Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon].

  • John Timbs
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    169/188 page 153
    A quarrel is, nine times out of ten, merely the fermenta- tion of a misunderstanding.—Bulwer. Man is but a rough pebble without the attrition received from contact with the gentler sex: it is wonderful how the ladies pumice a man down into smoothness, which occasions him to roll over and over with the rest of the species, jostling, but not wounding his neighbours, as the waves of circumstance bring him into collision with them. —Captain Marryat. The restraint which the customs of the world have put upon the conduct of females, renders the best among them, more or less, hypocrites. How hard this is—that the in- genuous confiding qualities of woman’s heart should be thus tortured and spoiled; and so it must be, while the present order of things lasts.—Theodore Hook. “ Never be critical upon the ladies,” was the maxim of an old Irish peer, remarkable for his homage to the sex: “the only way in the world that a true gentleman ever will attempt to look at the faults of a pretty woman is to shut his eyes.” Swift calls story-telling a knack; and Steele remarks that “ a story-teller is born as well as a poet.” The late Sir Walter Scott was an excellent story-teller in his boy- hood, an indication of genius which may be regarded as the corner-stone of his after fame. Story-tellers, or anecdote-mongers, are very liable to re- petitions. They seldom change their illustrative stories, so that amongst those who mix very much with one another, the same story is expected on the same occasion, as much as the known songs of an amateur singer. Again, so treacherous is the memory of some story-tellers, that they have been known to tell the same story, in the same words, to the same person—even to him who had before imparted it in the course of the same evening. Lord Byron knew a dull man, who lived on a bon mot of Moore’s for a week ; and his lordship once offered a wager of a considerable sum, that the reciter was guiltless of under- standing its point; but he could get no one to accept the bet.
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image