Finding his frankness to be thus seasoned with
hospitality, we resumed our seats. It soon appeared that he was more
disposed to communicate information than to seek it; and I became a patient
listener. If the boldness and strangeness of his opinions occasionally
startled me, I could not but admire the clearness with which he stated his
propositions, the fervour of his elocution, and the plausibility of his
arguments.
The expected guests at length arrived; and various questions of morals and
legislation were started, in which the disputants seemed sometimes as if
they would have laid aside the character of philosophers, but for the
seasonable interposition of the Brahmin. Wigurd, our host, often laboured
with his accustomed zeal, to prove that every one who opposed him, was
either a fool, or biassed by some petty interest, or the dupe of blind
prejudice.
After about two hours of warm, and, as it seemed to me, unprofitable
discussion, we were summoned to our repast in the adjoining room. But
before we rose from our seats, our host requested to know of each of us if
we were hungry; and, whether it were from modesty, perverseness, or really
because they had no appetite, I know not, but a majority of the company, in
which I was included, voted that their hour of eating was not yet come:
upon which Wigurd remarked that his own vote, as being at home, and the
Brahmin's, as being at once a philosopher and a stranger, should each count
for two; and by this mode of reckoning there was a casting vote in favour
of going to supper.
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