You are fastidious. Well, you have your excuses. But you
can understand a poor fellow like me, who has been dragged through
the slums and sewers of this wicked world for fifteen years and more,
being very well content with any sort of good which I can light on,
and not particular as to either quantity or quality."
"Perhaps yours is the healthier state of mind; if you can only
find the said good. The vulturine nose, which smells nothing but
corruption, is no credit to its possessor. And it would be pleasant,
at least, to find good in every man."
"One can't do that in one's study. Mixing with them is the only plan.
No doubt they're inconsistent enough. The more you see of them, the
less you trust them; and yet the more you see of them, the more you
like them. Can you solve that paradox from your books?"
"I will try," said Frank. "I generally have more than one to think
over when you go. But, surely, there are men so fallen that they are
utterly insensible to good."
"Very likely. There's no saying in this world what may not be. Only I
never saw one. I'll tell you a story: you may apply it as you like.
When I was on the Texan expedition, and raw to soldiering and camping,
we had to sleep in low ground, and suffered terribly from a miasma.
Deadly cold, it was, when it came; and the man who once got chilled
through with it, just died. I was lying on the bare ground one night,
and chilly enough I was--for I was short of clothes, and had lost my
buffalo robe--but fell asleep: and on waking the next morning, I found
myself covered up in my comrade's blankets, even to his coat, while he
was sitting shivering in his shirt sleeves.
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