‘Oh she is gone! methinks she should have left
A track so bright, I might have followed her
Like setting suns that vanish in a glory.’”
Nescio. “For the sake of quoting beautifully, you quote without application.”
Apple, (in a voice of thunder.) “Who in the name of heaven is it about whom you are making all this ‘tempest in a tea-pot?’ Girls, girls, girls, for ever and eternally! I wonder what you see in them! weak and shallow! It maddens me, Pulito, to see you, a fellow of some small sense, ‘bowing the knee in worship to an idol,’ a minion-queen, a painted doll—
‘A pagod thing of flirting sway,
With front of brass, and feet of clay.’”
Pulito. “Why, Apple, from your fierceness, I suspect you have lately met with a rebuff from some fair damsel.”
Apple. “No, indeed I have not; I was afraid I should though, and did not give her a chance. I was acquainted with some of them once, and endeavored to patronize, instruct, and even please them. But they had neither the acuteness to perceive the point of my puns, nor the complaisance to laugh at them, even when I led the way. In fact—the fiends scorch their pictures!—I believe they laughed at instead of with me. ‘Flattery is nectar and ambrosia to them.’ They drink it in and enjoy it like an old woman sucking metheglin through a quill.”
Pulito. “I allow that