nt, "There he shambles off on his one lone
leg, emblematic of his one-sided view of humanity."

"But trust your painted decoy," retorted the other from a distance,
pointing back to the black cripple, "and I have my revenge."

"But we aint agoing to trust him!" shouted back a voice.

"So much the better," he jeered back. "Look you," he added, coming to a
dead halt where he was; "look you, I have been called a Canada thistle.
Very good. And a seedy one: still better. And the seedy Canada thistle
has been pretty well shaken among ye: best of all. Dare say some seed
has been shaken out; and won't it spring though? And when it does
spring, do you cut down the young thistles, and won't they spring the
more? It's encouraging and coaxing 'em. Now, when with my thistles your
farms shall be well stocked, why then--you may abandon 'em!"

"What does all that mean, now?" asked the country merchant, staring.

"Nothing; the foiled wolf's parting howl," said the Methodist. "Spleen,
much spleen, which is the rickety child of his evil heart of unbelief:
it has made him mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh,
friends," raising his arms as in the pulpit, "oh beloved, how are we
admonished by the melancholy spectacle of this raver. Let us profit by
the lesson; and is it not this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence,
there be aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting
his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses full of tragic mopers, and
seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness
muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped
over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and
starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot at him."

"What an example," whispered one.

"Might deter Timon," was the response.

"Oh, oh, good ge'mmen, have you no confidence in dis poor ole darkie?"
now wailed the returning negro, who, during the late scene, had stumped
apart in alarm.

"Confidence in you?" echoed he who had whispered, with abruptly changed
air turning short round; "that remains to be seen."

"I tell you what it is, Ebony," in similarly changed tones said he who
had responded to the whisperer, "yonder churl," pointing toward the
wooden leg in the distance, "is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough, and
I would not wish to be like him; but that is no reason why you may not
be some sort of black Jeremy Diddler."

"No confidence in di