ring wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,
experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but
unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its
genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too
indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished
by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse
henceforth.

He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he
fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a
fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional
case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.
He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the
operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the
lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And
yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the
person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,
that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems
him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make
out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough
doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of
cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples
the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast
in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by
the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the
insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky
beast that windeth his way on his belly.

From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the
shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which
came a voice, sweet as a seraph's:

"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."

CHAPTER XXIV.

A PHILANTHROPIST UNDERTAKES TO CONVERT A MISANTHROPE, BUT DOES NOT GET
BEYOND CONFUTING HIM.

"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with
moroseness.

"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair
has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a
fine fellow wears it."

"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't
you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat."

This ungentle mention of the toucan was not