Chapter 10

IN THE CABIN.

Stools, settees, sofas, divans, ottomans; occupying them are clusters of men, old and young, wise and simple; in their hands are cards spotted with diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts; the favorite games are whist, cribbage, and brag. Lounging in arm-chairs or sauntering among the marble-topped tables, amused with the scene, are the comparatively few, who, instead of having hands in the games, for the most part keep their hands in their pockets. These may be the philosophes. But here and there, with a curious expression, one is reading a small sort of handbill of anonymous poetry, rather wordily entitled:—

“ODE
ON THE INTIMATIONS
OF
DISTRUST IN MAN,
UNWILLINGLY INFERRED FROM REPEATED REPULSES,
IN DISINTERESTED ENDEAVORS
TO PROCURE HIS
CONFIDENCE.”

On the floor are many copies, looking as if fluttered down from a balloon. The way they came there was this: A somewhat elderly person, in the quaker dress, had quietly passed through the cabin, and, much in the manner of those railway book-peddlers who precede their proffers of sale by a distribution of puffs, direct or indirect, of the volumes to follow, had, without speaking, handed about the odes, which, for the most part, after a cursory glance, had been disrespectfully tossed aside, as no doubt, the moonstruck production of some wandering rhapsodist.

In due time, book under arm, in trips the ruddy man with the traveling-cap, who, lightly moving to and fro, looks animatedly about him, with a yearning sort of gratulatory affinity and longing, expressive of the very soul of sociality; as much as to say, “Oh, boys, would that I were personally acquainted with each mother’s son of you, since what a sweet world, to make sweet acquaintance in, is ours, my brothers; yea, and what dear, happy dogs are we all!”

And just as if he had really warbled it forth, he makes fraternally up to one lounging stranger or another, exchanging with him some pleasant remark.

“Pray, what have you there?” he asked of one newly accosted, a little, dried-up man, who looked as if he never dined.

“A little ode, rather queer, too,” was the reply, “of the same sort you see strewn on the floor here.”

“I did not observe them. Let me see;” picking one up and looking it over. “Well now, this is pretty; plaintive, especially the opening:—

‘Alas for man, he hath small sense
Of genial trust and confidence.’
—If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir. Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?”

“As to that,” said the little dried-up man, “I think it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial. I don’t know that ever I felt so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in well-doing.”

“Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who snowed the odes about here?”

“I cannot say; I have not been here long.”

“Wasn’t an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as the rest, and have cards.”

“Thank you, I never play cards.”

“A bottle of wine?”

“Thank you, I never drink wine.”

“Cigars?”

“Thank you, I never smoke cigars.”

“Tell stories?”

“To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling.”

“Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial hand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you please; just enough to make it interesting.”

“Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards.”

“What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad Philomel here:—

‘Alas for man, he hath small sense
Of genial trust and confidence.’
Good-bye!”

Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at length seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a partly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon, like his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming not a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome, self-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil law.

By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the good merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of the Ode which he holds: “Sir, I don’t like the looks of those two, do you?”

“Hardly,” was the whispered reply; “those colored cravats are not in the best taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all.”

“You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don’t refer to dress, but countenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further than reading about them in the papers—but those two are—are sharpers, aint they?”