While my wife and I await our second shot, after which we will feel free to, you know, do things, and as I wait out the weather, which has pretty much put an end to daily biking, I’ve been doing more reading than usual. Among the books I’m currently reading is Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man. It’s not on the Moby Dick level, but it’s still reasonably amusing.
It’s the story, humorously told, of a grifter who boards a Mississippi Riverboat and plies his trade, trading personas and grifts as he passes various stops on the trip.
At one point he is peddling snake oil to the rubes, and comes upon a backwoodsman who won’t buy into his con. During the course of their back and forth the backwoodsman asks the grifter if he’s an abolitionist.
And here’s where we come to the part that’s relevant to today. Here’s the grifter’s reply:
“As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody’s interest, and therefore, rousing nobody’s enmity, would willingly abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say.”
To which the backwoodsman replies:
“Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for wrong, but are useless for right.”
As the title of this post says, some things never change.
I am sorry to say that after this scene, the grifter “disembarks” in one guise and reboards in another, and manages to work a new grift on the backwoodsman. Let us hope that the grifter down in Florida is not able to pull off that trick.
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