"To the sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum—however, this is irrelevant and frivolous. I am serious—and modest, I assure you—when I speak of my gifts. I have, as you know, a pronounced gift at repartee. Who knows what this might have become under proper development? But it has been systematically snubbed, misunderstood, dubbed impertinence, forsooth."
"If I remember aright, it was your gift of repartee that—wasn't it something of that sort which severed your connection with college?"
"Yes, and here I am. That's where the shoe pinches. Ha! and by way of literal illustration, speaking of the mal-adjustments of life, witness this boot."
The speaker languidly extended his right foot.
"The fellow who first wore it had bunions, blast him, and I come into his bunion-bulge with a short great toe. As a result, here I am in New York in December, instead of absorbing sunshine and the odor of violets in Jackson Square in New Orleans, with picturesqueness and color all about me. No man could start South with such a boot as that.
"I do most cordially hope that the beastly vulgarian who shaped it has gone, as my friend Mantalini would express it, 'to the demnition bow-wows.' You see the beauty of the Bellamy business is that all callings are equally worthy. As a social factor I should have made a record, and would probably have gone into history as a wit."
"Condemn the history! You'd have gone into life, Humphrey. That's enough. You'd have gone into the home—into your own bed at night—into dinner in a dress-coat—into society, your element—into posterity in your brilliant progeny, paterfamilias—"
"Enough, Colonel. There are some things—even from an old comrade like yourself—"
"Beg pardon, Humphrey. No offence meant, I assure you.
"It's only when life's fires are burning pretty low that we may venture to stir the coals and knock off the ashes a little.