The human analyst, jotting down in his note-book the motives of men, is often strangely misled. The master of a great financial house, working day and night in an office, is not trading away his life for a system of railroads. Bless you! sir, he would not give a day of those precious hours for all the steel rails in the world. Nor is my lady spending her life like water to reach the vantage-point where she may entertain Sir Henry. That tall, keen-eyed woman with the brains crowded in her head does not care a snap of her finger if the thing called Sir Henry be flying to the devil.
Look you a little further in, good analyst. It is the passion of the chess-player. Each of these is up to the shoulders in the grandest game you ever dreamed of. Other skilful men and other quick-witted women are there across the table with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works, there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus it comes about that when one pulls his life or his string of playthings out of a hole he does not seem to have made a gain by it. I learned this on the north bank of the Valley River, listening to Ump's growls as he ran his hands over the Bay Eagle, and the replies of Jud lying by the Cardinal in the sun.
Gratitude toward the man helper is about as rare as the splinters of the true cross. When one owes the debt to Providence, one depends always upon the statute of limitations to bar it. Here sat these grateful gentlemen, lately returned by a sort of miracle to the carpet of the green sod, swapping gibes like a couple of pirates.
"Old Nick was grabbin' for us this time," said Jud, "an' he mighty nigh got us."
"I reckon," answered Ump, "a feller ought to git down on his marrow-bones."
"I wouldn't try it," said Jud. "You might cork yourself."
"It was like the Red Sea," said I; "all the cattle piled up in there, and going round and round."
"Just like the good book tells about it," added Ump; "only we was them Egyptians, a-flounderin' an' a-spittin' water."
"Boys," said Jud, "that Pharaoh-king ought to a been bored for the holler horn. I've thought of it often."