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- 948
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- CHAPTER IV.
RENEWAL OF OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
"How do you do, Mr. Roberts?"
"Eh?"
"Don't you know me?"
"No, certainly."
The crowd about the captain's office, having in good time melted away,
the above encounter took place in one of the side balconies astern,
between a man in mourning clean and respectable, but none of the
glossiest, a long weed on his hat, and the country-merchant
before-mentioned, whom, with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, the
former had accosted.
"Is it possible, my dear sir," resumed he with the weed, "that you do
not recall my countenance? why yours I recall distinctly as if but half
an hour, instead of half an age, had passed since I saw you. Don't you
recall me, now? Look harder."
"In my conscience--truly--I protest," honestly bewildered, "bless my
soul, sir, I don't know you--really, really. But stay, stay," he
hurriedly added, not without gratification, glancing up at the crape on
the stranger's hat, "stay--yes--seems to me, though I have not the
pleasure of personally knowing you, yet I am pretty sure I have at least
_heard_ of you, and recently too, quite recently. A poor negro aboard
here referred to you, among others, for a character, I think."
"Oh, the cripple. Poor fellow. I know him well. They found me. I have
said all I could for him. I think I abated their distrust. Would I could
have been of more substantial service. And apropos, sir," he added, "now
that it strikes me, allow me to ask, whether the circumstance of one
man, however humble, referring for a character to another man, however
afflicted, does not argue more or less of moral worth in the latter?"
The good merchant looked puzzled.
"Still you don't recall my countenance?"
"Still does truth compel me to say that I cannot, despite my best
efforts," was the reluctantly-candid reply.
"Can I be so changed? Look at me. Or is it I who am mistaken?--Are you
not, sir, Henry Roberts, forwarding merchant, of Wheeling, Pennsylvania?
Pray, now, if you use the advertisement of business cards, and happen to
have one with you, just look at it, and see whether you are not the man
I take you for."
"Why," a bit chafed, perhaps, "I hope I know myself."
"And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my
dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else?
Stranger things have happened."
The good merchant stared.
"To come to particulars, my dear sir, I met you, now some six years
back, at Brade Brothers & Co's office, I think. I was traveling for a
Philadelphia house. The senior Brade introduced us, you remember; some
business-chat followed, then you forced me home with you to a family
tea, and a family time we had. Have you forgotten about the urn, and
what I said about Werter's Charlotte, and the bread and butter, and that
capital story you told of the large loaf. A hundred times since, I have
laughed over it. At least you must recall my name--Ringman, John
Ringman."
"Large loaf? Invited you to tea? Ringman? Ringman? Ring? Ring?"
"Ah sir," sadly smiling, "don't ring the changes that way. I see you
have a faithless memory, Mr. Roberts. But trust in the faithfulness of
mine."
"Well, to tell the truth, in some things my memory aint of the very
best," was the honest rejoinder. "But still," he perplexedly added,
"still I----"
"Oh sir, suffice it that it is as I say. Doubt not that we are all well
acquainted."
"But--but I don't like this going dead against my own memory; I----"
"But didn't you admit, my dear sir, that in some things this memory of
yours is a little faithless? Now, those who have faithless memories,
should they not have some little confidence in the less faithless
memories of others?"
"But, of this friendly chat and tea, I have not the slightest----"
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