Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACKMontaigne and “Howel’s Letters” are my bedside books.If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattleme to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever,and don’t weary me. I like to hear them tell their oldstories over and over again. I read them in the dozyhours, and only half remember them. I am informedthat both of them tell coarse stories. I don’t heed them.It was the custom of their time, as it is of Highlandersand Hottentots to dispense with a part of dress whichwe all wear in cities. But people can’t afford to beshocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every timethey meet an individual who wears his national airyraiment. I never knew the “Arabian Nights” was an improperbook until I happened once to read it in a “familyedition.” Well, qui s’excuse …. Who, pray, has accusedme as yet? Here am I smothering dear good oldMrs. Grundy’s objections, before she has opened hermouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing,Roundabout Papers12the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, thePerigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk ofKing Charles’s Council. Their egotism in nowise disgustsme. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason,talk about themselves. What subject does a man knowbetter? If I stamp on a friend’s corn, his outcry is genuine—heconfounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth.He is speaking about himself and expressing his emotionof grief or pain in a manner perfectly authenticand veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrongdone to me by somebody, as far back as the year 1838:whenever I think of it and have had a couple of glassesof wine, I CANNOT help telling it. The toe is stampedupon; the pain is just as keen as ever: I cry out, andperhaps utter imprecatory language. I told the storyonly last Wednesday at dinner:—“Mr. Roundabout,” says a lady sitting by me, “howcomes it that in your books there is a certain class (itmay be of men, or it may be of women, but that is notthe question in point)—how comes it, dear sir, there isa certain class of persons whom you always attack in