That the social is also somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for inspiriting.  It sticks and clogs.  The improvising songster is missed, the convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the upper to the fat citizen’s, where, instead of coming in the sequence of talk, they are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old Deluge sharks in monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries.  Nor are these the less welcome for the violence of their introduction among a people glad to be set burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of digs in the ribs.  Dan Merion, to give an example.  That was Dan Merion’s joke with the watchman:  and he said that other thing to the Marquis of Kingsbury, when the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race.  And old Dan is dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the question:  Is genius hereditary?  And the affirmative and negative are respectively maintained, rather against the Yes is the dispute, until a member of the audience speaks of Dan Merion’s having left a daughter reputed for a sparkling wit not much below the level of his own.  Why, are you unaware that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick versus Dannisburgh was old Dan Merion’s girl—­and his only child?  It is true; for a friend had it from a man who had it straight from Mr. Braddock, of the firm of Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in the action, who told him he could sit listening to her for hours, and that she was as innocent as day; a wonderful combination of a good woman and a clever woman and a real beauty.  Only her misfortune was to have a furiously jealous husband, and they say he went mad after hearing the verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles.  A witty woman is such salt that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more than any of the absent, the dowering heavens not having yet showered her like very plentifully upon us.  Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier had been travelling with her.  Miss Asper heard of it.  Her uncle, Mr. Quintin Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and titled dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin, at whose table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was mentioned.  Lady Wathin’s table could dispense with witty women, and, for that matter, witty men.  The intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped would have clashed.  She preferred, as hostess, the old legal anecdotes sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her guests.  She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the upstart.