of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of
professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil
law.

By-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the
good merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of
the Ode which he holds: "Sir, I don't like the looks of those two, do
you?"

"Hardly," was the whispered reply; "those colored cravats are not in the
best taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all."

"You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't refer to dress, but
countenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further
than reading about them in the papers--but those two are--are sharpers,
aint they?"

"Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit, my dear sir."

"Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given that way: but
certainly, to say the least, these two youths can hardly be adepts,
while the opposed couple may be even more."

"You would not hint that the colored cravats would be so bungling as to
lose, and the dark cravats so dextrous as to cheat?--Sour imaginations,
my dear sir. Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the Ode you
have there. Years and experience, I trust, have not sophisticated you. A
fresh and liberal construction would teach us to regard those four
players--indeed, this whole cabin-full of players--as playing at games
in which every player plays fair, and not a player but shall win."

"Now, you hardly mean that; because games in which all may win, such
games remain as yet in this world uninvented, I think."

"Come, come," luxuriously laying himself back, and casting a free glance
upon the players, "fares all paid; digestion sound; care, toil, penury,
grief, unknown; lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not
be cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick holes in the
blessed fate of the world?"

Upon this, the good merchant, after staring long and hard, and then
rubbing his forehead, fell into meditation, at first uneasy, but at last
composed, and in the end, once more addressed his companion: "Well, I
see it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and then. Somehow,
I don't know why, a certain misty suspiciousness seems inseparable from
most of one's private notions about some men and some things; but once
out with these misty notions, and their mere contact with other men's
soon dissipates, or, at least, modifies them."

"You th