One friend I have to whom I can’t express a taste or desire that isn’t treasured up against need. If I happen to mention liking a Japanese writing set, it is only a question of time when that set is mine.
I said to the Prandials once that I loved watercress, and lightly wished that I might have it for every meal. Never a meal have I ever had at the Prandials’ table, since then, without finding watercress bought specially for me.
D’YOU think it’s easy, this business of giving? Verily, verily, I say unto you, giving is as much of an art as portrait-painting, or the making of glass flowers. There really ought to be a four years’ course in the art of making presents in every college for those who are not born intelligently generous.
In one’s freshman year one would be taught, perhaps, not to present an $85 inlaid umbrella with a gold dog’s-head handle with rhinestone eyes to a gentleman of culture like Mr. Richard Mansfield, for instance, as was once done one Christmas by an ardent but unillumined friend. If a lady has saved your son’s life, the Educated Heart doesn’t reward her by offering her chastely appointed apartment a two-ton carved ebony chair upholstered in red plush.
Oh, no, it’s not easy. People nowadays haven’t the artless gratitude of that easily-satisfied girl who used to sing:
“He promised to bring me a bunch of blue ribbons
To tie up my bonny brown hair!”
The people I know usually prefer to select their own ribbons—and gloves and boudoir caps and neckties—rather than have them chosen, however expensively, by—well, by those who do sometimes have the audacity to choose them for you.
Now taste, you will say, cannot be disputed. Each one has his own. Perhaps it can’t even be educated. We’ll see, later.
But imagination surely can be brought to bear. Suppose we suggest a few ways, in illustration.
ARE you sailing for Italy? Ah, it isn’t the basket of fine fat fruits that brings the tears to your eyes, nor the flowers with trailing yards and yards of red ribbon—all that’s mere kindness, ordinary everyday kindness. Even the Vanderbilts can do that. But it’s the things—oh, it’s the things Mr. Rockefeller never would think of—it’s that little purse full of Italian currency, bills and small change all ready for you when you first trip ashore at Genoa. It’s the little nest of spools of colored silk Minnie made for you to catch up the first threatened run in your stocking. I may, oh, yes, I may forget the three hundred dollars you lent me that time I was broke; but the little corkscrew you so thoughtfully added when you gave me that bottle of your pet malt extract—that I shall never, never forget!