y life one insensibly contracts oddities,--talking to
one's self now."

"Been eaves-dropping, eh?"

"Why, a soliloquist in a crowd can hardly but be overheard, and without
much reproach to the hearer."

"You are an eaves-dropper."

"Well. Be it so."

"Confess yourself an eaves-dropper?"

"I confess that when you were muttering here I, passing by, caught a
word or two, and, by like chance, something previous of your chat with
the Intelligence-office man;--a rather sensible fellow, by the way; much
of my style of thinking; would, for his own sake, he were of my style of
dress. Grief to good minds, to see a man of superior sense forced to
hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.--Well, from what
little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable
philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have
observed--excuse me--to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness,
of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix
in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a
good time. Life is a pic-nic _en costume_; one must take a part, assume
a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in
plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a
discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold
water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated
ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too--_en
confiance_--that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety,
soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness.
Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by
beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple a little."

"Pray, what society of vintners and old topers are you hired to lecture
for?"

"I fear I did not give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The
story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who
wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit
might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a
green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell
into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see
her best friends. In much concern her good man sent for the doctor, who,
after seeing the patient and putting a question or two, beckoned the
husband out, and said: 'Deacon, do you want her cured