GOSSIP WITHOUT WORDS.
["Autolycus," in the Pall Mall Gazette of October 11, inveighs against the necessity of conversation between friends:—"If I find a girl nice to look at, and she has taken great pains to make herself nice to look at, why cannot we pass the evening, I looking at her, and she being looked at? But no, we must talk.">[
Undoubtedly, if conversation were abolished, "short stories" in the future would be still further abbreviated. Here is a beautiful specimen of blank—or Anthony Hope-less—dialogue:—
THE NELLY NOVELETTES.
"!" exclaimed Miss Nelly Eaton, suddenly, with her quivering nostril.
"?" I asked with my right eyebrow, rousing myself from a fit of abstraction.
She pointed at a young man who had just strolled past our seats in the Row without noticing her. He was dressed in the height of fashion, and was accompanied by a lady in very smart attire.
"..." explained Nelly, with her mouth tightly shut.
"Taught him to smoke."
I looked at her, and gathered by a swift process of intuition that she had made that boy, and taught him to drink and smoke—of course, in moderation; had got his hair cut, and had rescued him from an adventuress. From her he had learnt not to go to Monday Pops, nor to carry things about in brown paper—in fact, he owed everything to her.... And now——!
"§" I visibly commented, not knowing for the moment how else to express myself. In fact I was getting just a trifle out of my depth. However, I gazed again at her.... Yes, she had deeply eloquent blue eyes, fringed with dark eyelashes, that voiced forth every emotion! Stay, I am afraid that in my admiration my speechless remarks had wandered from the topic of our mute discussion.
"†" interjected her pitying but impatient glance, telling me that my devotion was useless.
I looked very miserable. It is generally understood that I am the most miserable of men since Miss Eaton's engagement to an American millionaire.
[Here I am sorry to say that our dialogue becomes somewhat elliptical, owing to the difficulty of finding enough unappropriated printers' symbols to represent our different shades of silence. However, with luck, I may be able to scrape together a few more, and come to some sort of conclusion.]
Let me see—where were we?... Oh, on the subject of the boy and his companion, who, it seems, were engaged.
"* * *" resumed Nelly, in a look which spoke three volumes. I divined at once that she had thrown him over, that there had been an awful scene, and his mother had written a horrid letter, that he had come back and abjectly apologised, that he said she had destroyed his faith in women (the usual thing), that he went on sending letters for a whole year: in fact, that it made her quite uncomfortable.... Really, Nelly can give points to Lord Burleigh's nod!
"?" inquired my right eye, meaning, had she not been in love with him a little bit?
Miss Nelly prodded the path with her parasol.
"¿" I asked again, referring to a different person, and, I am afraid, squinting.
Miss Nelly looked for the fraction of an instant in my direction.
"¿¿" I repeated.
Miss Nelly looked straight in front of her. There was her fiancé, the American millionaire!
"——! ——!" That is, I smilingly withdrew.
Satisfactory Reports as to the Ameer.—It was not an illness, it was "A mere indisposition."
