th
less snobbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient
of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be--your own
wit and charm give you the right to despise them."

"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to
look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune.
Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate
me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?--would-be
wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been
brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men
learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a
friend of theirs the week before last."

"Oh! they are indeed terrible," agreed Cecil; "they dabble in inverted
commas as Italians dabble in garlic."

"I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of
course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on
the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me
as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a
confirmed drunkard."

"Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!"

"Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations,"
added Elisabeth. "There are few things in the world more heart-rending
than a humorous recitation--with action. As for me, it unmans me
completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the
carriage comes to take me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's
eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being
the worse for wear."

"It seems to me after all," Cecil remarked, "that the evil that you
would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if
you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them,
at the same time."

"I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to
despise them--that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy
despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from
them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very
interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me
respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions
if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and
patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they
are, and generally out-Phariseeing the