he was gone,
unquestioned, merely caressed, it came to her mind that he had all through
insisted on his possession of this particular power, and she accused herself of
having wantonly helped to ruin his hope - a matter to be rejoiced at in the
abstract; but what suffering she had inflicted on him! To quiet her heart, she
persuaded herself that for the future she would never fail to believe in him and
second him blindly, as true love should; and contemplating one so brave,
far-sighted, and self-assured, her determination seemed to impose the lightest
of tasks.
    Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all kinds
of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling for the negro,
and, except as the representative of a certain amount of working power commonly
requiring the whip to wind it up, he inclined to despise that black spot in the
creation, with which our civilization should never have had anything to do. So
he pronounced his mind, and the long habit of listening to oracles might grow us
ears to hear and discover a meaning in it. Nevil's captures and releases of the
grinning freights amused him for awhile. He compared them to strings of bananas,
and presently put the vision of the whole business aside by talking of Nevil's
banana-wreath. He desired to have Nevil out of it. He and Cecil handed Nevil in
his banana-wreath about to their friends. Nevil, in his banana-wreath, was set
preaching »humanitomtity.« At any rate, they contrived to keep the remembrance
of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the period of his disappearance from the world,
and in so doing they did him a service.
 
There is a pause between the descent of a diver and his return to the surface,
when those who would not have him forgotten by the better world above him do
rightly to relate anecdotes of him, if they can, and to provoke laughter at him.
The encouragement of the humane sense of superiority over an object of interest,
which laughter gives, is good for the object; and besides, if you begin to tell
sly stories of one in the deeps who is holding his breath to fetch a pearl or
two for you all, you divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the chest,
that the extremely sensitive are apt to suffer from, and you dispose the larger
number to keep in mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is likely that
he will, very shortly after he has made his plunge, fatigue the contemplative
brains above, and be shuffled off