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- 8316
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z
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- 8250
- text
- CHAPTER XXXVI.
IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON ENSUES
PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.
As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew, a stranger
advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan, said: "I think I heard you say
you would see that man again. Be warned; don't you do so."
He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man, sandy-haired, and
Saxon-looking; perhaps five and forty; tall, and, but for a certain
angularity, well made; little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a
look of plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow, placidly thoughtful,
than by his general aspect, which had that look of youthfulness in
maturity, peculiar sometimes to habitual health of body, the original
gift of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance of
the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution as much as morality. A
neat, comely, almost ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red
clover-blossom at coolish dawn--the color of warmth preserved by the
virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what of
shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled; in that way, he seemed a
kind of cross between a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it
seemed as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability play
second fiddle to the last.
"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I
cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just
been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone
have prompted such an intimation. My friend, whose seat is still warm,
has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here.
Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if you choose
to hint aught further unfavorable to the man, the genial warmth of whose
person in part passes into yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders
through you--be it so."
"Quite beautiful conceits," said the stranger, now scholastically and
artistically eying the picturesque speaker, as if he were a statue in
the Pitti Palace; "very beautiful:" then with the gravest interest,
"yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul--one full of all
love and truth; for where beauty is, there must those be."
"A pleasing belief," rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning with an even
air, "and to confess, long ago it pleased me. Yes, with you and
Schiller, I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible
with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the
latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose
lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft
in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"
As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit--as
some earnest descriptive speakers will--as unconsciously to wreathe his
form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature
described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise,
apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and
presently said:
"When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to
change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to
glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole
beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish
never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and
conscience, and revel for a while in the carefree, joyous life of a
perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"
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