ne with those of the first, and
vigorously agitating those of the two hands,--a gesture which acts like
a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed,
and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the
words uttered by the Salesman. It must have been noticed that he very
rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep
emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is the
boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet, like most
human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of
being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical briskness of
movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his
calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of
sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate spasms; as
thus:

"Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards."

Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen
somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry
over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms;
out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up,
brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again,
like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man's having
some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need
not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out of
him.

But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow
that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner life.
I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly
commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by
telling the story of his hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically
than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him. I
will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, by saying how he has told it.

--We had been talking over the subjects touched upon in the Lady's
letter.

--I suppose one man in a dozen--said the Master--ought to be born a
skeptic. That was the proportion among the Apostles, at any rate.

--So there was one Judas among them,--I remarked.

--Well,--said the Master,--they 've been whitewashing Judas of late. But
never mind him. I did not say there w