"Well! well!" said I, for most of the time he was not altogether plain as to what he meant, as when he spoke of the cat as a chorus—"Well! well! you will go out with me on the water at sundown?"
"That may be," he answered; and I went away.
I have observed since then, in the long life I have lived, that the passion called love, when it is a hopeless one, acts on men as ferments do on fluids after their kind—turning some to honest wine and some to vinegar. With our stout little German all trials seemed to be of the former use, so that he took no ill from those hurts and bruises which leave other men sore and tender. Indeed, he talked of Mistress White to me, or even to Wholesome, whom he much embarrassed, in a calm, half-amused way, as of a venture which he had made, and, having failed, found it pleasant to look back upon as an experience not altogether to be regretted. We none of us knew until much later that it was more than a mere fancy for a woman who was altogether so sweet and winsome that no man needed an excuse for loving her. When by and by I also came to love a good woman, I used to try myself by the measure of this man's lack of self-love, and wonder how he could have seen with good-will the woman he cared for come to like another man better. This utter sweetness of soul has ever been to me a riddle.
An hour passed by, when Schmidt heard a footfall in the room behind him, and rising saw an old member of the Society of Friends who came at times to our house, and was indeed trustee for a small estate which belonged to Mistress White. Nicholas Oldmixon was an overseer in the Fourth street meeting, and much looked up to among Friends as a prompt and vigilant guardian of their discipline. Perhaps he would have been surprised to be told that he had that in his nature which made the post of official fault-finder agreeable; but so it was, I fancy, and he was here on such an errand. The asceticism of Friends in those days, and the extent to which Mr. Oldmixon, like the more strict of his sect, carried their views as to gravity of manner and the absence of color in dress and furniture, were especially hateful to Schmidt, who lived and was happy in a region of color and sentiment and gayety. Both, I doubt not, were good men, but each was by nature and training altogether unable to sympathize with the other.
"Good-evening!" said Schmidt, keeping his seat in the low window-sill.
Mr. Oldmixon returned, "Thee is well, I trust?"
"Ach! with such a sun and the last roses, which seem the most sweet, and these most lovely of fall-flowers, and a good book and a pipe," said Schmidt, "who will not be well? Have you the honest blessing of being a smoker?"
"Nay," said the Quaker, with evident guarding of his words. "Thee will not take it amiss should I say it is a vain waste of time?"
"But," answered Schmidt, "time hath many uses. The one is to be wasted; and this a pipe mightily helps. I did think once, when I went to meeting, how much more solemn it would be for each man to have a pipe to excuse his silence."
"Thee jests idly, I fear," said the Friend, coloring and evidently holding himself in check. "Is that friend Wholesome in the garden? I have need to see him."