"Do you mean to say that you really see anything in that definition?"
"I do," I said, with ominous distinctness.
My manner indicated his stupidity, and he resented it. He grew excited.
"Now, tell me, on your honor, do you really see anything funnier in the under side of that sofa than in the top side?"
I could have screamed with anguish. But, being in company, I only smote my hands together in my impotence and prayed for death.
The tension was relieved by the young son of our hostess in the library just beyond having overheard our conversation. He laid his hand over his mouth and went into such convulsions of silent laughter, all the time writhing and twisting his lean body into such contortions that in watching his extraordinary gymnastics over the head of my unconscious vis-à-vis, and wondering if the boy ever could untie himself, I forgot my suffering. I even relaxed my mental strain and forgot the stupid man.
Would I could keep on forgetting him.
THE NEW WOMAN
"You have taught me
To be in love with noble thoughts."
That clever bon-mot, "To say 'everybody is talking about him' is a eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a delicious bit deserves a longer life. I could weep over the early death of an epigram with a hearty spirit, which is second only to the grief I feel at a good story spoiled for relation's sake. Cleverness, like beauty, is its own excuse for being, and the first attribute of the new woman is her cleverness. It is the new woman who is responsible for the death of that epigram. But as she did not take an active part in the murder, but was only an accessory after the fact, let us hope that she will escape with as light a sentence as possible from that stern old judge, public opinion, who is not her friend.