How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Nay, nay, you have none—none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence. Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"
"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest; "but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I—yes, yes—I may say—that—that——"
"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
"Twenty dollars!"
"There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence."
The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want the twenty dollars?"
"And did I not——" then glancing at her half-mourning, "for the widow and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum, recently founded among the Seminoles."
"And why did you not tell me your object before?" As not a little relieved. "Poor souls—Indians, too—those cruelly-used Indians. Here, here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more." (8, 15-22)
The man in the grey-and-white suit really twists the emotional arm of this young widow's good intentions. All she wants to do is be friendly to this weird stranger who has sat down beside her. Instead, he majorly manipulates her kindness so that she'll pony up some cash. His strategy? He'll deny that she has any confidence in him at all, and then he'll demand she have more faith in him than she's willing to put into a stranger. He tops it all off with a strategic delay in telling her the reason he wants the money. By the time he reveals that he wants it so that he can make a donation, she's already been on a mini emo-rollercoaster. Her relief is that she suddenly doesn't have to worry about trusting him—she's just giving to charity. Right? Right?
Quote #8
"Herbs."
"What herbs? And the nature of them? And the reason for giving them?"
"It cannot be made known."
"Then I will none of you."
Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before him, the herb-doctor was mute a moment, then said:—"I give up."
"How?"
"You are sick, and a philosopher."
"No, no;—not the last."
"But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for giving, is the mark of a philosopher; just as the consequence is the penalty of a fool. A sick philosopher is incurable?"
"Why?"
"Because he has no confidence."
"How does that make him incurable?"
"Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity, would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other." (16, 23-35)
Always pay attention to how a person—especially a person trying to get you to do something—answers your questions. The herb-doctor gets the miser right where he wants him by calling him a philosopher. Being a philosopher is not what the miser wants to be; he fancies himself a practical man and assumes that a practical man is the opposite of a philosopher. (We beg to differ, but whatever.) The herb-doc pulls the old switcheroo on the miser and puts down the all-important questions of "What's in this medicine and why?" by saying that that's what a philosopher would want to know. Healing, apparently, is all about faith and confidence, not knowledge—at least according to the herb-doctor.
Quote #9
"Ah, sir, permit me—when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more than in nature herself."
"Well, really, now—really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those five and thirty boys of mine." (22, 104-105)
Poor Pitch. This lonely misanthrope is really just looking for a friend in the end. The PIO guy throws him off with this biting backhanded compliment. Basically, he says that even though Pitch's mind is as messed up as his clothes, both are just "worn," while his real essence is clearly superior. Uh, thanks, we guess. This comment certainly unsettles Pitch, who chooses to take it as a compliment.