ion.
"You have put your finger with strict accuracy on the causes of decline.
To a cultivated taste like yours this must be particularly painful."

"I did not say there was actual decline," said Felicia, with a touch of
_brusquerie_. "I don't set myself up as the great personage whom nothing
can please."

"That would be too severe a misfortune for others," says my
complimentary ape. "You approve, perhaps, of Rosemary's 'Babes in the
Wood,' as something fresh and _naive_ in sculpture?"

"I think it enchanting."

"Does he know that? Or _will_ you permit me to tell him?"

"Heaven forbid! It would be an impertinence in me to praise a work of
his--to pronounce on its quality; and that I happen to like it can be of
no consequence to him."

Here was an occasion for Hinze to smile down on his hat and stroke
it--Felicia's ignorance that her praise was inestimable being peculiarly
noteworthy to an observer of mankind. Presently he was quite sure that
her favourite author was Shakspere, and wished to know what she thought
of Hamlet's madness. When she had quoted Wilhelm Meister on this point,
and had afterwards testified that "Lear" was beyond adequate
presentation, that "Julius Caesar" was an effective acting play, and
that a poet may know a good deal about human nature while knowing little
of geography, Hinze appeared so impressed with the plenitude of these
revelations that he recapitulated them, weaving them together with
threads of compliment--"As you very justly observed;" and--"It is most
true, as you say;" and--"It were well if others noted what you have
remarked."

Some listeners incautious in their epithets would have called Hinze an
"ass." For my part I would never insult that intelligent and
unpretending animal who no doubt brays with perfect simplicity and
substantial meaning to those acquainted with his idiom, and if he feigns
more submission than he feels, has weighty reasons for doing so--I would
never, I say, insult that historic and ill-appreciated animal, the ass,
by giving his name to a man whose continuous pretence is so shallow in
its motive, so unexcused by any sharp appetite as this of Hinze's.

But perhaps you would say that his adulatory manner was originally
adopted under strong promptings of self-interest, and that his absurdly
over-acted deference to persons from whom he expects no patronage is the
unreflecting persistence of habit--just as those who live with the deaf
will shout to everybody