Prue and I | Page 5

integrity of your shirt-collar would
have interfered,) and smiling pleasantly, so that her going around the
corner was like a gentle sunset, so seemed she to disappear in her own
smiling; or--if you choose, in view of the apple difficulties--like a
rainbow after a storm.
If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she may know of my
existence; not otherwise. And even then she knows me only as a funny
old gentleman, who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled over an
apple-woman.
My fancy from that moment followed her. How grateful I was to the
wrinkled Eve's extortion, and to the untoward tumble, since it procured
me the sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from that. For I
knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered the house of her host with
beaming eyes, and my fancy heard her sparkling story. You consider
yourself happy because you are sitting by her and helping her to a
lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. But I was her theme
for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian. She was
the Homer of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to music, in
telling it. Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to have called a
brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not think so much of
passing Aurelia the mottoes, my dear young friend.
There was the advantage of not going to that dinner. Had I been invited,
as you were, I should have pestered Prue about the buttons on my white
waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piecing adolescent trowsers.
She would have been flustered, fearful of being too late, of tumbling
the garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in some way,
(admirable woman!) I, in my natural impatience, might have let drop a
thoughtless word, which would have been a pang in her heart and a tear
in her eye, for weeks afterward.
As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am unaccustomed to
prandial recreations), I should not have had that solacing image of quiet

Prue, and the trowsers, as the back-ground in the pictures of the gay
figures I passed, making each, by contrast, fairer. I should have been
wondering what to say and do at the dinner. I should surely have been
very warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, waning sunlight. Need I
tell you that I should not have stopped for apples, but instead of
economically tumbling into the street with apples and apple-women,
whereby I merely rent my trowsers across the knee, in a manner that
Prue can readily, and at little cost, repair. I should, beyond
peradventure, have split a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort of
straining my large hands into them, which would, also, have caused me
additional redness in the face, and renewed fluttering.
Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia passing in her carriage, nor
would she have smiled at me, nor charmed my memory with her
radiance, nor the circle at dinner with the sparkling Iliad of my woes.
Then at the table, I should not have sat by her. You would have had
that pleasure; I should have led out the maiden aunt from the country,
and have talked poultry, when I talked at all. Aurelia would not have
remarked me. Afterward, in describing the dinner to her virtuous
parents, she would have concluded, "and one old gentleman, whom I
didn't know."
No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of manner I yet greatly
commend, I am content, if you are. How much better it was that I was
not invited to that dinner, but was permitted, by a kind fate, to furnish a
subject for Aurelia's wit.
There is one other advantage in sending your fancy to dinner, instead of
going yourself. It is, that then the occasion remains wholly fair in your
memory. You, who devote yourself to dining out, and who are to be
daily seen affably sitting down to such feasts, as I know mainly by
hearsay--by the report of waiters, guests, and others who were
present--you cannot escape the little things that spoil the picture, and
which the fancy does not see.
For instance, in handing you the _potage à la Bisque_, at the very
commencement of this dinner to-day, John, the waiter, who never did
such a thing before, did this time suffer the plate to tip, so that a little of
that rare soup dripped into your lap--just enough to spoil those trowsers,
which is nothing to you, because you can buy a great many more
trowsers, but which little event is inharmonious with the fine porcelain

dinner service, with the fragrant wines, the glittering glass, the
beautiful guests, and the mood of