r
to any decent person even.--If I were giving advice to a young fellow of
talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all
means to keep his wit in the background until after he had made a
reputation by his more solid qualities. And so to an actor: _Hamlet_
first and _Bob Logic_ afterward, if you like; but don't think, as they
say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can
do anything great with _Macbeth's_ dagger after flourishing about with
_Paul Pry's_ umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look
upon all who challenge their attention,--for a while, at least,--as
beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they
can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a literary man--pardon
the forlorn pleasantry!--is the _funny_-bone. That is all very well so
far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as I
told you on a former occasion.

Oh, indeed, no!--I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I
think I could read you something I have in my desk that would probably
make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are
patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The
ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention,
but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes as
kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakespeare. How curious
it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay
surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future
life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then
called _blessed_! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be
preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look
forward, by banishing all gaiety from their hearts and all joyousness
from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently,
a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that
he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition,--something
as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every
acquaintance he met,--that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot,
and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't
doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with
it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it?

CAESAR'S QUIET LUNCH WITH CICERO

BY JAMES T.