Coldness and distrust had been engendered
in me, I knew, by my bad experiences; they were not natural to me;
and I often thought how much I had lost in life, losing
trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining hard caution.
This state of mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more
about this conversation than I might have troubled myself about a
greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how
readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful
instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of
those he talked with. As, in talking with me, he had easily
started the subject I might be supposed to understand best, and to
be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he guided
himself by the same rule. The company was of a varied character;
but he was not at fault, that I could discover, with any member of
it. He knew just as much of each man's pursuit as made him
agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little as
made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the
theme was broached.
As he talked and talked - but really not too much, for the rest of
us seemed to force it upon him - I became quite angry with myself.
I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it
in detail. I could not say much against any of his features
separately; I could say even less against them when they were put
together. 'Then is it not monstrous,' I asked myself, 'that
because a man happens to part his hair straight up the middle of
his head, I should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest
him?'
(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense.
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