The Woman of the World rose and opened the piano.
“Myself, I have always been of opinion—” I remarked.
“Please don’t chatter,” said the Minor Poet.
III
“I never liked her,” said the Old Maid; “I always knew she was heartless.”
“To my thinking,” said the Minor Poet, “she has shown herself a true woman.”
“Really,” said the Woman of the World, laughing, “I shall have to nickname you Dr. Johnson Redivivus. I believe, were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies. It would occur to you that it must have been naturally curly.”
“It is the Irish blood flowing in his veins,” I told them. “He must always be ‘agin the Government.’”
“We ought to be grateful to him,” remarked the Philosopher. “What can be more uninteresting than an agreeable conversation I mean, a conversation—where everybody is in agreement? Disagreement, on the other hand, is stimulating.”
“Maybe that is the reason,” I suggested, “why modern society is so tiresome an affair. By tabooing all difference of opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse. Religion, sex, politics—any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously excluded from all polite gatherings. Conversation has become a chorus; or, as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of the obvious to no conclusion. When not occupied with mumbling, ‘I quite agree with you’—‘As you say’—‘That is precisely my opinion’—we sit about and ask each other riddles: ‘What did the Pro-Boer?’ ‘Why did Julius Cæsar?’”