“Have you lace nightcaps?”

The clerk looked at me with a troubled, bewildered glance, and made no reply.  I supposed he had not understood me, and repeated the question.  Then he answered, dubiously,—­

“We have breakfast-caps.”

It was my turn to look bewildered.  What had I to do with breakfast-caps?  What connection was there between my question and his answer?  What field was there for any further inquiry?  “Have you ox-bows?” imagine a farmer to ask.  “We have rainbows,” says the shopman.  “Have you cameo-pins?” inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins.  “We have linchpins.”  “Have you young apple-trees?” asks the nursery-man.  “We have whiffle-trees.”  If I had wanted breakfast-caps, shouldn’t I have asked for breakfast-caps?  Or do the Boston people take their breakfast at one o’clock in the morning?  I concluded that the man was demented, and marched out of the shop.  When I laid the matter before Halicarnassus, the following interesting colloquy took place.

I.  “What do you suppose it meant?”

H.  “He took you for a North American Indian.”

I.  “What do you mean?”

H.  “He did not understand your patois.”

I.  “What patois?”

H.  “Your squaw dialect.  You should have asked for a bonnet de nuit.”

I.  “Why?”

H.  “People never talk about nightcaps in good society.”

I.  “Oh!”

I was very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was tired; so we went into a restaurant and ordered strawberries,—­that luscious fruit, quivering on the border-land of ambrosia and nectar.

“Doubtless,” says honest, quaint, delightful Isaac,—­and he never spoke a truer word,—­“doubtless, God might have made a better berry than a strawberry, but, doubtless, God never did.”

The bill of fare rated their excellence at fifteen cents.

“Not unreasonable,” I pantomimed.

“Not if I pay for them,” replied Halicarnassus.

Then we sat and amused ourselves after the usual brilliant fashion of people who are waiting in hotel parlors, railroad-stations, and restaurants.  We surveyed the gilding and the carpet and the mirrors and the curtains.  We hazarded profound conjectures touching the people assembled.  We studied the bill of fare as if it contained the secret of our army’s delay upon the Potomac, and had just concluded that the first crop of strawberries was exhausted and they were waiting for the second crop to grow, when Hebe hove in sight with her nectared ambrosia in a pair of cracked, browny-white saucers, with browny-green silver spoons.  I poured out what professed to be cream, but proved very low-spirited milk, in which a few disheartened strawberries appeared rari nantes.  I looked at them in dismay.  Then curiosity smote me, and I counted them.  Just fifteen.

“Cent apiece,” said Halicarnassus.

I was not thinking of the cent, but I had promised myself a feast; and what is a feast, susceptible of enumeration?  Cleopatra was right.  “That love”—­and the same is true of strawberries—­“is beggarly which can be reckoned.”  Infinity alone is glory.