“A gentleman,” said Micus, “don’t have to tell you he’s one.”
“Neither does a bla’guard, a thief, or a rogue, for that matter,” said Padna. “Howsomever, ’twas on a summer’s day, many years ago when I was young, and believed all the things I should doubt, and doubted all I should believe, that I met the Mayor of Loughlaurna. I was out fishing in a small boat that I had moored in the centre of the lough itself, and though I started at early morning, blast the bit did I catch all day except a cold in the head and chest, but as I was about to haul in my line at the tail end of the evening, something began to pull and tug, and I hauled and hauled and hauled until I thought I was dragging one of the Spanish Armada from the depths of the sea. But lo and behold! what did I find, when I came to the end of my pulling and tugging and dragging, but the finest-looking salmon your eyes ever rested on. And when I drew him over the gunwale, and took the hook from his mouth before breaking his neck on my knee, he gave one jump, cleared two thwarts, stood on his tail and commenced to abuse me, the same as if he was in politics all his lifetime.”
“And what did he say?” said Micus.
“‘Bad scran to your confounded impudence and presumption, not to say a word about your absence of courtesy and good breeding,’ ses he. ‘How dare you interfere with people who don’t interfere with you?’
“‘Oh,’ ses I, ‘sure ’tis by interference, inference, and ignorance that most of us become prosperous and presumptuous. And without presumption there would be no assumption, and without assumption there would be only chaos, and people would never get the things they are not entitled to.’
“‘Well,’ ses he, ‘I often heard that a little learning is the saving grace of an ignoramus, but now I have no doubt whatever about it.’
“‘Well,’ ses I, ‘if it takes a rogue to find a rogue, it takes one ignoramus to find wisdom in another.’
“‘I think,’ ses he, ‘that you have a lot to learn, and as much more to unlearn, before you will be fit to advise those who may be senseless enough to heed you.’
“‘You should know,’ ses I, ‘unless you are a schoolmaster, that what is wisdom to one man is tomfoolery to another. But who the blazes are you anyway, that I should be wasting my time talking like this?’
“‘You might as well be talking to me as anyone else,’ ses he, ‘because most people spend their lives between talking and sleeping, and all their old talk makes no more impression on the world than their snoring. And when they die, they are immediately forgotten by every one except those to whom they owed money. But if ’tis the way you want to know who I am,’ ses he, ‘I will tell you before you will have time to make another mistake.’