proof in occasional
outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for
inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is missed, the
convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the
one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a
feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the upper to
the fat citizen's, where, instead of coming in the sequence of talk, they
are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old Deluge sharks in
monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries. Nor are these the less welcome
for the violence of their introduction among a people glad to be set
burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of digs in the ribs.
Dan Merion, to give an example. That was Dan Merion's joke with the
watchman: and he said that other thing to the Marquis of Kingsbury, when
the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race. And old Dan is
dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the question: Is
genius hereditary? And the affirmative and negative are respectively
maintained, rather against the Yes is the dispute, until a member of the
audience speaks of Dan Merion's having left a daughter reputed for a
sparkling wit not much below the level of his own. Why, are you unaware
that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick versus Dannisburgh
was old Dan Merion's girl--and his only child? It is true; for a friend
had it from a man who had it straight from Mr. Braddock, of the firm of
Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in the action, who told him
he could sit listening to her for hours, and that she was as innocent as
day; a wonderful combination of a good woman and a clever woman and a
real beauty. Only her misfortune was to have a furiously jealous husband,
and they say he went mad after hearing the verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles. A witty woman is such salt
that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more than
any of the absent, the dowering heavens not having yet showered her like
very plentifully upon us. Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier had
been travelling with her. Miss Asper heard of it. Her uncle, Mr. Quintin
Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and titled
dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin, at whose
table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was mentioned.
Lady Wathin's table could