Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/43

 to his right eye and politely stared at me. Worse than all, it had not entered my mind that I should have bought a pair of kid gloves for the occasion.

"It is astonishing how much 'punishment' well-bred people will take fully as smilingly as do all the 'fancy'; but I held them down, sir, for a full hour of torment; and certainly some things got into the talk that were not in the text. The next day a friend, whose wife was present, told me that when she was putting on her cloak, behind a screen in the robing room, she heard one ultra-fashionable lady say to another of the same species: "Well, I never was bored so in all my life!" Then I knew that I had scored a success.—Suppose I had talked down to the level of her comprehension!"