- end_line
- 7882
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7809
- text
- the word which among men signifies the highest pitch of geniality,
implies, as indispensable auxiliary, the cheery benediction of the
bottle. Yes, Frank, to live together in the finest sense, we must drink
together. And so, what wonder that he who loves not wine, that sober
wretch has a lean heart--a heart like a wrung-out old bluing-bag, and
loves not his kind? Out upon him, to the rag-house with him, hang
him--the ungenial soul!"
"Oh, now, now, can't you be convivial without being censorious? I like
easy, unexcited conviviality. For the sober man, really, though for my
part I naturally love a cheerful glass, I will not prescribe my nature
as the law to other natures. So don't abuse the sober man. Conviviality
is one good thing, and sobriety is another good thing. So don't be
one-sided."
"Well, if I am one-sided, it is the wine. Indeed, indeed, I have
indulged too genially. My excitement upon slight provocation shows it.
But yours is a stronger head; drink you. By the way, talking of
geniality, it is much on the increase in these days, ain't it?"
"It is, and I hail the fact. Nothing better attests the advance of the
humanitarian spirit. In former and less humanitarian ages--the ages of
amphitheatres and gladiators--geniality was mostly confined to the
fireside and table. But in our age--the age of joint-stock companies and
free-and-easies--it is with this precious quality as with precious gold
in old Peru, which Pizarro found making up the scullion's sauce-pot as
the Inca's crown. Yes, we golden boys, the moderns, have geniality
everywhere--a bounty broadcast like noonlight."
"True, true; my sentiments again. Geniality has invaded each department
and profession. We have genial senators, genial authors, genial
lecturers, genial doctors, genial clergymen, genial surgeons, and the
next thing we shall have genial hangmen."
"As to the last-named sort of person," said the cosmopolitan, "I trust
that the advancing spirit of geniality will at last enable us to
dispense with him. No murderers--no hangmen. And surely, when the whole
world shall have been genialized, it will be as out of place to talk of
murderers, as in a Christianized world to talk of sinners."
"To pursue the thought," said the other, "every blessing is attended
with some evil, and----"
"Stay," said the cosmopolitan, "that may be better let pass for a loose
saying, than for hopeful doctrine."
"Well, assuming the saying's truth, it would apply to the future
supremacy of the genial spirit, since then it will fare with the hangman
as it did with the weaver when the spinning-jenny whizzed into the
ascendant. Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch turn his hand
to? Butchering?"
"That he could turn his hand to it seems probable; but that, under the
circumstances, it would be appropriate, might in some minds admit of a
question. For one, I am inclined to think--and I trust it will not be
held fastidiousness--that it would hardly be suitable to the dignity of
our nature, that an individual, once employed in attending the last
hours of human unfortunates, should, that office being extinct, transfer
himself to the business of attending the last hours of unfortunate
cattle. I would suggest that the individual turn valet--a vocation to
which he would, perhaps, appear not wholly inadapted by his familiar
dexterity about the person. In particular, for giving a finishing tie to
a gentleman's cravat, I know few who would, in all likelihood, be, from
previous occupation, better fitted than the professional person in
question."
"Are you in earnest?" regarding the serene speaker with unaffected
curiosity; "are you really in earnest?"
"I trust I am never otherwise," was the mildly earnest reply; "but
talking of the advance of geniality, I am not without hopes that it
will eventually exert its influence even upon so difficult a subject as
the misanthrope."
- title
- Chunk 7