{"id":"01KG8AK9XTCC2D0HJ7V9V04YT4","cid":"bafkreie3vbjojmx4do4naifd7vxqesamr64jrcmd4snzpzkisuyu43p4mq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2588,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":2510,"text":"\"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling.\"\r\n\r\n\"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as\r\nwater-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial\r\nhand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you\r\nplease; just enough to make it interesting.\"\r\n\r\n\"Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards.\"\r\n\r\n\"What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad\r\nPhilomel here:--\r\n\r\n    'Alas for man, he hath small sense\r\n    Of genial trust and confidence.'\r\n\r\nGood-bye!\"\r\n\r\nSauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at\r\nlength seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a\r\npartly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon,\r\nlike his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming\r\nnot a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a\r\nparty at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a\r\nred cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome,\r\nself-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of\r\nprofessional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in the civil\r\nlaw.\r\n\r\nBy-and-by, after a preliminary scanning of the new comer next him the\r\ngood merchant, sideways leaning over, whispers behind a crumpled copy of\r\nthe Ode which he holds: \"Sir, I don't like the looks of those two, do\r\nyou?\"\r\n\r\n\"Hardly,\" was the whispered reply; \"those colored cravats are not in the\r\nbest taste, at least not to mine; but my taste is no rule for all.\"\r\n\r\n\"You mistake; I mean the other two, and I don't refer to dress, but\r\ncountenance. I confess I am not familiar with such gentry any further\r\nthan reading about them in the papers--but those two are--are sharpers,\r\naint they?\"\r\n\r\n\"Far be from us the captious and fault-finding spirit, my dear sir.\"\r\n\r\n\"Indeed, sir, I would not find fault; I am little given that way: but\r\ncertainly, to say the least, these two youths can hardly be adepts,\r\nwhile the opposed couple may be even more.\"\r\n\r\n\"You would not hint that the colored cravats would be so bungling as to\r\nlose, and the dark cravats so dextrous as to cheat?--Sour imaginations,\r\nmy dear sir. Dismiss them. To little purpose have you read the Ode you\r\nhave there. Years and experience, I trust, have not sophisticated you. A\r\nfresh and liberal construction would teach us to regard those four\r\nplayers--indeed, this whole cabin-full of players--as playing at games\r\nin which every player plays fair, and not a player but shall win.\"\r\n\r\n\"Now, you hardly mean that; because games in which all may win, such\r\ngames remain as yet in this world uninvented, I think.\"\r\n\r\n\"Come, come,\" luxuriously laying himself back, and casting a free glance\r\nupon the players, \"fares all paid; digestion sound; care, toil, penury,\r\ngrief, unknown; lounging on this sofa, with waistband relaxed, why not\r\nbe cheerfully resigned to one's fate, nor peevishly pick holes in the\r\nblessed fate of the world?\"\r\n\r\nUpon this, the good merchant, after staring long and hard, and then\r\nrubbing his forehead, fell into meditation, at first uneasy, but at last\r\ncomposed, and in the end, once more addressed his companion: \"Well, I\r\nsee it's good to out with one's private thoughts now and then. Somehow,\r\nI don't know why, a certain misty suspiciousness seems inseparable from\r\nmost of one's private notions about some men and some things; but once\r\nout with these misty notions, and their mere contact with other men's\r\nsoon dissipates, or, at least, modifies them.\"\r\n\r\n\"You think I have done you good, then? may be, I have. But don't\r\nthank me, don't thank me. If by words, casually delivered in the\r\nsocial hour, I do any good to right or left, it is but involuntary\r\ninfluence--locust-tree sweetening the herbage under it; no merit at\r\nall; mere wholesome accident, of a wholesome nature.--Don't you see?\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJKFAGCCN46BE5MZN38SY","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9XTWZHE3RQ8FQ52MF4G","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9Y581DSNXYDV4GGGMDW","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:59.930Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:07.596Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}