which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery and delectable shapes, which delivered over to the voice,
the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit."

But it must have the right brain to work upon, and I doubt if there is
any brain to which it is so congenial and from which it brings so much
as that of a first-rate London old lady. I came away from the great city
with the feeling that this most complex product of civilization was
nowhere else developed to such perfection. The octogenarian Londoness
has been in society,--let us say the highest society,--all her days. She
is as tough as an old macaw, or she would not have lasted so long. She
has seen and talked with all the celebrities of three generations, all
the beauties of at least half a dozen decades. Her wits have been kept
bright by constant use, and as she is free of speech it requires some
courage to face her. Yet nobody can be more agreeable, even to young
persons, than one of these precious old dowagers. A great beauty is
almost certainly thinking how she looks while one is talking with her;
an authoress is waiting to have one praise her book; but a grand old
lady, who loves London society, who lives in it, who understands young
people and all sorts of people, with her high-colored recollections of
the past and her grand-maternal interests in the new generation, is the
best of companions, especially over a cup of tea just strong enough to
stir up her talking ganglions.

A breakfast, a lunch, a tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social
life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that
cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will
not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments
to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the
professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none