that up," gratefully glancing towards
it.

"But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to say, in so many
words, that you have no confidence? For instance, now," flinging aside
his neck-cloth, throwing back his blouse, and reseating himself on the
tonsorial throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber mechanically
filled a cup with hot water from a copper vessel over a spirit-lamp,
"for instance, now, suppose I say to you, 'Barber, my dear barber,
unhappily I have no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
depend upon your money to-morrow'--suppose I should say that now, you
would put trust in me, wouldn't you? You would have confidence?"

"Seeing that it is you, sir," with complaisance replied the barber, now
mixing the lather, "seeing that it is _you_ sir, I won't answer that
question. No need to."

"Of course, of course--in that view. But, as a supposition--you would
have confidence in me, wouldn't you?"

"Why--yes, yes."

"Then why that sign?"

"Ah, sir, all people ain't like you," was the smooth reply, at the same
time, as if smoothly to close the debate, beginning smoothly to apply
the lather, which operation, however, was, by a motion, protested
against by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which was
done in these words:

"All people ain't like me. Then I must be either better or worse than
most people. Worse, you could not mean; no, barber, you could not mean
that; hardly that. It remains, then, that you think me better than most
people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe; though, from vanity, I
confess, I could never yet, by my best wrestlings, entirely free myself;
nor, indeed, to be frank, am I at bottom over anxious to--this same
vanity, barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
pleasingly preposterous a passion."

"Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk very well. But the
lather is getting a little cold, sir."

"Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why that cold sign? Ah,
I don't wonder you try to shirk the confession. You feel in your soul
how ungenerous a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
your eyes--which somehow speak to me of the mother that must have so
often looked into them before me--I dare say, though you may not think
it, that the spirit of that notification is not one with your nature.
For look now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing in an
abstract light; in short, supposing a case,