It strikes me that even this little event had something to do with Charley in his becoming a Senator. You never saw a narrow-chested man who had any voice, energy or eloquence in your life. If you have got a stoop, my boy, you had better correct it if you ever intend being any thing.
I received from him one day a very, very plain exposition of one of my many faults. Never mind what it is. He pointed it out to me as you would point out a rattlesnake in a thicket to any companion you chanced to be walking with. I saw it—this vile fault of mine—and have been hunting it, and striking savagely at it, whenever I detect it stealing through my conduct with its accursed insidiousness ever since. Alas! it is “only skotched not killed” yet. But that is another matter. I only mention it to say that his very plain remarks gave an edge to my remarks, as I observed—
“You are right, Charley, perfectly so—and I war against that accursed fault forever. But it reminds me of one of yours.”
“Eh?”
“Charley, you have a vile, offensive, disgusting habit of chewing tobacco. It is loathsome. If you would only keep the weed in your mouth, why it would only poison yourself—but you will be everlastingly spitting out its juice—and it poisons me—poisons me through sight, smell, hearing and feeling. Don’t use it any more.”
True to his own true nature, he never took another quid. Whether this is one cause of his blooming health and firm nerve I will not say. I will say that it is one cause of his astonishing popularity with the ladies—whether they know that it is or not—and thus one cause of this election of his as Senator.
These faults of ours! I said they are like snakes. So they are. Sometimes a man catches sight of one of them lying full-length in its loathsomeness in his own conduct or conversation. Suppose the fault is self-conceit?—a disease of mentioning one’s self at all times, which you have contracted. Well, you see the same fault in some fool or other, or some Charley Bell tells you of it. The knowledge falls like a flash of daylight on the vice—you see it! If it would only perish—crawl out of you, it would be well. But the vile thing—crawls into you—like a snake into its hole. It does not show its head while you are watching for it. A day or two passes. You forget about it—and it is out—drawing its filthy trail through all your conduct again.
This is not a digression. Because I wanted to say that Charley was a man of too strong a desire after personal excellence not to wage eternal war after such vermin. A shrewd observer would have known the existence of his besetting faults only by the unusual prominence of just the opposite virtues, just as you recognize the former drunkard in the man who has a special horror now of all that can intoxicate.
There were several minor defects in Charley’s character, which I pointed out to him, but which he has so completely conquered that I have forgotten what they were.
I really must say something about that Dora Anson affair.