Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/194

 "Why, moderate drinking, of course," replied the novelist, lapsing into the wide arms of the chair, like one from whom all the virtue has departed. "Teach Americans to drink as the Greeks drink to-day: wine everywhere, no one drunk."

"Not a bad idea," chuckled His Excellency.

"An idea of quite startling originality," I added.

"Our 'dry battery' is crackling with suppressed thunderbolts," said Oliver. "But"—he glanced at his watch—"it lacks only ten minutes of midnight and the dawn of a better era for the world. While the inhabitants of this borough of Manhattan are meditating on their sins of the past year, and signifying repentance by various acts of atonement, it is fitting that we should not let the hour pass without some appropriate ceremony. Professor, you haven't seen my new set of Casanova—a Christmas gift from the wittiest of my French friends. Let me show it to you. Willys admires it immensely."

Willys and I followed our host to his bookshelves, while Cornelia idly turned the pages of the new American Mercury. But why go into details? Oliver's edition of the Mémoires, handsomely bound in full morocco and locked in a glass case, proved to be the mask of His Excellen-