suggested two others. Poor Frank, who was quite master of his one theme,
George, finds unawares that he is dealing with two, gets flurried, but
plunges on, only to find, in his remembering, that these two have doubled
into four, and then, conscious that in an instant they will be eight, and,
which is worse, eight themes or subjects on which he is not prepared to
speak at all, probably wishes he had never begun. It is certain that every
one else wishes it, whether he does or not. You need not explain. People
of sense understand something.

Do you remember the illustration of repartee in Miss Edgeworth? It
is this:--

Mr. Pope, who was crooked and cross, was talking with a young officer.
The officer said he thought that in a certain sentence an
interrogation-mark was needed.

"Do you know what an interrogation-mark is?" snarled out the crooked,
cross little man.

"It is a crooked little thing that asks questions," said the young man.

And he shut up Mr. Pope for that day.

But you can see that he would not have shut up Mr. Pope at all if he had
had to introduce his answer and explain it from point to point. If he had
said, "Do you really suppose I do not know? Why, really, as long ago as
when I was at the Charter House School, old William Watrous, who was
master there then,--he had been at the school himself, when he and Ezekiel
Cheever were boys,--told me that a point of interrogation was a little
crooked thing that asks questions."