"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune. Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?--would-be wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a friend of theirs the week before last."
"Oh! they are indeed terrible," agreed Cecil; "they dabble in inverted commas as Italians dabble in garlic."
"I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a confirmed drunkard."
"Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!"
"Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations," added Elisabeth. "There are few things in the world more heart-rending than a humorous recitation--with action. As for me, it unmans me completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the carriage comes to take me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being the worse for wear."
"It seems to me after all," Cecil remarked, "that the evil that you would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them, at the same time."
"I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to despise them--that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ever breathed."