, no, I solemnly promised my dear dead mother never
to touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the morning; besides,
I've just had one!"

Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I feel that I am wrong
in implying that the conversation was mainly composed of anecdotes. It
was mainly composed of narratives; but that is a different matter. There
is a clear distinction between the mere story-teller and the narrator.
Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us
with accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novels
in a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the most
ready-witted man I ever met. His inexhaustible gift of lightning
repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the
midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact
and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm." At
the luncheon party, he related several episodes from his chequered
journalistic career in a style so easy and yet so graphic that one felt,
if they could have been taken down in shorthand, they would have been
literature ready-made. It is a clear injustice to confound such talk as
this with a mere bandying of Joe-Millers.

The one drawback to American hospitality is that it is apt to be too
profuse. I have more than once had to offer a mild protest against being
entertained by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that would
have befitted a millionaire. The possibility of returning the compliment
in kind affords the canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner three
times more lavish and expensive than you want is not sweetened by the
thought that you may, in turn, give your host a dinner three times more
expensive and lavish than _he_ wants. Both parties, on this system,
suffer in digestion and in pocket, while only Delmonico is the gainer.
It seems to me, on the whole, that in this country the millionaire is
too commonly allowed to fix the standard of expenditure. Society would
not be less, but more, agreeable if, instead of always emulating the
splendours of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of Horatian
frugality. And I note that in club life, if the plutocrat sets the
standard of expenditure, the aristocrat looks to the training of the
servants. Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is not the
slightest trace of democratic equality in their dress, their manners, or
their speech.

Take it