{"id":"01KG8AK9XT0TNQP12NPZZDE6R1","cid":"bafkreigod7aysg4koytpnpmowkcm3p2vqlopwatjmgsumvykrvh5dzs42y","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2331,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":2250,"text":"\"Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have you a copy with you?\"\r\n\r\n\"I tell you again, I do not think that it would be suitable to convert\r\nthis boat into the Company's office.--That unfortunate man, did you\r\nrelieve him at all?\"\r\n\r\n\"Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.--Hand me the statement.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly deny you. Here,\"\r\nhanding a small, printed pamphlet.\r\n\r\nThe youth turned it over sagely.\r\n\r\n\"I hate a suspicious man,\" said the other, observing him; \"but I must\r\nsay I like to see a cautious one.\"\r\n\r\n\"I can gratify you there,\" languidly returning the pamphlet; \"for, as I\r\nsaid before, I am naturally inquisitive; I am also circumspect. No\r\nappearances can deceive me. Your statement,\" he added \"tells a very fine\r\nstory; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy awhile ago? downward\r\ntendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that\r\nstock?\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The\r\n'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the\r\ngrowling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears.\"\r\n\r\n\"How, hypocritical?\"\r\n\r\n\"Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites\r\nby inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of\r\nbright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of\r\ndepression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;\r\nspurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done,\r\nreturn, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the\r\ngains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!\"\r\n\r\n\"You are warm against these bears?\"\r\n\r\n\"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our\r\nstock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of\r\nconfidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in\r\nthemselves, are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence and\r\ngloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks,\r\npolitics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it\r\nmay--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness,\r\nsolely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of\r\ncalamity which the gloomy philosopher parades, is but his\r\nGood-Enough-Morgan.\"\r\n\r\n\"I rather like that,\" knowingly drawled the youth. \"I fancy these gloomy\r\nsouls as little as the next one. Sitting on my sofa after a champagne\r\ndinner, smoking my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me--what\r\na bore!\"\r\n\r\n\"You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?\"\r\n\r\n\"I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are happy enough, and\r\nyou know it; and everybody else is as happy as you, and you know that,\r\ntoo; and we shall all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,\r\ntoo; but no, still you must have your sulk.\"\r\n\r\n\"And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets his sulk? not from\r\nlife; for he's often too much of a recluse, or else too young to have\r\nseen anything of it. No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees\r\non the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to\r\none, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about\r\nstuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it\r\nlooks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way\r\nabove his kind.\"\r\n\r\n\"Just so,\" assented the youth. \"I've lived some, and seen a good many\r\nsuch ravens at second hand. By the way, strange how that man with the\r\nweed, you were inquiring for, seemed to take me for some soft\r\nsentimentalist, only because I kept quiet, and thought, because I had a\r\ncopy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him for his gloom, instead\r\nof his gossip. But I let him talk. And, indeed, by my manner humored\r\nhim.\"\r\n\r\n\"You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate man, you must have made\r\nquite a fool of him.\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJKFNGPW3W6RK0HAKDQYM","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9XTNK0VERVN3Q20KVYK","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9XT37W2H723T37REXF1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:59.930Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:07.417Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}