A Knight of the Nineteenth Century

"Are you in earnest in all this strange talk?"

"Yes, I am; I hate myself."

"Why?"

"Because I know all about myself. A-a-h!"

"How many poor, hungry people have you fed since the year opened?"

"Your question shows me jest what I am. I could tell you within three or four. I found myself a-countin' of 'em up and a-gloryin' in it all the tother night, takin' credit to myself for givin' away a few victuals after I had had plenty myself. Think of a man gittin' self-righteous over givin' to some poor fellow-critters what he couldn't eat himself! If that ain't meanness, what is it? A-a-h!"

"But you haven't told me how many you have fed."

"No, and I ain't a-goin' to--jest to spite myself. I want to tell you, and to take credit for it, but I'll head myself off this time."

"But you could eat these things which you are serving to me--if not to-day, why, then to-morrow."

"To-morrow's income will provide for to-morrow. The Lord shows he's down on this savin' and hoardin' up of things, for he makes 'em get musty right away; and if anything spiles on my hands I'm mad enough to bite myself in two."

"But if you treat all stragglers as you do me, you do not give away odds and ends and what's left over. This coffee is fine old Java, and a more delicate ham I never tasted."

"Now you hit me twice. I will have the best for myself, instead of practicin' self-denial and economy. Then I'm always wantin' to get some second-hand victuals to give away, but I daresn't. You see I read the Bible sometimes, and it's the most awfully oncomfortable book that ever was written. You know what the Lord says in it--or you ought to--about what we do for the least of these his brethren; that means such as you, only you're a sort of black sheep in the family; and if words have any sense at all, the Lord takes my givin' you a dinner the same as if I gave it to him. Now s'pose the Lord came to my house, as he did to Mary and Martha's, and I should git him up a slimpsy dinner of second-hand victuals, and stand by a-chucklin' that I had saved twenty-five cents on it, wouldn't that be meanness itself? Some time ago I had a ham that I couldn't and wouldn't eat, and they wouldn't take it back at the store, so I got some of the Lord's poor brethren to come to dinner, and I palmed it off on them. But I had to cuss myself the whole evenin' to pay up for it! A-a-h!"