tonishment, that Herman Melville, in
nervous fear of ridicule, apologized, most gracefully, of course, for
his beauteous Fayaway's primitive mode of carving a fish; but I fancy I
hear myself, or you either, sir, begging the community to shut its dear
eyes, while Harry's little victim, all unconscious of his fate,
disappeared behind the walls, coral and white, of her lips and teeth.

Oh, isn't it perfectly delicious to meet a real, frank, merry, wise sort
of a girl, who doesn't wear spectacles or blue stockings, nor disdain
the Lancers or a new frock with nineteen flounces? Just fancy it,
Gustav, my dear fellow, chatting with the Venus of Milo, in a New York
dining room, and she all done up in blue poplin, with cords and tassels
and all that, with that lovely hair tumbling about in a scarlet net, and
such a splendid enjoyment of her own great grace, and royal claiming of
homage! Eating mashed potatoes too, and celery, and roast beef, to keep
up that magnificent physique of hers! Oh, it's rare!

But Henrietta couldn't forget Snowe, any more than Snowe could forget
himself; so, after she had gazed with delight at the red veins of wine
that threaded the jelly-like custard, with its imprisoned macaroons,
looking like gold fish asleep in a globe of sun-dyed water, she went on,
as if the conversation had not been interrupted:

'Do you know, Fan, that he reminds me constantly of champagne. If
there's anything on earth or in a cellar that I do detest, its
champagne; such smiling, brilliant-looking impudence, that comes out
fizz--bang! and that's the end of it; there's not so much as the quaver
of an echo. You drink it, and instead of seeing cool vineyards and
purple waters and cataracts of icicles in your glass, you find a pale,
gaunt spectre, or a poor, half-drowned Bacchus, staring at you. It's
just so with your Landon Snowe. You, and other people, too, have a
_habit_ of admiring him, a great creature with eyes of milky blue, who
goes about disbursing his small coin like some old Aladdin! Why, my dear
children, the man, I don't doubt, is this moment congratulating himself,
in his solitude at Delmonico's, upon his great penetration. Didn't you
see him studying me with a great flourish of deference, and throwing
his old, three-birded snapdragons into my White Mountains? If he had
been as ugly as a Scarron, now, and had known what he said, I could have
loved him for that, for, of all things, I do delight in dragons! Such
sieges