Quote 1
"For, comparatively inexperienced as you are, my dear young friend, did you never observe how little, very little, confidence, there is? I mean between man and man—more particularly between stranger and stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence! I have sometimes almost thought that confidence is fled; that confidence is the New Astrea—emigrated—vanished—gone." Then softly sliding nearer, with the softest air, quivering down and looking up, "could you now, my dear young sir, under such circumstances, by way of experiment, simply have confidence in me?" (5, 17)
Weeds, our resident "unfortunate man," is punch-drunk on how much he loves people, and he's really stressed about the fact that so few humans trust one another in this world. Here, he's giving the scholar an earful about how important it is that not only friends but perfect strangers too put faith in one another.
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.
"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in understanding human nature—as if truth was ever got at by libel." (5, 15)
Weeds has his own axe to grind when he picks up Tacitus, but we're more interested in the accidental philosophizing he gets into regarding what a classical education is. For him, it's the study of human nature—as opposed to, say, the study of natural science or engineering or something like that.