Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/65

 are intimates at the eventful moments of our lives! We have trysted with them at the Continental, and in marbled halls, when

At the wedding breakfast (an extinct ceremony) they have prompted mouthings in honour of the ladies, and composed whole speeches to the health of the bride. They have even soothed the savage breast at those great and heavy dinners in Cromwell Road where Uncle Boanerges plays the gouty Elagabalus once a year. Only at funerals shall be missed the captive bubbles struggling, and rightly, to be free: though here the need of them is sorest, and you must perforce put up with Marsala, or, if a first class interment, with brown.