woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while
he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this unequal
division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to
battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in
the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life
with humorous or grave intention, and all the while, never hurrying,
nor flagging, nor taking an unfair advantage of the facts. Jack at a
given moment, when arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more
radiantly just to those from whom he differs; but then the tenor of
his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athelred, slower to forge
excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and sits over the welter of the
world, vacillating but still judicial, and still faithfully contending
with his doubts.

Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct and religion
studied in the "dry light"[21] of prose. Indirectly and as if against
his will the same elements from time to time appear in the troubled
and poetic talk of Opalstein.[22] His various and exotic knowledge,
complete although unready sympathies, and fine, full, discriminative
flow of language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps he
is with some, not _quite_ with me--_proxime accessit_,[23] I should
say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and
jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the
light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue like singing; no one
is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings
the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the
Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian
humours. His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for its
perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a double
orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance, one pealing
Beethoven[24] in the distance. He is not truly reconciled either with
life or with himself; and this instant war in his members sometimes
divides the man's attention. He does not always, perhaps not often,
frankly surrender himself in conversation. He brings into the talk
other thoughts than those which he expresses; you are conscious that
he keeps an eye on something else, that he does not shake off the
world, nor quite forget himself. Hence arise occasional
disappointments; even an occasional unfairness for his companions, who
find themselves