The Choir Invisible

Another day he examined John's wound tenderly, and then sat down by him with

his beautiful moss-agate eyes emitting dangerous little sparkles.

"It's a bad bite," he said, "the bite of a cat--felis concolor. They are a

bad family--these cats--the scratchers." He was holding John's wounded hand.

"So you've had your fight with a felis. A single encounter ought to be

enough! If some one hadn't happened to step in and save you!--What do you

suppose is the root of the idea universal in the consciousness of our race

that if a man had not been a man he'd have been a lion; and that if a woman

hadn't been a woman she'd have been a tigress? "

"I don't believe there's any such idea universal in the consciousness of the

race," replied John, laughing.

"It's universal in my consciousness," said the parson doggedly, "and my

consciousness is as valid as any other man's. But I'll ask you an easier

question: who of all men, do you suppose, knew most about women?"

"Women or Woman?" inquired John.

"Women," said the parson. "We'll drop the subject of Woman: she's beyond us!

"I don't know," observed John. "St. Paul knew a good deal, and said some

necessary things."

"St. Paul!" exclaimed the parson condescendingly. "He knew a few noble

Jewesses--superficially--with a scattering acquaintance among the pagan

sisters around the shores of the Mediterranean. As for what he wrote on

that subject--it may have been inspired by Heaven: it never could have been

inspired by the sex."

"Shakspeare, I suppose," said John.

"The man in the Arabian Nights," cried the parson, who may have been put in

mind of this character by his own attempts to furnish daily entertainment.

"He knew a thousand of them--intimately. And cut off the heads of nine

hundred and ninety-nine! The only reason he did not cut off the head of the

other was that he had learned enough: he could not endure to know any more.

All the evidence had come in: the case was closed."

"I suppose there are men in the world," he continued, "who would find it

hard to stand a single disappointment about a woman. But think of a thousand

disappointments! A thousand attempts to find a good wife--just one woman who

could furnish a man a little rational companionship at night. Bluebeard also

must have been a well-informed person. And Henry the Eighth--there was a man

who had evidently picked up considerable knowledge and who made considerable

use of it. But to go back a moment to the idea of the felis family. Suppose

we do this: we'll begin to enumerate the qualities of the common house cat.

I'll think of the cat; you think of some woman; and we'll see what we come

to."