My friend, whose seat is still warm,
has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here.
Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, if you choose
to hint aught further unfavorable to the man, the genial warmth of whose
person in part passes into yours, and whose genial hospitality meanders
through you--be it so."

"Quite beautiful conceits," said the stranger, now scholastically and
artistically eying the picturesque speaker, as if he were a statue in
the Pitti Palace; "very beautiful:" then with the gravest interest,
"yours, sir, if I mistake not, must be a beautiful soul--one full of all
love and truth; for where beauty is, there must those be."

"A pleasing belief," rejoined the cosmopolitan, beginning with an even
air, "and to confess, long ago it pleased me. Yes, with you and
Schiller, I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible
with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the
latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose
lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft
in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"

As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit--as
some earnest descriptive speakers will--as unconsciously to wreathe his
form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature
described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise,
apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and
presently said:

"When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to
change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to
glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole
beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish
never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and
conscience, and revel for a while in the carefree, joyous life of a
perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"

"Such a wish," replied the other, not perceptibly disturbed, "I must
confess, never consciously was mine. Such a wish, indeed, could hardly
occur to ordinary imaginations, and mine I cannot think much above the
average."

"But now that the idea is suggested," said the stranger, with infantile
intellectuality, "does it not raise the desire?"

"Hardly. For though I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice
against the rattle-snake,