300 THE CONFIDENCE-MAN .
speaker, who, now occupying the chair opposite him, sat there purely and coldly radiant as a prism. It seemed as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting with a sign, the cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of ice-water. "Ice it well, waiter," said he; "and now," turning to the stranger, " will you, if you please, give me your reason for the warning words you first addressed to me ?"
"I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings are," said the stranger ; " warnings which do not forewarn, but in mockery come after the fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent design your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains unaccomplished. You read his label."
"And what did it say ? 'This is a genial soul.' So you see you must either give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against my friend. But tell me," with renewed earnestness, " what do you take him for? What is he ?"
"What are you? What am I ? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to determine the triangle."
"But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent with your doctrine of labels ?"
"Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a philosophical view, consistency is a certain
