MR. POTTS ENCHANTED.
“How she did talk!” said Mr. Potts to us, one day, not long after the occurrence. He had invited us to dine with him at Delmonico’s, when he would tell us how we could “do him a great favor—that’s a good fellow.” As we were sure of a good dinner and a capital Regalia afterward; and knew, moreover, that Mr. Potts never wanted to borrow money, we of course accepted the invitation. He wanted us to go and “put things right with old Briggs about that confounded New Year’s scrape,” and so unburdened his whole soul to us.—“How she did talk!” said Mr. Potts; “she knows every thing! Had I heard this Opera, and that? and didn’t I admire this passage and that? and then she would go off into her Italian lingo, which I couldn’t understand a word of. I didn’t know she understood Italian. However, I’m glad I found it out—I know what to make of that handsome, dark-complexioned fellow, with black eyes and hair, and such a mustache, that I used to see coming out of old Briggs’s every day or two—he was her Italian teacher. And then about Jenny Lind, and there was more Italian, and I don’t know what. And then had I visited the Düsseldorff Gallery? and wasn’t I in love with those little Fairies? and didn’t the tears start to my eyes when I saw the Silesian Weavers? and what did I think of the Nativity? and did I ever see any thing so comical as the Student? and wasn’t the Wine-Tasters admirable? and wasn’t it wonderful that a man could put so much soul upon a bit of canvas, not larger than one’s nail, with no materials except a few red, and yellow, and blue, and brown colors, and a few bristles fastened into the end of a stick? and—” But we forbear: Mr. Potts’s confidences are sacred. We inferred, from his embarrassment and her volubility, that he was in love, and she wasn’t—with him.
