"Well, I've given that such a punch it will want some _lemon-aid_ to recover."
I suppose he had some idea about lemon acid taking out spots.
But, the best thing was what he said to me. He is so droll that he insisted upon coming down, and finishing the dance just as he was. The funny fellow brushed against all the dresses in his way, and, finally said to me, as he pointed to a lemon-seed upon his coat:
"I feel so very _lemon-choly_ for what I have done."
I laughed very much (you were in the other room), but Mr. P. stepped up and ordered him to leave the house. Boosey said he would do no such thing; and I have no doubt we should have had a scene, if Mr. P. had not marched him straight to the door, and put him into a carriage, and told the driver where to take him. Mr. P. was red enough when he came back.
"No man shall insult me or my guests, by getting drunk in my house," said he; and he has since asked me not to invite Boosey nor "any of his kind," as he calls them, to our house. However, I think it will pass over. I tell him that all young men of spirit get a little excited with wine sometimes, and he mustn't be too hard upon them.
"Madame," said he to me, the first time I ventured to say that, "no man with genuine self-respect ever gets drunk twice; and, if you had the faintest idea of the misery which a little elegant intoxication has produced in scores of families that you know, you would never insinuate again that a little excitement from wine is an agreeable thing. There's your friend Mrs. Croesus (he thinks she's my friend, because we call each other 'dear'!); she is delighted to be a fashionable woman, and to be described as the 'peerless and accomplished Mrs. Croesus' in letters from the Watering-places to the Herald; but I tell you, if anything of the woman or the mother is left in the fashionable Mrs. Croesus, I could wring her heart as it never was wrung--and never shall be by me--by showing her the places that young Timon Croesus haunts, the people with whom he associates and the drunkenness, gambling, and worse dissipations of which he is guilty.
"Timon Croesus is eighteen or nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty years old; and Polly, I tell you, he is actually _blasé_, worn out with dissipation, the companion of blacklegs, the chevalier of Cyprians, tipsy every night, and haggard every morning. Timon Croesus is the puny caricature of a man, mentally, morally, and physically. He gets 'elegantly intoxicated' at your parties; he goes off to sup with Gauche Boosey; you and Mrs. Croesus think them young men of spirit,--it is an exhilarating case of sowing wildcats, you fancy,--and, when, at twenty-five, Timon Croesus stands ruined in the world, without aims or capacities, without the esteem of a single man or his own self-respect--youth, health, hope, and energy, all gone forever--then you and your dear Mrs. Croesus will probably wonder at the horrible harvest. Mrs. Potiphar, ask the Rev. Cream Cheese to omit his sermon upon the maidenhood of Lot's wife, and preach from this text: 'They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.' Good heavens! Polly, fancy our Fred growing up to such a life! I'd rather bury him to-morrow!"