- end_line
- 6319
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6265
- text
- Again he offered his fraternal arm; but the bachelor once more flung it
off, and, raising his rifle in energetic invocation, cried: "Now the
high-constable catch and confound all knaves in towns and rats in
grain-bins, and if in this boat, which is a human grain-bin for the
time, any sly, smooth, philandering rat be dodging now, pin him, thou
high rat-catcher, against this rail."
"A noble burst! shows you at heart a trump. And when a card's that,
little matters it whether it be spade or diamond. You are good wine
that, to be still better, only needs a shaking up. Come, let's agree
that we'll to New Orleans, and there embark for London--I staying with
my friends nigh Primrose-hill, and you putting up at the Piazza, Covent
Garden--Piazza, Covent Garden; for tell me--since you will not be a
disciple to the full--tell me, was not that humor, of Diogenes, which
led him to live, a merry-andrew, in the flower-market, better than that
of the less wise Athenian, which made him a skulking scare-crow in
pine-barrens? An injudicious gentleman, Lord Timon."
"Your hand!" seizing it.
"Bless me, how cordial a squeeze. It is agreed we shall be brothers,
then?"
"As much so as a brace of misanthropes can be," with another and
terrific squeeze. "I had thought that the moderns had degenerated
beneath the capacity of misanthropy. Rejoiced, though but in one
instance, and that disguised, to be undeceived."
The other stared in blank amaze.
"Won't do. You are Diogenes, Diogenes in disguise. I say--Diogenes
masquerading as a cosmopolitan."
With ruefully altered mien, the stranger still stood mute awhile. At
length, in a pained tone, spoke: "How hard the lot of that pleader who,
in his zeal conceding too much, is taken to belong to a side which he
but labors, however ineffectually, to convert!" Then with another change
of air: "To you, an Ishmael, disguising in sportiveness my intent, I
came ambassador from the human race, charged with the assurance that for
your mislike they bore no answering grudge, but sought to conciliate
accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
I stark and stiff!"
With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
sapient.
- title
- Chunk 6