He was generous, and the needy, laughing at
him because he believed so naively their stories of distress,
borrowed from him with effrontery. He was very emotional, yet
his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd,
so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude.
To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised
him because he was so foolish. I imagine that a pickpocket,
proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation
with the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with
all her jewels in it. Nature had made him a butt, but had
denied him insensibility. He writhed under the jokes,
practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his
expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose
himself to them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-
nature was such that he could not bear malice: the viper might
sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no
sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once
more in his bosom. His life was a tragedy written in the
terms of knockabout farce. Because I did not laugh at him he
was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic
ear the long list of his troubles.
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