ts to-day."

"But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading
a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions
touching strangers?"

"Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the
controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look,
you----"

"Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for
double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say
what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society
in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace
it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny."

Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into
the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening
world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and
corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for
disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through
lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of
man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it.

"Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could
abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony,
and Satire, his bosom friend."

"A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his
rifle-lock.

"Now be frank. Own that was a little gratuitous. But, no, no, you didn't
mean; it any way, I can make allowances. Ah, did you but know it, how
much pleasanter to puff at this philanthropic pipe, than still to keep
fumbling at that misanthropic rifle. As for your worldling, glutton,
and coquette, though, doubtless, being such, they may have their little
foibles--as who has not?--yet not one of the three can be reproached
with that awful sin of shunning society; awful I call it, for not seldom
it presupposes a still darker thing than itself--remorse."

"Remorse drives man away from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain,
after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it
that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement?

"My dear fellow, you get excited. Say what you will, I for one must have
my fellow-creatures round me. Thick, too--I must have them thick."

"The pick-pocket, too, loves to have his fellow-creatures round him.
Tut, man! no one goes into the crowd but for his end; and the end of too
many