Pray, barber," innocently looking up, "which think you is the superior
creature?"

"All this sort of talk," cried the barber, still unmollified, "is, as I
told you once before, not in my line. In a few minutes I shall shut up
this shop. Will you be shaved?"

"Shave away, barber. What hinders?" turning up his face like a flower.

The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at length it became
necessary to prepare to relather a little--affording an opportunity for
resuming the subject, which, on one side, was not let slip.

"Barber," with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling his way, "barber,
now have a little patience with me; do; trust me, I wish not to offend.
I have been thinking over that supposed case of the man with the averted
face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that, by your opposite
replies to my questions at the time, you showed yourself much of a piece
with a good many other men--that is, you have confidence, and then
again, you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you think it sensible
standing for a sensible man, one foot on confidence and the other on
suspicion? Don't you think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
think consistency requires that you should either say 'I have confidence
in all men,' and take down your notification; or else say, 'I suspect
all men,' and keep it up."

This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting the case, did not
fail to impress the barber, and proportionately conciliate him.
Likewise, from its pointedness, it served to make him thoughtful; for,
instead of going to the copper vessel for more water, as he had
purposed, he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
hand, said: "Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice. I don't say, and
can't say, and wouldn't say, that I suspect all men; but I _do_ say that
strangers are not to be trusted, and so," pointing up to the sign, "no
trust."

"But look, now, I beg, barber," rejoined the other deprecatingly, not
presuming too much upon the barber's changed temper; "look, now; to say
that strangers are not to be trusted, does not that imply something like
saying that mankind is not to be trusted; for the mass of mankind, are
they not necessarily strangers to each individual man? Come, come, my
friend," winningly, "you are no Timon to hold the mass of mankind
untrustworthy. Take down your notification; it is misanthropical; much
the same sign that Timon traced with charcoal on th