will sooner or later be undermined in health, he answers,
'And do you think I don't know that? But health without cheer I hold a
bore; and cheer, even of the spurious sort, has its price, which I am
willing to pay.'"

"Such a man, Frank, must have a disposition ungovernably bacchanalian."

"Yes, if such a man there be, which I don't credit. It is a fable, but a
fable from which I once heard a person of less genius than grotesqueness
draw a moral even more extravagant than the fable itself. He said that
it illustrated, as in a parable, how that a man of a disposition
ungovernably good-natured might still familiarly associate with men,
though, at the same time, he believed the greater part of men
false-hearted--accounting society so sweet a thing that even the
spurious sort was better than none at all. And if the Rochefoucaultites
urge that, by this course, he will sooner or later be undermined in
security, he answers, 'And do you think I don't know that? But security
without society I hold a bore; and society, even of the spurious sort,
has its price, which I am willing to pay.'"

"A most singular theory," said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying
his companion with some inquisitiveness, "indeed, Frank, a most
slanderous thought," he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary
look almost of being personally aggrieved.

"In one sense it merits all you say, and more," rejoined the other with
wonted mildness, "but, for a kind of drollery in it, charity might,
perhaps, overlook something of the wickedness. Humor is, in fact, so
blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human
mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are
clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all
the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any
rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of
beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm--nearly all men
agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else--and in
its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world,
that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man
capable of a good loud laugh--seem how he may in other things--can
hardly be a heartless scamp."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale
pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it
were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstro