--It is n't quite fair to run an opposition to the other funny speaker,
Rev. Petroleum V. What 's-his-name,--spoke up an anonymous boarder.
--You may have been thinking, perhaps, that it was I,--I, the Poet, who
was the chief talker in the one-sided dialogue to which you have been
listening. If so, you were mistaken. It was the old man in the
spectacles with large round glasses and the iron-gray hair. He does a
good deal of the talking at our table, and, to tell the truth, I rather
like to hear him. He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various
ways, and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can
rub against, and so get up and let off a superficial intellectual
irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you
remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides
against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so
particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown
and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs). I think they
begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en
mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use
your friend's prejudices. This is a sturdy-looking personage of a good
deal more than middle age, his face marked with strong manly furrows,
records of hard thinking and square stand-up fights with life and all its
devils.
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