I shall not ask to be let up, when you once put me fairly
down. And now, Doctor, have I come to your leaf in my accounts. It is
time to foot up the small reckoning, that has been running on, for
some time, atwixt us. With you, I entered into open and manly faith;
in what manner have you kept it?"
The singular felicity, with which Ishmael had contrived to shift the
responsibility of all that had passed, from his own shoulders to those
of his prisoners, backed as it was by circumstances that hardly
admitted of a very philosophical examination of any mooted point in
ethics, was sufficiently embarrassing to the several individuals, who
were so unexpectedly required to answer for a conduct which, in their
simplicity, they had deemed so meritorious. The life of Obed had been
so purely theoretic, that his amazement was not the least embarrassing
at a state of things which might not have proved so very remarkable
had he been a little more practised in the ways of the world. The
worthy naturalist was not the first by many, who found himself, at the
precise moment when he was expecting praise, suddenly arraigned, to
answer for the very conduct on which he rested all his claims to
commendation.
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