Alice made herself comfortable, and spread out her fan; for laughing makes her warm nowadays.
Had she any right to look for humor in an essay by her husband? Look at her own chapter on the loves of Mary and the Don. A more sentimental performance I never read. Show me a trace therein, if you can, of witty, sparkling Alice of the merry-glancing hazel eyes! Look, for the matter of that, at this book of mine. Why, the other day, glancing over the proofs[[1]] of a certain chapter, and forgetting for the moment, as I read the printed page, that I had written it, would you believe it, my eyes filled with tears? (And a big one rolled down so softly that I started when it struck the paper.) Is this, cried I, the jolly book that my friends expect of me? Alas, fair reader, fellow-pilgrim, through this valley of shadows, I trust full many a sun-streak may fall across your path. As for me,—I can only sing the song that is given me.
| [1] | Mr. Whacker must mean that he intended “glancing over the proofs.”—Ed. |
CHAPTER LXIX.
[Being an Essay on Military Glory; by Charles Frobisher, Esquire, M.A. (Univ. Va.); late Major of Artillery C. S. A.
Omnibus, mentis compotibus, SKIPIENDUM, utpote quod TINKERII MOLEM NON VALEAT.]
Charley shifted his manuscript to his left hand, and smoothing down the leaves with his right, and glancing at the paper, raised his eyes to mine. The tip of his forefinger, placed lightly against the tip of his nose, lent to that organ an air of rare subtlety.
“A julep,” he began, “differs from a thought in this: that while—”
“A julep!” cried Alice; “why, just now you began with Hannibal.”