I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow’s which I have put on record.  I do not like to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de Buffon says.  The fact is, the young fellow is a good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes,—­and if it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun much.]

[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I talked a little.]

—­I don’t think I have a genuine hatred for anybody.  I am well aware that I differ herein from the sturdy English moralist and the stout American tragedian.  I don’t deny that I hate the sight of certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them.  It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not waste on noble natures.  One who is born with such congenital incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy.  But as we cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our society,—­we love them, but open the window and let them go.  By the time decent people reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste for such animals; in which case, no matter what their position may be, there is something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to that of their wretched parasites.

—­The divinity-student wished to know what I thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies; did I believe in love at first sight?

Sir,—­said I,—­all men love all women.  That is the prima-facie aspect of the case.  The Court of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so; and the individual man is bound to show cause why he does not love any particular woman.  A man, says one of my old black-letter law-books, may show divers good reasons, as thus:  He hath not seen the person named in the indictment; she is of tender age, or the reverse of that; she hath certain personal disqualifications,—­as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of loving being limited, his affections are engrossed by a previous comer; and so of other conditions.  Not the less is it true that he is bound by duty and inclined by nature to love each and every woman.  Therefore it is that each woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her.  This is not by written document, or direct speech, for the most part, but