gainst the practice, when it raged at its "prettiest." I have heard him
relate a story of a poor friend of his, who had to march out for a
trifle, and said, as he accepted the invitation, "It's all nonsense!" and
walking to the measured length, "It's all nonsense, you know!" and when
lying on the ground, at his last gasp, "I told you it was all nonsense!"'

Sullivan Smith leaned over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations,
and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!--and excuseable to
her:--she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow said was--' He
murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, to
rightly emphasize his noun.

Whitmonby nodded to the superior relish imparted by the vigour of
masculine veracity in narration. 'A story for its native sauce piquante,'
he said.

'Nothing without it!'

They had each a dissolving grain of contempt for women compelled by their
delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant
accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable. For to see
insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing
the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal
gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan
Smith would have let the expletive rest.

Major Carew Mahoney capped Mrs. Warwick's tale of the unfortunate
duellist with another, that confessed the practice absurd, though he
approved of it; and he cited Lord Larrian's opinion: 'It keeps men braced
to civil conduct.'

'I would not differ with the dear old lord; but no! the pistol is the
sceptre of the bully,' said Diana.

Mr. Hepburn, with the widest of eyes on her in perpetuity, warmly agreed;
and the man was notorious among men for his contrary action.

'Most righteously our Princess Egeria distinguishes her reign by
prohibiting it,' said Lady Singleby.

'And how,' Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, 'how, I'd ask, are ladies to be
protected from the bully?'

He was beset: 'So it was all for us? all in consideration for our
benefit?'

He mournfully exclaimed: 'Why, surely!'

'That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbarous
chapter,' said Diana.

'Too fine in mind, too fat in body; that is a consequence with men, dear
madam. The conqueror stands to his weapons, or he loses his possessions.'

'Mr. Sullivan Smith jumps at his pleasure from the special to the
general, and will be back, if we foll