d magically all manner of strange and precious
things, one after another, without pause. He must have invention keeping
pace with utterance. He must be inexhaustible. Only so can he exhaust
us.

I have a friend whom I would praise. There are many other of my friends
to whom I am indebted for much laughter; but I do believe that if all of
them sent in their bills to-morrow and all of them overcharged me not a
little, the total of all those totals would be less appalling than that
which looms in my own vague estimate of what I owe to Comus. Comus I
call him here in observance of the line drawn between public and private
virtue, and in full knowledge that he would of all men be the least glad
to be quite personally thanked and laurelled in the market-place for the
hours he has made memorable among his cronies. No one is so diffident as
he, no one so self-postponing. Many people have met him again and
again without faintly suspecting 'anything much' in him. Many of his
acquaintances--friends, too--relatives, even--have lived and died in the
belief that he was quite ordinary. Thus is he the more greatly valued by
his cronies. Thus do we pride ourselves on possessing some curious right
quality to which alone he is responsive. But it would seem that either
this asset of ours or its effect on him is intermittent. He can be dull
and null enough with us sometimes--a mere asker of questions, or drawer
of comparisons between this and that brand of cigarettes, or full
expatiator on the merits of some new patent razor. A whole hour and more
may be wasted in such humdrum and darkness. And then--something will
have happened. There has come a spark in the murk; a flame now,
presage of a radiance: Comus has begun. His face is a great part of his
equipment. A cast of it might be somewhat akin to the comic mask of the
ancients; but no cast could be worthy of it; mobility is the essence of
it. It flickers and shifts in accord to the matter of his discourse; it
contracts and it expands; is there anything its elastic can't express?
Comus would be eloquent even were he dumb. And he is mellifluous. His
voice, while he develops an idea or conjures up a scene, takes on a
peculiar richness and unction. If he be describing an actual scene,
voice and face are adaptable to those of the actual persons therein. But
it is not in such mimicry that he excels. As a reporter he has rivals.
For the most part, he moves on a higher plane that of mere fact: he