His opposite neighbor was one Silas Dexter, a flag- and banner-maker, who went into business in Salt Lane sometime during that memorable year of Andrew's venture. Apparently this young man was no better off than Swift, between whom and himself a friendly intercourse was at once established; but he had the advantage of a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,--even as though he had sometime been presented,--not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy her Highness.
Indeed, he was such a man as would find exhilaration of spirit even in the uncertainties of his position. The sight of his banners waving from the sign-post, showing all sorts of devices, the flags flowing round the walls of his shop, enlivening the little dark place with their many gorgeous colors, sufficed for his encouragement. Utter ruin could not have ruined the man. He could not have failed with failure. Some sense of this fact he had, and he lived like one who has had his life insured.
Not a creature looked upon him but was free to the good he might derive. The sparkling eyes, quick smile, and manly voice, the active limbs and generous heart, seemed at the service of every soul that breathed. Trashy thought and base utterance could not cheat his soul of her integrity; the vileness of Salt Lane had nothing to do with him.
And I cannot account for this by bringing his wife forward. For how came he by this wife, except by the excellence and soundness of the virtue which preferred her to the world, and made him preferred of her? Still, you see the ripe cherry, one half full, beautiful, luscious, the other a patch of skin stretched over the pit, worthless and sad to view. This, but for his choice and hers, might have served as an emblem of Dexter.
She was her husband's partner in a twofold sense: for it was DEXTER & CO. on the sign-board, and Jessie was represented by the Company. Of that woman I cannot refrain from saying what was so gracefully said of "the fair and happy milkmaid,"--"All the excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge."
The effect of these diverse influences, his wife Jessie in the house, and his neighbor Andrew to the opposite, kept the spirit of Silas Dexter at work like a ploughing Pegasus. He was full of pranks as a boy, but malice found poor encouragement of him. Andrew was his garden, and he was Andrew's sun: he shone across the lane with a brightness and a warmth sufficient to quicken the poorest earth; and the crops he perfected were various, all of the kind that flourish in heavy soil, but various and good. Do you think the good Samaritan could take the leprosy?