The old colonel was the first to speak. ‘Speak, sir! Is this a scene from a play?’
By this time the heiress had left the sweet anchorage of her lover’s arms, and advancing to the old man, said: ‘Do you not recognise your godchild, Emily Anstruther?’
But surprise had taken away the power of speech from the colonel.
His son interposed. ‘I trust Miss Anstruther will acquit me of any guilty knowledge of this fact—will believe that I believed she was merely Miss Fonblanque the actress.’
Emily Anstruther here cast down her eyes, while a deep blush mantled over her face and neck. ‘I am afraid I am not equally innocent; for Mr Vallance informed me that I had refused my hated lover. But I have enough confidence in his love for me, to hope for his belief in my unselfish love for him.’
‘So you see, dad,’ exclaimed the younger Stanley, ‘Love not only rules the court, the camp, the grove, as the poet says, but does not disdain to flutter his wings in the greenroom.’
Author’s Note.—This story having been dramatised, and the provisions of the law as regards dramatic copyright having been duly complied with, any infringement of the author’s rights becomes actionable.
HUMOROUS DEFINITIONS.
A smart, pithy, or humorous definition often furnishes a happy illustration of the proverbial brevity which is the soul of wit. Wit itself has not inaptly been called ‘a pleasant surprise over truth;’ and wisdom, often its near ally, is, in the opinion of a clever writer, ‘nothing more than educated cunning.’ ‘Habits are what we learn and can’t forget,’ says the same author, who also defines silence as ‘a safe place to hide in,’ and a lie as ‘the very best compliment that can be paid to truth.’ ‘Show him an egg and instantly the air is full of feathers,’ said a humorist, defining a sanguine man. ‘A moral chameleon’ is a terse reckoning-up of a humbug. Man’s whole life has been cynically summed up in the sentence, ‘Youth is a blunder; middle life, a struggle; and old age, a regret.’
Whimsical definitions are sometimes quite as neat and telling as those of a smarter kind. Dr Johnson confessed to a lady that it was pure ignorance that made him define ‘pastern, the knee of a horse;’ but he could hardly make the same excuse for defining pension, ‘an allowance made to any one without an equivalent.’ A patriot, some writer tells us, is ‘one who lives for the promotion of his country’s union and dies in it;’ and a hero, ‘he who, after warming his enemies, is toasted by his friends.’