"'Tis a mad world, Mr. Vavasour," he would say, "consider it how you will. The desires and pursuits of ninety-nine out of a hundred men are so lunatical that we should die of laughing at one another, if we were not all mad together. One man sets his heart on acquiring twenty thousand pounds; he might just as wisely toil to accumulate twenty thousand red pebbles. Nay, that would be better, for he might heap up his pebbles without lying and cheating or harm to any of his neighbours. He gets no more good of his pounds than if they were pebbles, unless you can reckon the envy of his equally foolish associates as an advantage. He eats no better than I, sleeps no better, has no enjoyment which is not mine, and at last he dies, leaving his pebbles--his pounds I mean--to be the subject of heart-burning and wrangling among his heirs. Another idiot is bent on learning, which means that he loads his memory with a pack of stuff which is mainly false, and none of it of use for any conceivable purpose. He reads what was written ages ago by the flatterers of some man called great, or by those who took pleasure in defaming him, or by those who were too cross and stupid to understand him. He reads of prodigies which never happened, of monsters which never existed, speeches which were never spoken, accounts of battles derived from persons who did not see them. He is crammed with idle tales and fond inventions; and other men, addicted to the same follies, give him a cloak and a cap, and call him doctor. And the most outrageous part of the farce is that the men who are appointed to teach poor folk to be chaste and just and kind, are required to be well versed in tales about gods and goddesses, which are so full of impurity and wickedness that no one would dare to English them for the reading of the common people. 'Tis a mad world."
Thus he would go on by the hour when the humour took him, and had it all his own way with me, for if I put in a word of objection, he overwhelmed me with a torrent of eloquence, or nimbly skipped off in some new direction.
One evening he strove to show me that Daft Jack was the sanest man in our part of the world.
"He is free from the madness of gathering money, being content to live as the birds and beasts do, without care for the morrow, as your religion bids you to live. He has no wish to be talked about after he is dead and buried, which madmen dignify by calling it desire for fame. He has not racked his brain over books filled with lies and vain imaginations; but he knows the whereabout and the ways of fish and fowl, and how to find and use every herb and root which is good for food. His bit of orchard is well kept and tilled, and if you were to put him down in any quarter of the world, he would know how to get a living. And to crown all, he accepts without murmur the name of fool, which madmen give him."