Consul (as I am always called), I wish I could discover a
new pleasure.' 'Try virtue!' was my reply. A pompous ex-Governor said
swaggeringly to me at the last dinner party at which I assisted,
'Well, Mr. Consul, I suppose you Europeans think us semi-civilised
here in America?' 'Almost!' said I. Now ask Tom if that was not pretty
considerable smart. But assure him at the same time, it is nothing at
all to what I _could_ do in the way of impertinence! Need I say how
truly and affectionately we all love you?
"T.C. GRATTAN."
* * * * *
I wrote back that I would enter the lists with him in the matter of
impertinence; and as a sample told him that I thought he had better
return to the punning.
I could, I doubt not, find among my mother's papers some further
letters that might be worth printing or quoting. But my waning space
warns me that I must not indulge myself with doing so.
CHAPTER XVIII.
I said at the beginning of the last chapter, that during the period,
some of the recollections of which I had been chronicling, the two
greatest sorrows I had ever known had befallen me. A third came
subsequently. But that belonged to a period of my life which does not
fall within the limits I have assigned to these reminiscences. Of the
first, the death of my mother, I have spoken. The other, the death of
my wife, followed it at no great distance, and was of course a far
more terrible one.
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