vinegar. With our stout little German all trials seemed to be of the
former use, so that he took no ill from those hurts and bruises which
leave other men sore and tender. Indeed, he talked of Mistress White to
me, or even to Wholesome, whom he much embarrassed, in a calm,
half-amused way, as of a venture which he had made, and, having failed,
found it pleasant to look back upon as an experience not altogether to
be regretted. We none of us knew until much later that it was more than
a mere fancy for a woman who was altogether so sweet and winsome that no
man needed an excuse for loving her. When by and by I also came to love
a good woman, I used to try myself by the measure of this man's lack of
self-love, and wonder how he could have seen with good-will the woman he
cared for come to like another man better. This utter sweetness of soul
has ever been to me a riddle.

An hour passed by, when Schmidt heard a footfall in the room behind him,
and rising saw an old member of the Society of Friends who came at times
to our house, and was indeed trustee for a small estate which belonged
to Mistress White. Nicholas Oldmixon was an overseer in the Fourth
street meeting, and much looked up to among Friends as a prompt and
vigilant guardian of their discipline. Perhaps he would have been
surprised to be told that he had that in his nature which made the post
of official fault-finder agreeable; but so it was, I fancy, and he was
here on such an errand. The asceticism of Friends in those days, and the
extent to which Mr. Oldmixon, like the more strict of his sect, carried
their views as to gravity of manner and the absence of color in dress
and furniture, were especially hateful to Schmidt, who lived and was
happy in a region of color and sentiment and gayety. Both, I doubt not,
were good men, but each was by nature and training altogether unable to
sympathize with the other.