“And who is your friend Icarus?” I asked.
“The aspiring son of Dædalus!” said he. “Is it possible that you have never heard the name of Byfield?”
“Possible and true,” said I.
“And is fame so small a thing?” cried he. “Byfield, sir, is an aëronaut. He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the inhabitants—I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our neighbourhood—the spectacle of an ascension. As one of the gentry concerned, I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a Tinker’s Damn for his ascension. No more—I breathe in your ear—does anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts—for I was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated ad nauseam by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if they would go up and not come down again! But this is by the question. The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is a sound, reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups. Under the radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit.”
It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought it at the time. Indeed, I was impatient to be gone. Even as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.