Chapter 23

by Herman Melville

　　IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASEOF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS ARETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling upits unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his handat the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don SaturninusTyphus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and threeundertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling withfire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certainpassengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning overthe rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubiousmedium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles hiscynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on thisvillainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroformtreacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. Towhat vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders themystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives withCrossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in themorning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but erebed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wakeup wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, andfor all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left inthe lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equallylittle as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge,experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, butunbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, itsgenial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his tooindulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonishedby which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercoursehenceforth.He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as hefancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such afool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptionalcase, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race.He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less theoperator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than thelucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? Andyet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision theperson of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli,that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deemshim--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he makeout a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enoughdoctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration ofcherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couplesthe slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister castin his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted bythe oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; theinsinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunkybeast that windeth his way on his belly.From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on theshoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of whichcame a voice, sweet as a seraph's:"A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."