dence in himself."

"That's your Confession of Faith, is it? Confidence in man, eh? Pray,
which do you think are most, knaves or fools?"

"Having met with few or none of either, I hardly think I am competent to
answer."

"I will answer for you. Fools are most."

"Why do you think so?"

"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses.
Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"

"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery--ha, ha, ha!"

"But I'm in earnest."

"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest
air--knaves munching up fools as horses oats.--Faith, very droll,
indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I
was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about
having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much as I
have."

"_I_ have confidence in nature? _I?_ I say again there is nothing I am
more suspicious of. I once lost ten thousand dollars by nature. Nature
embezzled that amount from me; absconded with ten thousand dollars'
worth of my property; a plantation on this stream, swept clean away by
one of those sudden shiftings of the banks in a freshet; ten thousand
dollars' worth of alluvion thrown broad off upon the waters."

"But have you no confidence that by a reverse shifting that soil will
come back after many days?--ah, here is my venerable friend," observing
the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you _will_ keep afoot,
don't lean against that baluster; take my arm."

It was taken; and the two stood together; the old miser leaning against
the herb-doctor with something of that air of trustful fraternity with
which, when standing, the less strong of the Siamese twins habitually
leans against the other.

The Missourian eyed them in silence, which was broken by the
herb-doctor.

"You look surprised, sir. Is it because I publicly take under my
protection a figure like this? But I am never ashamed of honesty,
whatever his coat."

"Look you," said the Missourian, after a scrutinizing pause, "you are a
queer sort of chap. Don't know exactly what to make of you. Upon the
whole though, you somewhat remind me of the last boy I had on my place."

"Good, trustworthy boy, I hope?"

"Oh, very! I am now started to get me made some kind of machine to do
the sort of work which boys are supposed to be fitted for."

"Then you have passed a veto upon boys?"

"And men, too