste products out of him, and could live at top speed again. He finished up by tellin’ of a cross old doctor he once knew, who used to say ’at cattle and kings didn’t have to control themselves; but all ordinary men had to use self-denial, even in matters of pleasure.
It was more the way the Friar said things than what he said; his voice and his eyes helped a lot; but the thing ’at counted for most was the fact ’at you knew it wasn’t none of it put on. He loved to joke when it was a jokin’ matter; but he was stiff as stone with what he called the foundations of life. A man, you know, as a rule, is mighty timid about the things which lie close to his heart, no matter how bold and free he’ll talk about other things; but the Friar was like a little child, an’ he’d speak out as bold and frank as one, about the things he loved and hated, until he finally put a few drops o’ this queer brand o’ courage into our own hearts.
Of course we didn’t get to be troubled with wing-growth or anything like that; but a short time after this fake hold-up, ol’ Tank Williams went in to fill up with picklin’-fluid, and he started in on Monday and kept fightin’ it all that week until Friday. Then he said that he wouldn’t neither eat, drink, nor smoke on that day; and they couldn’t make him do it. He started in on Saturday to continue what had started out to be one o’ the best benders he had ever took; but the first quart made him sick as a dog, and he came out to the ranch and said ’at the Friar had made him a temperate man, and for the rest of his life he intended to set aside one day a week in the Friar’s favor.
After the boys had started for the ranch, the Friar invited me to spend the night with him; so we unpacked his bed from the lead-hoss and we built a little fire and had a right sociable time of it. Me and him was good pals by this time. He had said to me once: “Happy, you do more general thinkin’ than some varsity men I’ve known.”
“I reckon,” sez I, modest as I could, “that a man who has bossed a dozen men and ten thousand cattle through a three days’ blizzard, has to be able to think some like a general.”
Then he explained to me that general thinkin’ meant to think about stars an’ flowers an’ the human race an’ the past an’ the future, an’ such things, and not to be all the time lookin’ at life just from the way it touched a feller himself. This was another thing I liked about him. Most Easteners is so polite that they haven’t the heart to set a feller right when he has the wrong notion; but the Friar would divvy up on his knowledge as free as he would on his bacon or tobacco; so I opened myself up to him until he knew as much about me as I did myself.
He didn’t have much use for the shut-eye this night, nor he wasn’t as talky as common; so we sat smokin’ and lookin’ into the fire for a long time. Once in a while he’d speak a verse about some big deed a man had done years ago, or else one describin’ the mountains or something like that; until finally I asked him how it came that a man who loved adventure an’ fightin’ an’ feats of skill, the way he did, had selected to be a preacher.
“We don’t select our lives, Happy,” sez he. “You’re surely philosopher enough to see that. As far as we can see, it is like that gamblin’ game; we roll down through a lot o’ little pegs bobbin’ off from one to another until finally we pop into a little hole at the bottom; but we didn’t pick out that hole. No, we didn’t pick out that hole.”