' But
there are many whom a suspicion of the dilettante in such an exterior
belies, and Narcissus was one of them. He had very strongly developed
that instinct of manner to which sympathy is a daily courtesy, and he
thus readily, when it suited him, could take the complexion of his
company, and his capacity of 'bend' was well-nigh genius. Of course, all
this is but to say that he was a gentleman; yet is not that in itself a
fine kind of originality? Besides, he had a genuine appetite for the
things of earth, such as many another delicate thing--a damask
rose-bush, for example--must be convicted of too; and often, when some
one has asked him 'what he could have in common with so-and-so,' I have
heard him answer: 'Tobacco and beer.' Samuel Dale once described him as
Shelley with a chin; and perhaps the chin accounted for the absence of
any of those sentimental scruples with regard to beefsteaks and certain
varieties of jokes, for which the saint-like deserter of Harriet
Westbrook was distinguished.
A supremely quaint instance of this gift of accommodation befell during
that same holiday, which should not pass unrecorded, but which I offer
to the Reader with an emphatic _Honi soit qui mal y pense_. Despairing
of reaching a certain large manufacturing town on foot in time to put up
there, one evening, he was doing the last mile or two by rail, and, as
the train slackened speed he turned to his companions in the carriage to
enquire if they could tell him of a good hotel.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28