Part 27 (1/2)
”Your style of reasoning is rather wild, to say the least of it,”
answered Ned, as he rubbed down his colours on the bottom of a broken plate. ”In the first place, you a.s.sume that I propose to spend _all_ my life in rambling; and, in the second place, you found your argument on the absurd supposition that everybody else must find their sole enjoyment in the same occupation.”
”How I wish,” sighed Tom Collins, smoking languidly, ”that there was no such thing as reasoning. You would be a much more agreeable fellow, Ned, if you didn't argue.”
”It takes two to make an argument,” remarked Ned. ”Well, but couldn't you _converse_ without arguing?”
”Certainly, if you would never contradict what I say, nor make an incorrect statement, nor draw a wrong conclusion, nor object to being contradicted when I think you are in the wrong.”
Tom sighed deeply, and drew comfort from his cigar. In a few minutes he resumed,--”Well, but what do you mean by enjoying life?”
Ned Sinton pondered the question a few seconds, and then replied--
”I mean this:--the way to enjoy life is to do all the good you can, by working just enough to support yourself and your family, if you have one; to a.s.sist in spreading the gospel, and to enable you to help a friend in need; and to alleviate the condition of the poor, the sick, and the dest.i.tute. To work for more than this is to be greedy; to work for less is to be reprehensibly lazy. This amount of work being done, men ought to mingle with their fellow-creatures, and wander abroad as much as may be among the beautiful works of their Creator.”
”A very pretty theory, doubtless,” replied Tom; ”but, pray, in what manner will your proposed ramble advance the interests of religion, or enable you to do the extra ordinary amount of good you speak of?”
”There you go again, Tom; you ask me the abstract question, `What do you mean by enjoying life?' and when I reply, you object to the answer as not being applicable to the present case. Of course, it is not. I did not intend it to be. The good I mean to do in my present ramble is chiefly, if not solely, to my own body and mind--”
”Stop, my dear fellow,” interrupted Tom, ”don't become energetic! I accept your answer to the general question; but how many people, think you, can afford to put your theory in practice?”
”Very, very few,” replied Ned, earnestly; ”but that does not affect the truth of my theory. Men _will_ toil night and day to acc.u.mulate gold, until their bodies and souls are incapable of enjoying the good things which gold can purchase, and they are infatuated enough to plume themselves on this account, as being diligent men of business; while others, alas! are compelled thus to toil in order to procure the bare necessaries of life; but these melancholy facts do not prove the principle of `grind-and-toil' to be a right one; much less do they const.i.tute a reason for my refusing to enjoy life in the right way when I have the power.”
Tom made no reply, but the vigorous puffs from his cigar seemed to indicate that he pondered these things deeply. A few minutes afterwards, Ned's expected sitter entered. He was a tall burly Irishman, with a red-flannel s.h.i.+rt, open at the neck, a pair of huge long boots, and a wide-awake.
”The top o' the mornin' to yees,” said the man, pulling off his hat as he entered.
”Good-morning, friend,” said Ned, as Tom Collins rose, shouldered his pick and shovel, and left the hut. ”You are punctual, and deserve credit for so good a quality. Pray, sit down.”
”Faix, then, I don't know what a `quality' is, but av it's a good thing I've no objection,” replied the man, taking a seat on the edge of the bed which Tom had just vacated. ”I wos wantin' to ax ye, sir, av ye could put in me pick and shovel in the lan'scape.”
”In the landscape, Pat!” exclaimed Ned, addressing his visitor by the generic name of the species; ”I thought you wanted a portrait.”
”Troth, then, I don't know which it is ye call it; but I wants a pictur'
o' meself all over, from the top o' me hat to the sole o' me boots.
Isn't that a lan'scape?”
”No, it's a portrait.”
”Then it's a porthraite I wants; an' if ye'll put in the pick and shovel, I'll give ye two dollars a pace for them.”
”I'll put them in, Pat, for nothing,” replied Ned, smiling, as he commenced his sketch. ”I suppose you intend to send this to some fair one in old Ireland?”
Pat did not reply at once. ”Sure,” said he, slowly, ”I niver thought of her in that way before, but maybe she was fair wance, though she's been a'most as black as bog-oak for half-a-cintury. It's for me grandmother I want it.”
”Your grandmother! that's curious, now; the last man I painted meant to send the likeness to his mother.”
”Not so cur'ous neither,” replied the man, with some feeling; ”it's my opinion, the further a man goes from the owld country, and the rougher he becomes wi' sc.r.a.pin' up and down through the world, the more tinder his heart gits when he thinks o' his mother. Me own mother died whin I wos a bit spalpeen, an' I lived wi' me grandmother, bliss her heart, ever since,--at laste till I took to wanderin', which was tin years past.”
”So long! Pat, you must have wandered far in that time. Have you ever been away far into the interior of this country, among the mountains, in the course of your wanderings!”
”Among the mountains, is it? Indeed I have, just; an' a most tree-mendous beautiful sight it is. Wos ye goin' there?”