Whetstone.
Pardon me,—your name and home?
Catharine.
My name is Catharine, and my home is wherever I am. I come from the city, where there are more sharks in one day than you will see here in a year, and where people in despair come to me for the fortune fate has denied them. I am more pitiful than fate; and their pleased looks give me a joy greater than does their pittance. Hence, poor souls, I give them precious pictures of future good, which, believing in, they achieve, and thus their griefs assuage.
Bluegrass.
We all, to-day, bear our fortunes lightly.
Catharine.
And may you at nightfall bear them as lightly! Fine weather makes quick friends. Come, then, gentlemen, will you buy? Each one in his own humor. If there be a true merchant among you, I will tempt him with the fish’s weight; if there be a moralist, with the fish’s moral; if there be a scientist, with the fish’s complicated structure; if there be a poet, with the fish’s most poetical history; if there be a gourmand, with the fish’s flavor. Each one shall see in the fish he buys, his own humor. He shall have both weight and moral; for a good moral without weight is immoral, and a good weight without a good moral is a dull measure. You shall pay me for the weight, for that the fish had in the sea; but for the moral, that is in my humor, and gain has taken a vacation. Every one has his pastime, and no one is so poor but he has his humor. Mine is to see men buy a fish, each in his own humor; for by the fish’s scales will I weigh him.
Scythe.
How came your hair so white at your age?