“He ain’t squimmidge,” said Jake to us, as the fellow walked off to call his comrade. “He’s bound to ring himself into this here party, whoever says stickleback. He’s one er them Algerines what don’t know a dark hint, till it begins to make motions, and kicks ’em out. Well, two more men, with two regiments’ allowance of shootin’ irons won’t do no harm in this Ingine country.”
“Well, boys!” said the unpleasant fatling, approaching again. “Here is my pardener, Sam Smith, from Sacramenter; what he don’t know about a horse ain’t worth knowin’. My name is Jim Robinson. I ken sing a song, tell a story, or fling a card with any man, in town or out er town.”
While the strangers cooked their supper, my friend and I lounged off apart upon the prairie. A few steps gave us a capital picture. The white wagon; the horses feeding in the distance, a dusky group; the men picturesquely disposed about the fire, now glowing ruddy against the thickening night. A Gypsy scene. Literal “Vie de Bohême.”
“I am never bored,” said Brent to me, “with the company or the talk of men like those, good or bad. Homo sum; nil humani, and so forth,—a sentiment of the late Plautus, now first quoted.”
“You do not yet feel a reaction toward scholarly society.”
“No; this Homeric life, with its struggle against elements, which I can deify if I please, and against crude forces in man or nature, suits the youth of my manhood, my Achilles time. The world went through an epoch of just such life as we are leading. Every man must, to be complete and not conventional.”
“A man who wants to know his country and his age must clash with all the people and all the kinds of life in it. You and I have had the college, the salon, the club, the street, Europe, the Old World, and Yankeedom through and through; when do you expect to outgrow Ishmael, my Jonathan?”
“Whenever Destiny gives me the final accolade of merit, and names me Lover.”
“What! have you never been that happy wretch?”
“Never. I have had transitory ideals. I have been enchanted by women willowy and women dumpy; by the slight and colorless mind and body, by the tender and couleur de rose, and by the buxom and ruddy. I have adored Zobeide and Hildegarde, Dolores and Dorothy Ann, imp and angel, sprite and fiend. I have had my little irritation of a foolish fancy, my sharp scourge of an unworthy passion. I am heart-whole still, and growing a little expectant of late.”