Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/327

 their judgments by being suspicious, saw something couched under that apparent simplicity, which they said was hid from the injudicious and unwary eye. I have really seen people, when they have been repeating some saying or talking of a transaction of his, hum—and ha —for half an hour, and put on that look which some people are spiteful enough to call dull; whilst others are so excessively good-natured as to give it the term of serious, only to consider what great mystery was concealed under such his words or actions. "The poor man led a miserable life from being thus reputed to have art. That open generosity of temper, which for my part I thought very apparent in him, was generally esteemed only to be put on in order to cover those cunning views he had continually before his eyes. Thus, because he did not talk like a fool he must act like a villain; which, in my opinion, is the falsest conclusion imaginable; and, as a proof of it, I will let you into the character of a man who was in every respect perfectly opposite to the other. "This person's understanding was but very small; the best things he said were trite, and such as he had picked up from others: he had the reputation in the world of a very silly fellow, but of one who had no harm in him; whereas in reality he spent his whole time in laying plots which way he might do the most mischief. And as things in this world, even of the greatest consequence, sometimes turn on very small hinges, and his capacity was exactly suited to the comprehension and management of trifles, he often succeeded in his pernicious schemes better than a man of sense would have done whose ideas were more enlarged, and his thoughts so much fixed on great affairs that small ones might frequently have escaped his notice. "I look upon the difference between a man who