e and then suddenly fetch out a shout that would make
you jump out of the United States."

By this time the insurrection at Mrs. Dodge's table--at least that part
of it in my immediate neighborhood--had died down, and the silence was
spreading, couple by couple, down the long table. I went on in a lower
and still lower mumble, and most impressively--

"During one of Mr. X. X.'s mute intervals, a man opposite us approached
the end of a story which he had been telling his elbow-neighbor. He was
speaking in a low voice--there was much noise--I was deeply interested,
and straining my ears to catch his words, stretching my neck, holding my
breath, to hear, unconscious of everything but the fascinating tale. I
heard him say, 'At this point he seized her by her long hair--she
shrieking and begging--bent her neck across his knee, and with one awful
sweep of the razor--'

"HOW DO YOU LIKE CHICA-A-AGO?!!!"

That was X. X.'s interruption, hearable at thirty miles. By the time I
had reached that place in my mumblings Mrs. Dodge's dining-room was so
silent, so breathlessly still, that if you had dropped a thought
anywhere in it you could have heard it smack the floor.[18] When I
delivered that yell the entire dinner company jumped as one person, and
punched their heads through the ceiling, damaging it, for it was only
lath and plaster, and it all came down on us, and much of it went into
the victuals and made them gritty, but no one was hurt. Then I explained
why it was that I had played that game, and begged them to take the
moral of it home to their hearts and be rational and merciful
thenceforth, and cease from screaming in mass, and agree to let one
person talk at a time and the rest listen in grateful and unvexed peace.
They granted my prayer, and we had a happy time all the rest of the
evening; I do not think I have ever had a better time in my life. This
was largely because the new terms enabled me to keep the floor--now that
I had it--and do all the talking myself. I do like to hear myself talk.
Susy has exposed this in her Biography of me.

Dean Sage was a delightful man, yet in one way a terror to his friends,
for he loved them so well that he could not refrain from playing
practical jokes on them. We have to be pretty deeply in love with a
person before we can do him the honor of joking familiarly with him.
Dean Sage was the best citizen I have known in America. It takes courage
to be a good citizen, and he had plent