to tea, because it would be making a meal of sweetmeats.  But when he is present with others of different temperament, he is entertaining.  He always reminds me of the dessert called floating island, beaten egg on custard.  On all subjects—­political, social and religious—­he takes the smooth side.  He is a minister, and preached a course of fifty-one sermons on heaven in one year, saying that he would preach on the last and fifty-second Sunday concerning a place of quite opposite character; but the audience assembling on that day, in August, he rose and said that it was too hot to preach, and so dismissed them immediately with a benediction.  At the tea-table I never could persuade him to take any currant-jelly, for he always preferred strawberry-jam.  He rejects acidity.

We generally place opposite him at the tea-table Mr. Givemfits.  He is the very antipodes of Dr. Butterfield; and when the two talk, you get both sides of a subject.  I have to laugh to hear them talk; and my little girl, at the controversial collisions, gets into such hysterics that we have to send her with her mouth full into the next room, to be pounded on the back to stop her from choking.  My friend Givemfits is “down on” almost everything but tea, and I think one reason of his nervous, sharp, petulant way is that he takes too much of this beverage.  He thinks the world is very soon coming to an end, and says, “The sooner the better, confound it!” He is a literary man, a newspaper writer, a book critic, and so on; but if he were a minister, he would preach a course of fifty-one sermons on “future punishment,” proposing to preach the fifty-second and last Sabbath on “future rewards;” but the last Sabbath, coming in December, he would say to his audience, “Really, it is too cold to preach.  We will close with the doxology and omit the benediction, as I must go down by the stove to warm.”

He does not like women—­thinks they are of no use in the world, save to set the tea a-drawing.  Says there was no trouble in Paradise till a female came there, and that ever since Adam lost the rib woman has been to man a bad pain in the side.  He thinks that Dr. Butterfield, who sits opposite him at the tea-table, is something of a hypocrite, and asks him all sorts of puzzling questions.  The fact is, it is vinegar-cruet against sugar-bowl in perpetual controversy.  I do not blame Givemfits as much as many do.  His digestion is poor.  The chills and fever enlarged his spleen.  He has frequent attacks of neuralgia.  Once a week he has the sick headache.  His liver is out of order.  He has twinges of rheumatism.  Nothing he ever takes agrees with him but tea, and that doesn’t.  He has had a good deal of trial, and the thunder of trouble has soured the milk of human kindness.  When he gets criticising Dr. Butterfield’s sermons and books, I have sometimes to pretend that I hear somebody at the front door, so that I can go out in the hall and have an uproarious laugh without being indecorous.  It is one of the great amusements of my life to have on opposite sides of my tea-table Dr. Butterfield and Mr. Givemfits.