第4章

--Dear me, no; only levelling everything smack, and trampling us under foot, as the reporters made it out.That means FIRE, I take it, and knocking you down and stamping on you, whichever side of your person happens to be uppermost.Sounded like a threat; meant, of course, for a warning.But I don't believe it was in the piece as they spoke it,--could n't have been.Then, again, Paris wasn't to blame,--as much as to say--so the old women thought--that New York or Boston would n't be to blame if it did the same thing.I've heard of political gatherings where they barbecued an ox, but I can't think there 's a party in this country that wants to barbecue a city.But it is n't quite fair to frighten the old women.I don't doubt there are a great many people wiser than I am that would n't be hurt by a hint I am going to give them.It's no matter what you say when you talk to yourself, but when you talk to other people, your business is to use words with reference to the way in which those other people are like to understand them.These pretended inflammatory speeches, so reported as to seem full of combustibles, even if they were as threatening as they have been represented, would do no harm if read or declaimed in a man's study to his books, or by the sea-shore to the waves.But they are not so wholesome moral entertainment for the dangerous classes.Boys must not touch off their squibs and crackers too near the powder-magazine.This kind of speech does n't help on the millennium much.

--It ain't jest the thing to grease your ex with ile o' vitrul, said the Member.

--No, the wheel of progress will soon stick fast if you do.You can't keep a dead level long, if you burn everything down flat to make it.Why, bless your soul, if all the cities of the world were reduced ashes, you'd have a new set of millionnaires in a couple of years or so, out of the trade in potash.In the mean time, what is the use of setting the man with the silver watch against the man with the gold watch, and the man without any watch against them both?

--You can't go agin human natur', said the Member --You speak truly.Here we are travelling through desert together like the children of Israel.Some pick up more manna and catch more quails than others and ought to help their hungry neighbors more than they do; that will always be so until we come back to primitive Christianity, the road to which does not seem to be via Paris, just now; but we don't want the incendiary's pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead us in the march to civilization, and we don't want a Moses who will smite rock, not to bring out water for our thirst, but petroleum to burn us all up with.

--It is n't quite fair to run an opposition to the other funny speaker, Rev.Petroleum V.What 's-his-name,--spoke up an anonymous boarder.

--You may have been thinking, perhaps, that it was I,--I, the Poet, who was the chief talker in the one-sided dialogue to which you have been listening.If so, you were mistaken.It was the old man in the spectacles with large round glasses and the iron-gray hair.He does a good deal of the talking at our table, and, to tell the truth, Irather like to hear him.He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various ways, and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can rub against, and so get up and let off a superficial intellectual irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs).I think they begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to.

That is the way to use your friend's prejudices.This is a sturdy-looking personage of a good deal more than middle age, his face marked with strong manly furrows, records of hard thinking and square stand-up fights with life and all its devils.There is a slight touch of satire in his discourse now and then, and an odd way of answering one that makes it hard to guess how much more or less he means than he seems to say.But he is honest, and always has a twinkle in his eye to put you on your guard when he does not mean to be taken quite literally.I think old Ben Franklin had just that look.I know his great-grandson (in pace!) had it, and I don't doubt he took it in the straight line of descent, as he did his grand intellect.

The Member of the Haouse evidently comes from one of the lesser inland centres of civilization, where the flora is rich in checkerberries and similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels, wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their hats on one side when they feel conspicuous and distinshed; where they say--Sir to you in their common talk and have other Arcadian and bucolic ways which are highly unobjectionable, but are not so much admired in cities, where the people are said to be not half so virtuous.