We shall see later on that no department of human speech is altogether free from “Things one would rather have expressed differently;” but, naturally, the great bulk of them belong to social conversation; and, just as the essential quality of a “bull” is that it expresses substantial sense in the guise of verbal nonsense, so the social “Thing one would rather have expressed differently” must, to be really precious, show a polite intention struggling with verbal infelicity.  Mr. Corney Grain, narrating his early experiences as a social entertainer, used to describe an evening party given by the Dowager Duchess of S——­ at which he was engaged to play and sing.  Late in the evening the young Duke of S——­ came in, and Mr. Grain heard his mother prompting him in an anxious undertone:  “Pray go and say something civil to Mr. Grain.  You know he’s quite a gentleman—­not a common professional person.”  Thus instructed, the young Duke strolled up to the piano and said, “Good-evening, Mr. Grain.  I’m sorry I am so late, and have missed your performance.  But I was at Lady ——­’s. We had a dancing-dog there.”

The married daughter of one of the most brilliant men of Queen Victoria’s reign has an only child.  An amiable matron of her acquaintance, anxious to be thoroughly kind, said, “O Mrs. W——­, I hear that you have such a clever little boy.”  Mrs. W., beaming with a mother’s pride, replied, “Well, yes, I think Roger is rather a sharp little fellow.”  “Yes,” replied her friend.  “How often one sees that—­the talent skipping a generation!” A stately old rector in Buckinghamshire—­a younger son of a great family—­whom I knew well in my youth, had, and was justly proud of, a remarkably pretty and well-appointed rectory.  To him an acquaintance, coming for the first time to call, genially exclaimed, “What a delightful rectory!  Really a stranger arriving in the village, and not knowing who lived here, would take it for a gentleman’s house.”  One of our best-known novelists, the most sensitively courteous of men, arriving very late at a dinner-party, was overcome with confusion—­“I am truly sorry to be so shockingly late.”  The genial hostess, only meaning to assure him that he was not the last, emphatically replied “O, Mr. ——­, you can’t come too late.”  A member of the present[33] Cabinet was engaged with his wife and daughter to dine at a friend’s house in the height of the season.  The daughter fell ill at the last moment, and her parents first telegraphed her excuses for dislocating the party, and then repeated them earnestly on arriving.  The hostess, receiving them with the most cordial sympathy, exclaimed, “Oh, it doesn’t matter in the least to us; we are only so sorry for your daughter.”  An eminent authoress, who lives not a hundred miles from Richmond Hill, was asked, in my hearing, if she had been to “write her name” at White Lodge, in Richmond Park (then occupied by the Duchess of Took), on the occasion of an important event in the Duchess’s family.  She replied that she had not, because she did not know the Duchess, and saw no use in adding another stranger’s signature to the enormous list.  “Oh, that’s a pity,” was the rejoinder; “the Royal Family think more of the quantity of names than the quality.”