- end_line
- 5471
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5408
- text
- 'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
"Sir," replied the other, spite of his shocked feelings seeming to pluck
up some spirit, but not to an indiscreet degree, "Sir, heaven be
praised, I am far, very far from knowing what you say. True," he
thoughtfully continued, "with my associates, I keep an intelligence
office, and for ten years, come October, have, one way or other, been
concerned in that line; for no small period in the great city of
Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I
must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying
mankind--in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking
the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of
various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel,
educated and uneducated; yet--of course, I candidly admit, with some
random exceptions, I have, so far as my small observation goes, found
that mankind thus domestically viewed, confidentially viewed, I may say;
they, upon the whole--making some reasonable allowances for human
imperfection--present as pure a moral spectacle as the purest angel
could wish. I say it, respected sir, with confidence."
"Gammon! You don't mean what you say. Else you are like a landsman at
sea: don't know the ropes, the very things everlastingly pulled before
your eyes. Serpent-like, they glide about, traveling blocks too subtle
for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones
wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back
into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words
put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily
insuring it, sends his ship to be wrecked--
'A wet sheet and a flowing sea!'--
and, sir, now that it occurs to me, your talk, the whole of it, is
but a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and an idle wind that follows fast,
offering a striking contrast to my own discourse."
"Sir," exclaimed the man with the brass-plate, his patience now more or
less tasked, "permit me with deference to hint that some of your remarks
are injudiciously worded. And thus we say to our patrons, when they
enter our office full of abuse of us because of some worthy boy we may
have sent them--some boy wholly misjudged for the time. Yes, sir, permit
me to remark that you do not sufficiently consider that, though a small
man, I may have my small share of feelings."
"Well, well, I didn't mean to wound your feelings at all. And that they
are small, very small, I take your word for it. Sorry, sorry. But truth
is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the
way. Hope you understand me. Don't want to hurt you. All I say is, what
I said in the first place, only now I swear it, that all boys are
rascals."
"Sir," lowly replied the other, still forbearing like an old lawyer
badgered in court, or else like a good-hearted simpleton, the butt of
mischievous wags, "Sir, since you come back to the point, will you allow
me, in my small, quiet way, to submit to you certain small, quiet views
of the subject in hand?"
"Oh, yes!" with insulting indifference, rubbing his chin and looking the
other way. "Oh, yes; go on."
- title
- Chunk 5