ral, drolly cynic, drawn
from the queer bacchanalian fellow we were speaking of, who had his
reasons for still drinking spurious wine, though knowing it to be
such--there, I say, we have an example of what is certainly a wicked
thought, but conceived in humor. I will now give you one of a wicked
thought conceived in wickedness. You shall compare the two, and answer,
whether in the one case the sting is not neutralized by the humor, and
whether in the other the absence of humor does not leave the sting free
play. I once heard a wit, a mere wit, mind, an irreligious Parisian wit,
say, with regard to the temperance movement, that none, to their
personal benefit, joined it sooner than niggards and knaves; because, as
he affirmed, the one by it saved money and the other made money, as in
ship-owners cutting off the spirit ration without giving its equivalent,
and gamblers and all sorts of subtle tricksters sticking to cold water,
the better to keep a cool head for business."

"A wicked thought, indeed!" cried the stranger, feelingly.

"Yes," leaning over the table on his elbow and genially gesturing at him
with his forefinger: "yes, and, as I said, you don't remark the sting of
it?"

"I do, indeed. Most calumnious thought, Frank!"

"No humor in it?"

"Not a bit!"

"Well now, Charlie," eying him with moist regard, "let us drink. It
appears to me you don't drink freely."

"Oh, oh--indeed, indeed--I am not backward there. I protest, a freer
drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal
snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it.
"By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention
from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital
thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me so, I got it by heart at
two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which stands in
something the same relation to blank verse which that does to rhyme. A
sort of free-and-easy chant with refrains to it. Shall I recite it?"

"Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to hear," rejoined the
cosmopolitan, "the more so," he gravely proceeded, "as of late I have
observed in some quarters a disposition to disparage the press."

"Disparage the press?"

"Even so; some gloomy souls affirming that it is proving with that great
invention as with brandy or eau-de-vie, which, upon its first discovery,
was believed by the doctors to be, as its French name impli