Some time after his return he was a guest of honor at a dinner which was also attended by Lady Randolph Churchill, now Mrs. Cornwallis West, who is an American. His lordship did not air his personal grievances, but he lost no opportunity of decrying everything American. He was especially severe upon American table manners.
"Do you know," he remarked, "that I have seen Americans eating with their knives and spilling their soup on the table-cloth?"
Lady Randolph's eyes had flashed several times during the dinner, but this was a little too much. She leaned quietly toward the distinguished diplomat and remarked, in her cool, sarcastic voice:
"What poor letters of recommendation you must have had, my lord!"
Silencing the Surgeon.
At a certain dinner-table with General Miles, one night, was a distinguished Washington surgeon, who listened with a certain air of superiority to some of the soldier's reminiscences of various experiences during the Civil War.
"And how do you feel, general," he finally asked, with just a touch of sarcasm, "after you've professionally killed a man?"
"Oh," replied General Miles, "I dare say I don't mind doing that any more than you do."
Thomas Lawson's Sharp Tongue.
A Marblehead fisherman reports hearing, while out one day in the bay, this bit of repartee between Thomas Lawson and a young woman, evidently no respecter of persons.