n speech is altogether
free from "Things one would rather have expressed differently;" but,
naturally, the great bulk of them belong to social conversation; and,
just as the essential quality of a "bull" is that it expresses
substantial sense in the guise of verbal nonsense, so the social "Thing
one would rather have expressed differently" must, to be really
precious, show a polite intention struggling with verbal infelicity. Mr.
Corney Grain, narrating his early experiences as a social entertainer,
used to describe an evening party given by the Dowager Duchess of S----
at which he was engaged to play and sing. Late in the evening the young
Duke of S---- came in, and Mr. Grain heard his mother prompting him in
an anxious undertone: "Pray go and say something civil to Mr. Grain. You
know he's quite a gentleman--not a common professional person." Thus
instructed, the young Duke strolled up to the piano and said,
"Good-evening, Mr. Grain. I'm sorry I am so late, and have missed your
performance. But I was at Lady ----'s. _We had a dancing-dog there._"

The married daughter of one of the most brilliant men of Queen
Victoria's reign has an only child. An amiable matron of her
acquaintance, anxious to be thoroughly kind, said, "O Mrs. W----, I hear
that you have such a clever little boy." Mrs. W., beaming with a
mother's pride, replied, "Well, yes, I think Roger is rather a sharp
little fellow." "Yes," replied her friend. "How often one sees
that--the talent skipping a generation!" A stately old rector in
Buckinghamshire--a younger son of a great family--whom I knew well in my
youth, had, and was justly proud of, a remarkably pretty and
well-appointed rectory. To him an acquaintance, coming for the first
time to call, genially exclaimed, "What a delightful rectory! Really a
stranger arriving in the village, and not knowing who lived here, would
take it for a gentleman's house." One of our best-known novelists, the
most sensitively courteous of men, arriving very late at a dinner-party,
was overcome with confusion--"I am truly sorry to be so shockingly
late." The genial hostess, only meaning to assure him that he was not
the last, emphatically replied "O, Mr. ----, you can't come too late." A
member of the present[33] Cabinet was engaged with his wife and daughter
to dine at a friend's house in the height of the season. The daughter
fell ill at the last moment, and her parents first telegraphed her
excuses for dislocating the