- end_line
- 1875
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1807
- text
- to attend, in a festive grove, the afternoon wedding of his niece: so
did not carry much money with him.
The other was about expressing his thanks when the gentleman in his
pleasant way checked him: the gratitude was on the other side. To him,
he said, charity was in one sense not an effort, but a luxury; against
too great indulgence in which his steward, a humorist, had sometimes
admonished him.
In some general talk which followed, relative to organized modes of
doing good, the gentleman expressed his regrets that so many benevolent
societies as there were, here and there isolated in the land, should not
act in concert by coming together, in the way that already in each
society the individuals composing it had done, which would result, he
thought, in like advantages upon a larger scale. Indeed, such a
confederation might, perhaps, be attended with as happy results as
politically attended that of the states.
Upon his hitherto moderate enough companion, this suggestion had an
effect illustrative in a sort of that notion of Socrates, that the soul
is a harmony; for as the sound of a flute, in any particular key, will,
it is said, audibly affect the corresponding chord of any harp in good
tune, within hearing, just so now did some string in him respond, and
with animation.
Which animation, by the way, might seem more or less out of character in
the man in gray, considering his unsprightly manner when first
introduced, had he not already, in certain after colloquies, given
proof, in some degree, of the fact, that, with certain natures, a
soberly continent air at times, so far from arguing emptiness of stuff,
is good proof it is there, and plenty of it, because unwasted, and may
be used the more effectively, too, when opportunity offers. What now
follows on the part of the man in gray will still further exemplify,
perhaps somewhat strikingly, the truth, or what appears to be such, of
this remark.
"Sir," said he eagerly, "I am before you. A project, not dissimilar to
yours, was by me thrown out at the World's Fair in London."
"World's Fair? You there? Pray how was that?"
"First, let me----"
"Nay, but first tell me what took you to the Fair?"
"I went to exhibit an invalid's easy-chair I had invented."
"Then you have not always been in the charity business?"
"Is it not charity to ease human suffering? I am, and always have been,
as I always will be, I trust, in the charity business, as you call it;
but charity is not like a pin, one to make the head, and the other the
point; charity is a work to which a good workman may be competent in all
its branches. I invented my Protean easy-chair in odd intervals stolen
from meals and sleep."
"You call it the Protean easy-chair; pray describe it."
"My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and
bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch,
that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back,
seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,
nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and
somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to
make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little
means and off to the World's Fair with it."
"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"
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