--I laughed at that. I have just such a fellow always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of the “ape-like human being” born with him rather than civilized instincts. One does not have to be a king to know what it is to keep a king's jester.
--I mentioned my book,--the Master said, because I have something in it on the subject we were talking about. I should like to read you a passage here and there out of it, where I have expressed myself a little more freely on some of those matters we handle in conversation. If you don't quarrel with it, I must give you a copy of the book. It's a rather serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it. It has made my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one may use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided doses, as my friends the doctors say.
-Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,--I said, laughing at my own expense. I don't doubt the medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves, and probably a great deal better,--I added, reinforcing my feeble compliment.
[When you pay a compliment to an author, don't qualify it in the next sentence so as to take all the goodness out of it. Now I am thinking of it, I will give you one or two pieces of advice. Be careful to assure yourself that the person you are talking with wrote the article or book you praise. It is not very pleasant to be told, “Well, there, now! I always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as this last piece,” and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last piece is n't yours, but t' other man's. Take care that the phrase or sentence you commend is not one that is in quotation-marks. “The best thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not remember meeting before; it struck me as very true and well expressed:
“'An honest man's the noblest work of God.'
“But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be found in a writer of the last century, and not original with me.” One ought not to have undeceived her, perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear to be credited with what is not his own. The lady blushes, of course, and says she has not read much ancient literature, or some such thing. The pearl upon the Ethiop's arm is very pretty in verse, but one does not care to furnish the dark background for other persons' jewelry.]