rather confused ideas of the fitness of
things. However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds
himself, by a stumble of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his
yataghan, pistols, and turban scattered around him, he rises quietly, and
exclaims, 'Allah is great!' I know a Christian would have expended his
wrath in a variety of anathemas highly edifying, and close by wishing
his unfortunate steed in a much warmer climate than the Mohammedan
has any idea of. I am a poor church-man: let me emulate the philosophy
of the simple child of the desert, and when I fall into trouble bear it
patiently.
"I wonder what the grim savage would do were he short of money in a
land thronging with beggars and other blissful adjuncts of civilization?
Woe unto every blind or club-foot man, and every one-armed or
scalded woman, I meet to-day! They shall work out their own salvation
with fear and trembling, or I'm an idiot.
"Why, bless my soul, the fortunes bequeathed to all the novel-heroes
created this century, would not begin to supply them!"
Redfield shook his head decidedly when he came to this part of his
monologue, and put the gold and silver coins back into his pocket.
"I hate poor people--I positively do! I despise their pale faces and
cadaverous expression. I detest straggling little girls who come up to
you and say their mothers have been bedridden for three months, and
all their little brothers and sisters are down with the fever. I know it's a
lie. I can detect at once the professional whine, and am certain the story
has been repeated by rote a hundred times that day; but for the life of
me I cannot put out from my mind the imaginary picture of the
half-furnished room in some filthy back street, with a forlorn woman
with red hair stretched on a bed of straw, and half a dozen or more
red-haired children piled about promiscuously.
"There is a wretched little German girl, always managing to have a boil
either on her forehead or the back of her neck,--I believe in my soul it's
from overfeeding,--who follows my footsteps like a misanthropic
vampire. By what ingenuity she manages to cajole me out of my money
I know not, but I positively assert that in the last fortnight, according to
her account, her unhappy mother has suffered from eleven different
incurable diseases. My God! what a complication of misfortune! Why
not let them starve? When a man is not capable of maintaining a family,
why in Heaven's name does he ever have one?
"I think I will follow the maxims of political economists and all
respectable members of society, and vote beggars a nuisance. I wonder
how many people to-day, praying for deliverance by Christ's 'agony
and bloody sweat,' by his 'cross and passion,' his 'precious death and
burial,' his 'glorious resurrection and ascension,' and the 'coming of the
Holy Ghost,' don't?
"This is a charitable frame of mind to precede a Christmas morning.
When did I contract the habit of talking to myself?
"I must be impressed with the two grand reasons of the man we all
know of: first, I like to talk to a sensible man, and second, I like to hear
a sensible man talk.
"I wonder if there is not something under the surface in Sol Smith's
charity sermon? I rather like its pithy style:
"'He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord. Now, brethren, if you
are satisfied with the security, down with the dust.'
"I once repeated it to a gaunt little parson, and his look of unmitigated
horror caused me to hide my diminished head. I knew from his
manner--he did not condescend a reply--what chamber in the Inferno
was being heated up for my especial benefit. Well, well! the sentiment
is doubtless creditable to his head and heart.
"What a pity it is I am not one of the 'good' people! What an
agonizingly cerulean expression I would wear, to be sure!
"I wonder why young mothers don't write for their children's first copy
Dante's inscription, and teach their baby lips to lisp of the world what
he says of hell. It's surprising to me that that parson is not crazed at his
sense of the certain perdition into which everybody except himself is
hurrying. Perhaps, after all, there is something in the question of La
Rochefoucauld, 'Is it not astonishing that we are not altogether
overpowered at the misfortunes of our friends?' Well, man learns
something every day. When I first saw a chicken take a billful of water
and hold up its head, in my childish simplicity I imagined it thanking
God: I afterward discovered it was only letting the water run down its
throat. My mind,
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