Oh, Thomas, fellow man, brother! We have rubbed elbows for months and I
do not know whether you are a man or only a lackey; whether you drink
all night, or pray; whether you love me or hate me. How can you hold the
cigar box so impassively, so single-mindedly?
I said to myself that I would make amends to Thomas, that it was never
too late. And, quietly, genially, I asked him, "How do you like your
place here, Thomas?" Thomas grew uneasy, and smiled in a sickish
fashion, and entreated me with his eyes to pick my cigar and let him go.
But I was in the full swing of new-found righteousness. "There's nothing
wrong, is there, Thomas?" And he replied, "I beg pardon, sir; but
Henry's my name. Thomas was my predecessor. He left, you will remember,
sir, a year ago last May." "But everybody calls you Thomas." "The
gentlemen were used to the other name, sir."
Might Professor Wilson Stubbs be wrong, after all, I thought. Perhaps no
one is really expected to know what everybody ought to know. I don't
know the name of my Congressman. But neither do I know the name of my
butcher and my grocer; and my butcher and my grocer can slay me with
typhoid or ptomaines, whereas the utmost my Congressman can do is to
misrepresent me.
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