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- 416
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- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 340
- text
- strange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself,
but not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder--they made no scruple to
jostle him aside; while one, less kind than the rest, or more of a wag,
by an unobserved stroke, dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon
his head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly turned, and
writing anew upon the slate, again held it up:--
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind."
Illy pleased with his pertinacity, as they thought it, the crowd a
second time thrust him aside, and not without epithets and some buffets,
all of which were unresented. But, as if at last despairing of so
difficult an adventure, wherein one, apparently a non-resistant, sought
to impose his presence upon fighting characters, the stranger now moved
slowly away, yet not before altering his writing to this:--
"Charity endureth all things."
Shield-like bearing his slate before him, amid stares and jeers he moved
slowly up and down, at his turning points again changing his inscription
to--
"Charity believeth all things."
and then--
"Charity never faileth."
The word charity, as originally traced, remained throughout uneffaced,
not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date, otherwise left for
convenience in blank.
To some observers, the singularity, if not lunacy, of the stranger was
heightened by his muteness, and, perhaps also, by the contrast to his
proceedings afforded in the actions--quite in the wonted and sensible
order of things--of the barber of the boat, whose quarters, under a
smoking-saloon, and over against a bar-room, was next door but two to
the captain's office. As if the long, wide, covered deck, hereabouts
built up on both sides with shop-like windowed spaces, were some
Constantinople arcade or bazaar, where more than one trade is plied,
this river barber, aproned and slippered, but rather crusty-looking for
the moment, it may be from being newly out of bed, was throwing open
his premises for the day, and suitably arranging the exterior. With
business-like dispatch, having rattled down his shutters, and at a
palm-tree angle set out in the iron fixture his little ornamental pole,
and this without overmuch tenderness for the elbows and toes of the
crowd, he concluded his operations by bidding people stand still more
aside, when, jumping on a stool, he hung over his door, on the customary
nail, a gaudy sort of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed
by himself, gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in readiness to
shave, and also, for the public benefit, with two words not unfrequently
seen ashore gracing other shops besides barbers':--
"NO TRUST."
An inscription which, though in a sense not less intrusive than the
contrasted ones of the stranger, did not, as it seemed, provoke any
corresponding derision or surprise, much less indignation; and still
less, to all appearances, did it gain for the inscriber the repute of
being a simpleton.
Meanwhile, he with the slate continued moving slowly up and down, not
without causing some stares to change into jeers, and some jeers into
pushes, and some pushes into punches; when suddenly, in one of his
turns, he was hailed from behind by two porters carrying a large trunk;
but as the summons, though loud, was without effect, they accidentally
or otherwise swung their burden against him, nearly overthrowing him;
when, by a quick start, a peculiar inarticulate moan, and a pathetic
telegraphing of his fingers, he involuntarily betrayed that he was not
alone dumb, but also deaf.
Presently, as if not wholly unaffected by his reception thus far, he
went forward, seating himself in a retired spot on the forecastle, nigh
the foot of a ladder there leading to a deck above, up and down which
ladder some of the boatmen, in discharge of their duties, were
occasionally going.
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