Literary Lapses | Page 6

Just then it turned out that the favourite child of the family, such a dear
little romp, had hidden Mr. Jones's hat; so papa said that he must stay,
and invited him to a pipe and a chat. Papa had the pipe and gave Jones
the chat, and still he stayed. Every moment he meant to take the plunge,

but couldn't. Then papa began to get very tired of Jones, and fidgeted
and finally said, with jocular irony, that Jones had better stay all night,
they could give him a shake-down. Jones mistook his meaning and
thanked him with tears in his eyes, and papa put Jones to bed in the
spare room and cursed him heartily.
After breakfast next day, papa went off to his work in the City, and left
Jones playing with the baby, broken- hearted. His nerve was utterly
gone. He was meaning to leave all day, but the thing had got on his
mind and he simply couldn't. When papa came home in the evening he
was surprised and chagrined to find Jones still there. He thought to
jockey him out with a jest, and said he thought he'd have to charge him
for his board, he! he! The unhappy young man stared wildly for a
moment, then wrung papa's hand, paid him a month's board in advance,
and broke down and sobbed like a child.
In the days that followed he was moody and unapproachable. He lived,
of course, entirely in the drawing-room, and the lack of air and exercise
began to tell sadly on his health. He passed his time in drinking tea and
looking at the photographs. He would stand for hours gazing at the
photographs of papa's uncle's friend in his Bengal uniform--talking to it,
sometimes swearing bitterly at it. His mind was visibly failing.
At length the crash came. They carried him upstairs in a raging
delirium of fever. The illness that followed was terrible. He recognized
no one, not even papa's uncle's friend in his Bengal uniform. At times
he would start up from his bed and shriek, "Well, I think I..." and then
fall back upon the pillow with a horrible laugh. Then, again, he would
leap up and cry, "Another cup of tea and more photographs! More
photographs! Har! Har!"
At length, after a month of agony, on the last day of his vacation, he
passed away. They say that when the last moment came, he sat up in
bed with a beautiful smile of confidence playing upon his face, and said,
"Well--the angels are calling me; I'm afraid I really must go now. Good
afternoon."
And the rushing of his spirit from its prison-house was as rapid as a

hunted cat passing over a garden fence.

A Christmas Letter
(In answer to a young lady who has sent an invitation to be present at a
children's party)
Madamoiselle,
Allow me very gratefully but firmly to refuse your kind invitation. You
doubtless mean well; but your ideas are unhappily mistaken.
Let us understand one another once and for all. I cannot at my mature
age participate in the sports of children with such abandon as I could
wish. I entertain, and have always entertained, the sincerest regard for
such games as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man's Buff. But I have now
reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a
powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me
to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could
only culminate in reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders
with a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and knees
under the pretence that I am a bear without a sense of personal
insufficiency, which is painful to me.
Neither can I look on with a complacent eye at the sad spectacle of
your young clerical friend, the Reverend Mr. Uttermost Farthing,
abandoning himself to such gambols and appearing in the role of life
and soul of the evening. Such a degradation of his holy calling grieves
me, and I cannot but suspect him of ulterior motives.
You inform me that your maiden aunt intends to help you to entertain
the party. I have not, as you know, the honour of your aunt's
acquaintance, yet I think I may with reason surmise that she will
organize games--guessing games--in which she will ask me to name a
river in Asia beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put a
hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children will clap their
hands. These games, my dear young friend, involve the use of a more

adaptable intellect than mine, and I cannot consent to be a party to