Prue and I | Page 6

mind suggested by all of these. There
is, in fact, if you will pardon a free use of the vernacular, there is a
grease-spot upon your remembrance of this dinner.
Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of mental result, you can
easily imagine the meats a little tough; a suspicion of smoke
somewhere in the sauces; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little salt; or
there might be the graver dissonance of claret not properly attempered,
or a choice Rhenish below the average mark, or the spilling of some of
that Arethusa Madeira, marvellous for its innumerable
circumnavigations of the globe, and for being as dry as the
conversation of the host. These things are not up to the high level of the
dinner; for wherever Aurelia dines, all accessories should be as perfect
in their kind as she, the principal, is in hers.
That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse than all. Suppose that
soup had trickled down the unimaginable berthe of Aurelia's dress
(since it might have done so), instead of wasting itself upon your
trowsers! Could even the irreproachable elegance of your manners have
contemplated, unmoved, a grease-spot upon your remembrance of the
peerless Aurelia?
You smile, of course, and remind me that that lady's manners are so
perfect that, if she drank poison, she would wipe her mouth after it as
gracefully as ever. How much more then, you say, in the case of such a
slight contretemps as spotting her dress, would she appear totally
unmoved.
So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and look, as pure as ever;
but, my young friend, her dress would not. Once, I dropped a pickled
oyster in the lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion, her sea-green
silk gown. I did not love my Prue the less; but there certainly was a
very unhandsome spot upon her dress. And although I know my Prue to
be spotless, yet, whenever I recall that day, I see her in a spotted gown,
and I would prefer never to have been obliged to think of her in such a
garment.
Can you not make the application to the case, very likely to happen, of
some disfigurement of that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In going
down stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr Carbuncle, who
is coming close behind with Mrs. Peony, both very eager for dinner,

tread upon the hem of that garment which my lips would grow pale to
kiss? The august Aurelia, yielding to natural laws, would be drawn
suddenly backward--a very undignified movement--and the dress
would be dilapidated. There would be apologies, and smiles, and
forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces, nor would there be the faintest
feeling of awkwardness or vexation in Aurelia's mind. But to you,
looking on, and, beneath all that pure show of waistcoat, cursing old
Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing of dresses and repair of the
toilette is by no means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the very
impatience that it produces in your mind jars upon the harmony of the
moment.
You will respond, with proper scorn, that you are not so absurdly
fastidious as to heed the little necessary drawbacks of social meetings,
and that you have not much regard for "the harmony of the occasion"
(which phrase I fear you will repeat in a sneering tone). You will do
very right in saying this; and it is a remark to which I shall give all the
hospitality of my mind, and I do so because I heartily coincide in it. I
hold a man to be very foolish who will not eat a good dinner because
the table-cloth is not clean, or who cavils at the spots upon the sun. But
still a man who does not apply his eye to a telescope or some kind of
prepared medium, does not see those spots, while he has just as much
light and heat as he who does.
So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful dinners
without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the
beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest
who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best wines, and
talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something, I can tell
you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips
in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It not
only hears what she says, but it perceives what she thinks and feels. It
lies like a bee in her flowery thoughts, sucking all their honey. If there
are unhandsome or unfeeling guests at table, it will not see them. It
knows only