mbecility, is better; I would rather any
day of my life sit and carve for guests--the grossest of human trials--a
detestable dinner, than be doomed to hear some wretched fellow--and you
hear the old as well as the young--excruciate feelings which, where they
exist, cannot but be exquisitely delicate. Goodness gracious me! to
see the man pumping up his wit! For me, my visage is of an unalterable
gravity whenever I am present at one of these exhibitions. I care not
if I offend. Let them say I wish to revolutionize society--I declare to
you, Richie boy, delightful to my heart though I find your keen stroke
of repartee, still your fellow who takes the thrust gracefully, knows
when he's traversed by a master-stroke, and yields sign of it,
instead of plunging like a spitted buffalo and asking us to admire his
agility--you follow me?--I say I hold that man--and I delight vastly
in ready wit; it is the wine of language!--I regard that man as the
superior being. True, he is not so entertaining.'

My father pressed on my arm to intimate, with a cavernous significance
of eyebrow, that Captain DeWitt had the gift of repartee in perfection.

'Jorian,' said he, 'will you wager our editor declines to dine with us?'

The answer struck me as only passable. I think it was:

'When rats smell death in toasted cheese.'

Captain DeWitt sprang up the staircase of our hotel to his bedroom.

'I should not have forced him,' my father mused. 'Jorian DeWitt has at
times brilliant genius, Richie--in the way of rejoinders, I mean. This
is his happy moment--his one hour's dressing for dinner. I have watched
him; he most thoroughly enjoys it! I am myself a quick or slow dresser,
as the case may be. But to watch Jorian you cannot help entering into
his enjoyment of it. He will have his window with a view of the sunset;
there is his fire, his warmed linen, and his shirt-studs; his bath, his
choice of a dozen things he will or will not wear; the landlord's or
host's menu is up against the looking-glass, and the extremely handsome
miniature likeness of his wife, who is in the madhouse, by a celebrated
painter, I forget his name. Jorian calls this, new birth--you catch his
idea? He throws off the old and is on with the new with a highly hopeful
anticipation. His valet is a scoundrel, but never fails in extracting
the menu from the cook, wherever he may be, and, in fine, is too
attentive to the hour's devotion to be discarded! Poor Jorian. I know no
ma