Pazienza!
"Well—what do you think of Leah Gibson?" said my sister, as we walked home together through Torrington Square.
"I think she's a regular stunner," said I—"like her mother and her grandmother before her, and probably her great‑grandmother too."
And being a poetical youth, and well up in my Byron, I declaimed:
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."...
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."...
Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quotations, I never made a more felicitous quotation than that. I little guessed then to what splendor that bony black‑eyed damsel would reach in time.
All through this period of high life and low dissipation Barty kept his unalterable good‑humor and high spirits—and especially the kindly grace of manner and tact and good‑breeding that kept him from ever offending the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits, and made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and darling.
I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in very distinguished company; I don't remember how I came to be invited—through Barty, no doubt. He got me many invitations that I often thought it better not to accept. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam!"