For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which lays "tylfritu3dp" or something of that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor may or may not indorse the sentiments therein enunciated.
CHESTNUT-BURR—THE HUMORIST INTERVIEWS HIS GRACE THE DUKE IN THE IMPROVED STYLE.
Marlborough's Seeming Lack of Appreciation of a Joke—Likewise his Lack of Loquacity—A Cordial Invitation to the Duke to Visit the Metropolis—Nye's Naive and Graceful Conservation on Society Gossip.
Newport, Sept. 8.
I have just terminated a pleasant call upon the Duke of Marbro at his lodgings. I write his name Marbro because that is the way we pronounce it here at Newport. In the language of my ostensibly colored friend, Mr. Rankin, the amateur pronouncer would call it Marl-bor-ough, with three grunts, while in fact Marbro, the correct pronunciation of the name, is executed with but one grunt.
I found the Duke seated on a low ottoman, clad in a loosely fitting costume of pajamas. It was so loose and negligé that it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if his mother made it for him out of his father's old pajamas; but I suddenly remembered that I was in Newport, and not in Tombstone, Arizona, and I restrained myself.
The Duke is suffering from a slight cold, which he contracted for during the early part of the week. It resulted from his ignorance of our changeable and freckle-minded climate. On Tuesday he took a long stroll, and while several miles from his lodgings and wearing his light summer cane, he was overtaken by a severe and sudden change in the temperature. The Marbros are not a strong race, and I am told that one of the Duke's second cousins died of pneumonia from exposing himself to the severity of a Christmas-day frolic clad in an autumn cane.
The Duke rose languidly as I entered, and, taking a reef in his pajamas clothes, looked at me in an inquiring way which betokened that, though of lineage high, he was not entirely at his ease in my presence.