conceive
how it had come about (it did not occur to him that the gossip about his
family's great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account
for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the
fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged
into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were
one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a
self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd
daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find
himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the
discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and
put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the
result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of
dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in
admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every
remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he
overheard people say he was exceedingly bright--they were chiefly mammas
and marriageable young ladies. He found that some of his good things
were being repeated about the town. Whenever he heard of an instance of
this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at
home in private. At first he could not see that the remark was anything
better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that
perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his
good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which
would have been unapparent to him in earlier days--and then he would make
a note, of that good thing and say it again the first time he found
himself in a new company. Presently he had saved up quite a repertoire
of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself to repeating these
and ceased to originate any more, lest he might injure his reputation by
an unlucky effort.

He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at
receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in time he began to
feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way; and after
that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these
female ambushes and surprises. He was distressed to find that nearly
every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway
report