- end_line
- 1625
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1535
- text
- truth almost offensive as falsehood. Who is he?"
"He who I mentioned to you as having boasted his suspicion of the
negro," replied the young clergyman, recovering from disturbance, "in
short, the person to whom I ascribe the origin of my own distrust; he
maintained that Guinea was some white scoundrel, betwisted and painted
up for a decoy. Yes, these were his very words, I think."
"Impossible! he could not be so wrong-headed. Pray, will you call him
back, and let me ask him if he were really in earnest?"
The other complied; and, at length, after no few surly objections,
prevailed upon the one-legged individual to return for a moment. Upon
which, the man in gray thus addressed him: "This reverend gentleman
tells me, sir, that a certain cripple, a poor negro, is by you
considered an ingenious impostor. Now, I am not unaware that there are
some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being
wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have
sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. I hope
you are not one of these. In short, would you tell me now, whether you
were not merely joking in the notion you threw out about the negro.
Would you be so kind?"
"No, I won't be so kind, I'll be so cruel."
"As you please about that."
"Well, he's just what I said he was."
"A white masquerading as a black?"
"Exactly."
The man in gray glanced at the young clergyman a moment, then quietly
whispered to him, "I thought you represented your friend here as a very
distrustful sort of person, but he appears endued with a singular
credulity.--Tell me, sir, do you really think that a white could look
the negro so? For one, I should call it pretty good acting."
"Not much better than any other man acts."
"How? Does all the world act? Am _I_, for instance, an actor? Is my
reverend friend here, too, a performer?"
"Yes, don't you both perform acts? To do, is to act; so all doers are
actors."
"You trifle.--I ask again, if a white, how could he look the negro so?"
"Never saw the negro-minstrels, I suppose?"
"Yes, but they are apt to overdo the ebony; exemplifying the old saying,
not more just than charitable, that 'the devil is never so black as he
is painted.' But his limbs, if not a cripple, how could he twist his
limbs so?"
"How do other hypocritical beggars twist theirs? Easy enough to see how
they are hoisted up."
"The sham is evident, then?"
"To the discerning eye," with a horrible screw of his gimlet one.
"Well, where is Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at
once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis."
"Do so," cried the one-eyed man, "I'm just in the humor now for having
him found, and leaving the streaks of these fingers on his paint, as the
lion leaves the streaks of his nails on a Caffre. They wouldn't let me
touch him before. Yes, find him, I'll make wool fly, and him after."
"You forget," here said the young clergyman to the man in gray, "that
yourself helped poor Guinea ashore."
"So I did, so I did; how unfortunate. But look now," to the other, "I
think that without personal proof I can convince you of your mistake.
For I put it to you, is it reasonable to suppose that a man with brains,
sufficient to act such a part as you say, would take all that trouble,
and run all that hazard, for the mere sake of those few paltry coppers,
which, I hear, was all he got for his pains, if pains they were?"
"That puts the case irrefutably," said the young clergyman, with a
challenging glance towards the one-legged man.
"You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and
hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the
devil make by gulling Eve?"
Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of his intolerable
jeer.
- title
- Chunk 3