(Sensation.) Get
him to eat a pate de foie gras, any pretext will do."
"Ah, but my uncle is a thin, tall man, and very niggardly and
abstemious."
"That sort of uncle is a monster; he misappropriates existence."
"Then," the speaker on uncles went on, "tell him, while he is
digesting it, that his banker has failed."
"How if he bears up?"
"Let loose a pretty girl on him."
"And if----?" asked the other, with a shake of the head.
"Then he wouldn't be an uncle--an uncle is a gay dog by nature."
"Malibran has lost two notes in her voice."
"No, sir, she has not."
"Yes, sir, she has."
"Oh, ho! No and yes, is not that the sum-up of all religious,
political, or literary dissertations? Man is a clown dancing on the
edge of an abyss."
"You would make out that I am a fool."
"On the contrary, you cannot make me out."
"Education, there's a pretty piece of tomfoolery. M. Heineffettermach
estimates the number of printed volumes at more than a thousand
millions; and a man cannot read more than a hundred and fifty thousand
in his lifetime. So, just tell me what that word _education_ means. For
some it consists in knowing the name of Alexander's horse, of the dog
Berecillo, of the Seigneur d'Accords, and in ignorance of the man to
whom we owe the discovery of rafting and the manufacture of porcelain.
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