"No doubt you felt greatly surprised when you saw us," observed the gentleman.
"I must say I did," answered the barber, still looking very bashful.
"Did you witness any of my capers in the street, my friend? I am fearful that I have played a somewhat foolish part, for my elation well nigh drove me out of my senses. Come, my good friend," concluded the gentleman, noting the shy look of the barber, "let us sit down, and, over a comfortable glass of wine, talk over this matter;—not forgetting your family adage of 'Right is every man's, but Wrong is no man's right.'"
They were seated accordingly; and the barber, having been plied with a couple of glasses of claret, and his shame-facedness having vanished, the gentleman renewed the conversation, with a look of great good-humour.
"My good friend," said he, "I remember an observation of yours which, it strikes me, you cannot always bring to bear upon your mind with the force of a maxim, although you profess to have made it one: it was that 'When we believe all men to be equal, we ought to treat every man like a gentleman.' Now, tell me, frankly, did you not completely forget your principles of equality at the moment you saw me with this my beloved and only sister, in the guise of a vagabond gypsy?" The gentleman took the hand of his recovered relative once more in his own, and they looked with joy and love upon each other.
The barber felt conscience-stricken with the inconsistency between his philosophy and his practice, in this notable instance, and, despite his natural loquacity, remained dumb.
"Nay, my good friend," resumed the stranger; "do not think yourself unlike other people. Let me see you rally, and display the spirit you did this morning: all the world is too prone to fail in the act of applying principles and professions to practice."
"I do, indeed, feel," said the barber at length, but still hanging down his head, "that I have not felt and acted as a disciple of the great doctrine of equality ought to have felt and acted this day."
"And I think you will not fail to draw this great lesson from your own experience, my friend," rejoined the gentleman, "that, however intrinsically true it may be that we are all equal in the eye of Him who made us, yet our birth, our early associations, our habits,—in brief, the whole complexity of circumstances with which we are every hour, nay, every moment, surrounded, renders it absolutely impossible for any of us to act at all times, or even generally, upon the conviction of that most undeniable and solemn truth."
"You are perfectly right, sir," replied the barber, conscious that the stranger spoke the language of common sense, and feeling humbled into willing discipleship.