"This is SO good of you, Miss Monson," said Tom, as he made his bow—I heard it all, being still on the sofa—"This is SO good of you, when your time must have so many demands on it."
"Not in the least, Mr. Thurston—mamma and the housekeeper have settled every thing, and I am really pleased to see you, as you can give me the history of the new play—"
"Ah! Miss Monson, my heart—my faculties—my ideas—" Tom was getting bothered, and he made a desperate effort to extricate himself—"In short, my JUDGMENT is so confused and monopolized, that I have no powers left to think or speak of plays. In a word, I was not there."
"That explains it, then—and what has thus confused your mind, Mr. Thurston?"
"The approach of this awful night. You will be surrounded by a host of admirers, pouring into your ears their admiration and love, and then what shall I have to support me, but that 'yes,' with which you once raised me from the depths of despair to an elevation of happiness that was high as the highest pinnacle of the caverns of Kentucky; raising me from the depths of Chimborazo."
{caverns of Kentucky = Mammoth Cave; Chimborazo = a 20,500 foot volcano in Ecuador}
Tom meant to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction and poetry.
"I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you," she said. "Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of Kentucky so strikingly elevated."
"Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring 'yes,' loveliest of human females," continued Tom, kneeling with some caution, lest the straps of his pantaloons should give way—"Impute all to your own lucid ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience. Repeat that 'yes,' lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me from the thrill of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human acmes."
"Hang it," thought Tom, "if she stand THAT, I shall presently be ashore. Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer."