- end_line
- 5113
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5023
- text
- supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives bad dreams."
"What, in wonder's name--ugh, ugh!--is he talking about?" asked the old
miser, looking up to the herb-doctor.
"Heaven be praised for that!" cried the Missourian.
"Out of his mind, ain't he?" again appealed the old miser.
"Pray, sir," said the herb-doctor to the Missourian, "for what were you
giving thanks just now?"
"For this: that, with some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a
thing after all, seeing that, like a loaded pistol found by poor devils
of savages, it raises more wonder than terror--its peculiar virtue being
unguessed, unless, indeed, by indiscreet handling, it should happen to
go off of itself."
"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor,
after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of
pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his
state of mind, and, at the same time, wondered what had brought him to
it, "but this much I know," he added, "that the general cast of your
thoughts is, to say the least, unfortunate. There is strength in them,
but a strength, whose source, being physical, must wither. You will yet
recant."
"Recant?"
"Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when
a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the
dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence
begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it
return to you in age."
"Go back to nurse again, eh? Second childhood, indeed. You are soft."
"Mercy, mercy!" cried the old miser, "what is all this!--ugh, ugh! Do
talk sense, my good friends. Ain't you," to the Missourian, "going to
buy some of that medicine?"
"Pray, my venerable friend," said the herb-doctor, now trying to
straighten himself, "don't lean _quite_ so hard; my arm grows numb;
abate a little, just a very little."
"Go," said the Missourian, "go lay down in your grave, old man, if you
can't stand of yourself. It's a hard world for a leaner."
"As to his grave," said the herb-doctor, "that is far enough off, so he
but faithfully take my medicine."
"Ugh, ugh, ugh!--He says true. No, I ain't--ugh! a going to die
yet--ugh, ugh, ugh! Many years to live yet, ugh, ugh, ugh!"
"I approve your confidence," said the herb-doctor; "but your coughing
distresses me, besides being injurious to you. Pray, let me conduct you
to your berth. You are best there. Our friend here will wait till my
return, I know."
With which he led the old miser away, and then, coming back, the talk
with the Missourian was resumed.
"Sir," said the herb-doctor, with some dignity and more feeling, "now
that our infirm friend is withdrawn, allow me, to the full, to express
my concern at the words you allowed to escape you in his hearing. Some
of those words, if I err not, besides being calculated to beget
deplorable distrust in the patient, seemed fitted to convey unpleasant
imputations against me, his physician."
"Suppose they did?" with a menacing air.
"Why, then--then, indeed," respectfully retreating, "I fall back upon my
previous theory of your general facetiousness. I have the fortune to be
in company with a humorist--a wag."
"Fall back you had better, and wag it is," cried the Missourian,
following him up, and wagging his raccoon tail almost into the
herb-doctor's face, "look you!"
"At what?"
"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I
flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or
pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer
that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the
kind."
"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
- title
- Chunk 4