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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 187
would stare, and cry out, and hate him. He was the last man who
was aware of the Woolcomb flirtation, when hundreds of people, I
daresay, were simpering over it.
" Who is that little man who comes to your house, and whom
I sometimes see in the Park, aunt—that little man with the very
white gloves and the very tawny complexion ?" asks Philip.
"That is Mr. Woolcomb, of the Life Guards Green," aunt
remembers.
"An officer is he?" says Philip, turning round to the girls.
" I should have thought he would have done better for the turban
and cymbals." And he laughs and thinks he has said a very clever
thing. Oh, those good things about people and against people!
Never, my dear young friend, say them to anybody—not to a
stranger, for he will go away and tell ; not to the mistress of your
affections, for you may quarrel with her, and then she will tell ; not
to your son, for the artless child will return to his schoolfellows and
say: "Papa says Mr. Blenkinsop is a muff." My child, or what
not, praise everybody: smile on everybody: and everybody will
smile on you in return, a sham smile, and hold you out a sham
hand ; and, in a word, esteem you as you deserve. No. I think you
and I will take the ups and the downs, the roughs and the smooths
of this daily existence and conversation. We will praise those
whom we like, though nobody repeat our kind sayings ; and say our
say about those whom we dislike, though we are pretty sure our
words will be carried by tale-bearers, and increased and multiplied,
and remembered long after we have forgotten them. We drop a
little stone—a little stone that is swallowed up and disappears, but
the whole pond is set in commotion, and ripples in continually
widening circles long after the original little stone has popped down
and is out of sight. Don't your speeches of ten years ago—maimed,
distorted, bloated it may be out of all recognition—come strangely
back to their author ?
Phil, five minutes after he had made the joke, so entirely forgot
his saying about the Black Prince and the cymbals, that, when
Captain Woolcomb scowled at him with his fiercest eyes, young
Firmin thought that this was the natural expression of the Captain's
swarthy countenance, and gave himself no further trouble regarding
it. " By George ! sir," said Phil afterwards, speaking of this
officer, " I remarked that he grinned, and chattered, and showed his
teeth; and remembering it was the nature of such baboons to
chatter and grin, had no idea that this chimpanzee was more angry
with me than with any other gentleman. You see, Pen, I am a
white-skinned man ; I am pronounced even red-whiskered by the
ill-natured. It is not the prettiest colour. But I had no idea that