How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Don't, don't leave me, friend; bear with me; age can't help some distrust; it can't, friend, it can't. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and miserable. I ought to have a guardian. Tell me, if——"
"If? No more!"
"Stay! how soon—ugh, ugh!—would my money be trebled? How soon, friend?"
"You won't confide. Good-bye!"
"Stay, stay," falling back now like an infant, "I confide, I confide; help, friend, my distrust!"
From an old buckskin pouch, tremulously dragged forth, ten hoarded eagles, tarnished into the appearance of ten old horn-buttons, were taken, and half-eagerly, half-reluctantly, offered.
"I know not whether I should accept this slack confidence," said the other coldly, receiving the gold, "but an eleventh-hour confidence, a sick-bed confidence, a distempered, death-bed confidence, after all. Give me the healthy confidence of healthy men, with their healthy wits about them. But let that pass. All right. Good-bye!" (15, 44-50)
Tassel changes his tune again. Now he's demanding confidence from his victims—er, clients. He pretty much gets the miser to beg him to him to sell him stock by shaming him about having a lack of confidence. It's icky. Impressive, but icky.
Quote #5
"You told me to have confidence, said that confidence was indispensable, and here you preach to me distrust. Ah, truth will out!"
"I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant confidence in the genuine medicine, and the genuine me."
"But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be yours, it seems I cannot have unquestioning confidence."
"Prove all the vials; trust those which are true."
"But to doubt, to suspect, to prove—to have all this wearing work to be doing continually—how opposed to confidence. It is evil!"
"From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to confidence. How has it proved in our interview? But your voice is husky; I have let you talk too much. You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay—when I hear that health is yours, I will not, like some I know, vainly make boasts; but, giving glory where all glory is due, say, with the devout herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil, when, in the unseen but efficacious presence of Venus, he with simples healed the wound of Aneas:
'This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,
Nor art's effect, but done by power divine.'" (16, 59-65)
The herb-doctor is a smooth operator as well. His tactic with this sick man is to equate confidence in his medicine with faith in God. He messes with the man's head, though, by telling him to beware counterfeit meds. This makes the unwilling patient all worried, and he freaks out. We're not 100% sure if he's calling his new doubt evil or the herb-doctor's insertion of his new doubt evil. It's a toss-up, but here's what we do know: the herb-doctor applies some fancy footwork when he says "from evil comes good." Now, this is some twisty business. He could mean that God makes good things even out of bad situations, but we have no guarantee of that. What we do understand is that the herb-doctor is trying to get a divine pass with an appeal to God's power as the source of his own power.
Quote #6
The growing interest betrayed by the merchant had not relaxed as the other proceeded. After some hesitation, indeed, something more than hesitation, he confessed that, though he had never received any injury of the sort named, yet, about the time in question, he had in fact been taken with a brain fever, losing his mind completely for a considerable interval. He was continuing, when the stranger with much animation exclaimed:
"There now, you see, I was not wholly mistaken. That brain fever accounts for it all."
"Nay; but——"
"Pardon me, Mr. Roberts," respectfully interrupting him, "but time is short, and I have something private and particular to say to you. Allow me." (4, 27-30)
Weeds is pulling some Inception-type nonsense with the country merchant: he basically tries to plant memories into the country merchant's brain by arguing that they've met before. When the country merchant persists in being all "Nah, brah," Weeds tells this story about how you can lose memories with a brain injury—has he had one of those? No? Oh, well, then he must have had brain fever. That must be it. The country merchant barely consents to this theory when Weeds goes whole-hog into his money-asking spiel. This dude moves quickly.