“No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and--”
“Well--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy.”
I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this unimaginable revelation, then said:
“I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to love! I've borne enough for her--that is, nothing that could do her any good--though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So, look at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that can get a woman's love.”
“Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and neuter!”
“You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry--”
“Thank God they don't, Daniel!” sighed out I devoutly.
“Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking about the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman he loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of Orion? I can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a man even tolerable to a woman!”
“I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is tolerable to a woman!”
“No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate the ability is--in order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet and strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack Mankyn, 'who don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts of men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)--sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the power to make a good appearance before her!”