Wherever I go I adopt the country that I happen to be in, lest at a pinch it should have nothing to say to me, not as most men do, by halves, growling like a bear all the time they do it; no, but altogether as a man does a wife, for better, for worse--laws, manners, superstitions, and prejudices. Now, had I followed this excellent custom in the present instance, I ought, in Persia, to have imagined my old man to be a Ghole _instanter_, or, at best, a Siltrim; but somehow forgetting a few thousand years, I could not get his likeness to Diogenes out of my head, and walking up to him, I asked him if he were looking for an honest man, adding, that if he were, I should be happy to help him, for that I wanted one too.
"No," said the old man, "I am looking for sticks."
"Sticks!" echoed I, "you will find none on this side of the valley--you must cross the stream, and amongst those bushes you will find sticks enough."
"But I cannot go out of the moonshine," said the old man.
I now began to smoke him, (as the vulgar have it.) "Ho, ho!" said I, "you are the Man in the Moon, I take it?"
"At your service," said my companion, making me a low bow.
"Well, then," I continued, "I will go and gather you a faggot, and afterwards we will have some chat together, and you shall tell me something about your habitation up there, for I have often wished to know all that is going on in it."
The Man in the Moon seemed very well pleased with the proposal. The sticks were soon gathered, and sitting on the bank together, he set the lantern down beside him whistled to his dog, which was one of those little, black, round-limbed, short-tailed curs, which seem of no earthly use but to bark at our horses' heels, and then entered into conversation without further ceremony. Indeed, ever after, in the many conversations which I have had with him, and which perhaps the malicious may term fits of lunacy, I have had reason to think of him as I did at first--namely, that he was a very shrewd, chatty old gentleman, not at all slack in showing any knowledge he possessed, and who, if he had not read much, had at least seen a good deal.
"Sages and philosophers," said the Man in the Moon, "always show the certainty of what they advance by the descrepancy of their opinions. You must have remarked, my dear young friend----"