One Of Them

“No, sir; not a physician, at least.”

“That’s a pity,” said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off his cigar. “Help yourself, stranger; that’s claret, t’other’s the country wine, and this is cognac, – all three bad o’ their kind; but, as they say here to everything, ‘Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!’”

“It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir,” said Ogden, somewhat pompously, “that I am forced to recall you to my first question.”

“Come si fa!” repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in committing to memory.

“Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I ask?”

“I ain’t in a witness-box, stranger. I ‘m a-sittin’ at my own fireside. I ‘m a-smokin’ my Virginian, where I ‘ve a right to, and if you choose to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we ‘ll talk it over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you ‘ve caught the wrong squirrel by the tail, Britisher, you have!”

“I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt resided here?”

“And so you ain’t a doctor?” said Quackinboss, pensively.

“No, sir; I have already told you as much.”

“Bred to the law, belike?”

“I have studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer.”

“Well, now, I expected you was!” said Quackinboss, with an air of self-satisfaction. “You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other class in all creation; as Flay Harris says: ‘A lawyer is a fellow won’t drink out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for himself.’ You ain’t long in these parts?”

“No, sir; a very short time, indeed,” said Ogden, drearily.

“You needn’t sigh about it, stranger, though it is main dull in these diggin’s! Here’s a people that don’t understand human natur’. What I mean, sir, is, human natur’ means goin’ ahead; doin’ a somewhat your father and your grandfather never so much as dreamt of. But what are these critturs about? Jest showin’ the great things that was done centuries before they was born, – what pictures and statues and monuments their own ancestors could make, and of which they are jest showmen, nothing more!”

“The Arts are Italy’s noblest inheritance,” said Ogden, sententionsly.

“That ain’t my platform, stranger. Civilization never got anything from painters or sculptors. They never taught mankind to be truthful or patient or self-denyin’ or charitable. You may look at a bronze Hercules till you ‘re black in the face, and it will never make you give a cent to a lame cripple. I ‘ll go further again, stranger, and I ‘ll say that there ain’t anything has thrown so many stumblin’-blocks before pro-gress as what you call the Arts, for there ain’t the equal o’ them to make people idlers. What’s all that loafing about galleries, I ask ye, but the worst of all idling? If you want them sort of emotions, go to the real article, sir. Look at an hospital, that’s more life-like than Gerard Dow and his dropsical woman, – ay, and may touch your heart, belike, before you get away.”

“Though your conversation interests me much, sir, you will pardon my observing that I feel myself an intruder.”

“No, you ain’t; I’m jest in a talkin’ humor, and I’d rather have you than that Italian crittur, as don’t understand me.”

“Even the flattery of your observation, sir, cannot make me forget that another object claims my attention.”

“For I ‘ve remarked,” resumed Quackinboss, as if in continuation of his speech, “that a foreigner that don’t know English wearies after a while in listenin’, even though you ‘re tellin’ him very interesting things.”

“I perceive, sir,” said Ogden, rising, “that I have certainly been mistaken in the address. I was told that at the Palazzo Barsotti – ”

“Well, you ‘re jest there; that’s what they call this ramshackle old crazy consarn. Their palaces, bein’ main like their nobility, would be all the better for a little washin’ and smartenin’ up.”

“You can perhaps, however, inform me where Lord Agincourt does live?”

“Well, he lives, as I may say, a little promiscuous. If he ain’t here. it’s because he’s there! You understand?”

“I cannot say very confidently that I do understand,” said Ogden, slowly.

“It was well as you was n’t a practisin’ lawyer, Britisher, for you ain’t smart! that’s a fact. No, sir; you ain’t smart!”

“Your countrymen’s estimate of that quality has a high standard, sir,” said Ogden, haughtily.

“What do you mean by my countrymen?” asked the other, quickly.

“I ventured to presume that you were an American,” said Ogden, with a supercilious smile.

“Well, stranger, you were main right; though darn me con-siderable if I know how you discovered it. Don’t you be a-goin’, now that we ‘re gettin’ friendly together. Set down a bit. Maybe you ‘d taste a morsel of something.”

“Excuse me, I have just dined.”

“Well, mix a summut in your glass. It’s a rare pleasure to me, stranger, to have a chat with a man as talks like a Christian. I’m tired of ‘Come si fa,’ – that’s a fact, sir.”

“I regret that I cannot profit by your polite invitation,” said Ogden, bowing stiffly. “I had been directed to this house as the residence of Lord Agincourt and his tutor; and as neither of them live here – ”

“Who told you that? There’s one of them a-bed in that room there; he’s caught swamp-fever, and it’s gone up to the head. He’s the tutor, – poor fellow.”

“And the Marquis?”

“The Marquis! he’s a small parcel to have such a big direction on him, ain’t he? He’s at a villa, a few miles off; but he ‘ll be over here to-morrow morning.”

“You are quite sure of that?” asked Ogden.

“Yes, sir,” said Quackinboss, drinking off his glass, and nodding, in token of salutation.

“I must beg you to accept my excuses for this intrusion on my part,” began Ogden.

“Jest set you down there again; there’s a point I ‘d like to be cleared up about I ‘m sure you ‘ll not refuse me. Jest set down.”

Ogden resumed his seat, although with an air and manner of no small disinclination.

“No wine, thank you. Excuse me,” said he, stiffly, as Quackinboss tried to fill his glass.

“You remarked awhile ago,” said Quackinboss, slowly, and like a man weighing all his words, “that I was an American born. Now, sir, it ain’t a very likely thing that any man who was ever raised in the States is goin’ to deny it. It ain’t, I say, very probable as he ‘d say I’m a Chinese, or a Mexican, or a Spaniard; no, nor a Britisher. Whatever we do in this life, stranger, one thing, I suppose, is pretty certain, – we don’t say the worst of ourselves. Ain’t that your platform, sir?”

“I agree to the general principle.”

“Agreein’, then, to the gen’ral principle, here’s where we go next, for I ain’t a-goin’ to let you off, Britisher; I ‘ve got a harpoon in you now, and I ‘ll tow you after me into shoal water; see if I don’t. Agreein’, as we say, to the gen’ral principle, that no man likes to make his face blacker than it need be, what good could it do me to say that I wasn’t born a free citizen of the freest country of the universe?”

“I am really at a loss to see how I am interested in this matter. I have not, besides, that perfect leisure abstract discussion requires. You will forgive me if I take my leave.” He moved hastily towards the door as he spoke, followed by Quackinboss, whose voice had now assumed the full tones and the swelling modulations of public oratory.

“That great land, sanctified by the blood of the pilgrim fathers, and whose proudest boast it is that from the first day, when the star-spangled banner of Freedom dallied with the wind and scorned the sun, waving its barred folds over the heads of routed enemies, – to that glorious consummation, when, from the rugged plains of New England to the golden groves of Florida – ”

“Good-bye, sir, – good-evening,” said Ogden, passing out and gaining the landing-place.

“ – One universal shout, floating over the Atlantic waters, proclaimed to the Old World that the ‘Young’ was alive and kickin’ – ”

“Good-night,” cried Ogden, from the bottom of the stairs; and Quackinboss re-entered his chamber and banged the door after him, muttering something to himself about Lexington and Concord, Columbus and Quincy Adams.