The other animals is willin’ to do what they can do, an’ they take pride in seein’ how well they can do it; but not so a human. He only takes pride in tryin’ to do the things he can’t do. A hog don’t try to fly, nor a butterfly don’t try to play the cornet, nor a cow don’t set an’ fret because she can’t climb trees like a squirrel; but not so with man: he has to try everything ’at anything else ever tried, an’ he don’t care what it costs nor who gets killed in the attempt. Sometimes you hear a wise guy say: “No, no that’s contrary to human nature.” This is so simple minded it allus makes me silent. Human nature is so blame contrary, itself, that nothin’ else could possibly be contrary to it. To think of Horace knowin’ about the Friar, an’ yet doggin’ me all over the map with that song of his, was enough to make me shake him; but I didn’t. I wanted the story, so I pumped him for it, patient an’ persistent.
“I never was very religious,” began Horace. Most people begin stories about other people, by tellin’ you a lot about themselves, so I had my resignation braced for this. “I allus liked the Greek religion better ’n airy other,” he went on. “It was a fine, free, joyous religion, founded on Art an’ music, an’ symmetry—”
I was willin’ to stand for his own biography; but after waitin’ this long for a clue to the Friar’s past, I wasn’t resigned to hearin’ a joint debate on the different religions; so I interrupted, by askin’ if him believin’ in the Greek religion was what had made Friar Tuck throw up his job.
“No, you chump,”—me an’ Horace was such good friends by this time that we didn’t have any regard for one another’s feelin’s. “No, you chump,” he sez, “I told you he quit on account of a girl. I don’t look like a girl, do I?”
“Well,” sez I, studying him sober, “those side-burns look as if they might ’a’ been bangs which had lost their holt in front an’ slipped down to your lip; but aside from this you don’t resemble a girl enough to drive a man out o’ church.”
I allus had better luck with Horace after I’d spurred him up a bit.
“You see, Friar Tuck, as you call him, was a good deal of a fanatic, those days,” sez Horace, after he’d thrown a stone at me. “He took his religion serious, an’ wanted to transform the world into what it would be if all people tried their best to live actual Christ-like lives. He was a big country boy, fresh from college, an’ full of ideals, an’ feelin’ strong enough to hammer things out accordin’ to the pattern he had chose.
“It was his voice which got him his place. He had a perfectly marvelous voice, an’ I never heard any one else read the service like he did. This was what took me to church, and I’d have gone as long as he stayed. You see, Happy, life is really made up of sensations an’ emotions; and it used to lift me into the clouds to see his shinin’ youth robed in white, an’ hear that wonderful voice of his fillin’ the great, soft-lighted church with melody an’ mystery. It was all I asked of religion an’ it filled me with peace an’ inspiration. Of course, from a philosophical standpoint, the Greek religion—”
“Did the girl believe in the Greek religion?” I asked to switch him back.
“No, no,” he snapped. “This Greek religion that I’m speakin’ of died out two thousand years ago.”