Was there ever a steamboat, or stage, or rail car, or any other place where people are thrown together in such a way that they can not escape, that that unmitigated nuisance, that nuisance without any compensating features, the knowing young man, the young man who knows everything that a young man should be ashamed to have it known that he does know, is not present? There is a tremendous crop of these weeds every year: Lightning strikes innocent cows and beautiful houses, but it never hits one of these fellows, which argues a great waste of electricity. Good men and beautiful women die of fevers and such complaints, but these insects never have anything of the kind. A row of shanties never burns, but stately buildings go down or up in smoke daily.
They are an exasperating set. They do not seem to know that it is rather discreditable than otherwise for a man not in the trade to actually know all about wines and liquors, and things of that nature. But when a young fellow is weak enough to profess this disreputable knowledge when he has it not, he ought to be immediately taken out and killed. To see the old wine tasters and the ancient beer drinkers, who do actually know all about these things, smile and wink at the vaporings of these young simpletons, is a piteous sight. But, heaven help them, they go on just the same. Panoplied in egotism, they do not know they are asses, and therefore enjoy themselves. It is a delightful thing to be an egotist. An egotist pities the people who do not enjoy him.
We had him on our steamer down the Rhine. He was six feet high, with a moustache, and a billy-cock hat, and pointed shoes, and short coat, and all that, and he talked to everybody.
“Know Ned Stokes? Should say so! Knew him before he killed Jim Fisk. Used to meet him at Harry Felter’s, and many a hot old time I’ve had with him. Last time I met Ned was in Chicago, and we were both so blind drunk we didn’t know whether we were in Illinois or Louisiana.”
He rattled on about wines, and salads, and so on, and then a bottle of wine that he had ordered came up. He took a little of it in his mouth, and rinsed it, and passed the bottle under his nose, backward and forward, and sniffed critically, and then remarked sagely that it would do, but that it was not quite up to the mark, and that it was difficult to get good wine even in the Rhine country.
From this he glided off to beer, criticising the various varieties, with the air of a man who had lived a long life in sampling beverages and doing everything else of that kind, and he branched out in cheerful conversation about celebrities in the various walks of life.
“D’ye ever meet Ned Sothern? Poor Ned! There was Ned and Billy Florence, and we used to have high old times before poor Ned went under. I remember—”
Tibbitts moved uneasily in his chair, which portended something.
“Then there was Uncle John Brougham, and Lester Wallack”—and he went glibly through all the noted actors and actresses as though he had been a boon companion and bosom friend of all of them for years.
Then he took a short excursion into the realm of sport. He knew every pugilist who had ever fought, every rower, every pedestrian, and all the crack shots and base ball players, and he had the dates of their various performances down to a dot. He reeled off this interesting matter, toying the while with corks from champagne bottles, pausing a moment in his narrations, to give the history of each one.