Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/29

Rh the bourgeoisie was an amusement of which he never tired. He delighted to watch for the "Do you really mean it, Mr. Wilde?" look on the face of some guileless or stupid listener. I remember being at a dinner-party on one occasion when he gravely propounded the theory that missionaries were the divinely provided food for those desolate cannibal islands where other food was scarce. "O are you really serious, Mr. Wilde?" said an innocent young thing at his side. Anything more profoundly serious than Wilde's expression in answer cannot be conceived.

While he would sometimes be thus deliberately whimsical, many of his most famous mots were not so much meant to be witty as to be true. To tell the truth in a world that has so little courage to tell it, to think for oneself in a world that has always let others think for it, by sheer contrast, is one of the most effective forms of wit. To say—to take one of Wilde's most notorious mots—that you are disappointed with the Atlantic seems nothing but a huge joke, a pose, to a world which is accustomed to go into false raptures over nature, and to speak of the Atlan-