Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/137

 of entering the brain of one in his senses; namely, of hunting after a real friend. "This, sir," says Varnish, "he ridiculed with more pleasantry than I can remember; and, in the end, said you were as silly as a little child, who cries for the moon." However difficult it was to raise David's resentment, yet he found an indignation within him at having his favourite scheme made a jest of: for his man of goodness and virtue was, to him, what Dulcinea was to Don Quixote; and to hear it was thought impossible for any such thing to be found, had an equal effect on him as what Sancho had on the knight, when he told him, his great princess was winnowing of wheat and sifting corn. He cried out, "Is there a man on earth who finds so much badness in his own bosom, as to convince him (for from thence he must be convinced) that there is no such thing in the world as goodness? But I should wonder at nothing in a man who professes himself a lover of revenge, and of an inexorable temper." Varnish smiled, and said, if he would please to hear him, he would tell him Spatter's character, which, by what he had said, he found he was wholly mistaken in; for it was so odd a one, that nobody could find it out, unless they had conversed with him a great while; that, for his part, he should never have known it, had he not been told it by a man who had been a long time intimate with him, and who knew the history of his whole life. David said he would be all attention. Then Mr. Varnish went on as follows—

"You are to know, sir, Mr. Spatter's ill-nature dwells nowhere but in his tongue; and the very people whom he so industriously endeavours to abuse, he would do anything in his power to serve. I have known instances of his doing the best-natured actions in the world, and at the same time abusing the very person he was serving. He deals out the