Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/112

 into whom Nature hath so crowded humors, that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war, because his own forte is nothing but giving and taking knocks, and his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug, their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man.