When the ladies had retired, the conversation, as usual, became still
more animated; many good things were broached which had been thought
of during dinner, but which would not exactly do for a lady's ear; and
though I cannot positively affirm that there was much wit uttered, yet
I have certainly heard many contests of rare wit produce much less
laughter. Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much
too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humour is the oil and wine
of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that
where the jokes are rather small, and the laughter abundant. The Squire
told several long stories of early college pranks and adventures, in
some of which the parson had been a sharer; though in looking at the
latter, it required some effort of imagination to figure such a little
dark anatomy of a man into the perpetrator of a madcap gambol. Indeed,
the two college chums presented pictures of what men may be made by
their different lots in life. The Squire had left the university to live
lustily on his paternal domains, in the vigorous enjoyment of prosperity
and sunshine, and had flourished on to a hearty and florid old age;
whilst the poor parson, on the contrary, had dried and withered away,
among dusty tomes, in the silence and shadows of his study.
Still there seemed to be a spark of almost extinguished fire, feebly
glimmering in the bottom of his soul; and as the Squire hinted at a sly
story of the parson and a pretty milkmaid, whom they once met on the
banks of the Isis, the old gentleman made an "alphabet of faces,"
which, as far as I could decipher his physiognomy, I verily believe was
indicative of laughter;--indeed, I have rarely met with an old gentleman
who took absolutely offence at the imputed gallantries of his youth.
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