I tried to remember
it afterwards, and jotted down a few notes, but I found the first bar
took up seven sheets of fool's-cap, and so gave it up. Then Mozart tried
his hand on a banjo for my amusement, Mendelssohn sang a half-dozen of
his songs without words, and then Gottschalk played one of Poe's weird
stories on the piano.
"Then Carlyle came in, and Hawley introduced me to him. He was a gruff
old gentleman, and seemingly anxious to have Froude become an eligible,
and I judged from the rather fierce manner in which he handled a club he
had in his hand, that there were one or two other men of prominence still
living he was anxious to meet. Dickens, too, was desirous of a two-minute
interview with certain of his at present purely mortal critics; and,
between you and me, if the wink that Bacon gave Shakespeare when I spoke
of Ignatius Donnelly meant anything, the famous cryptogrammarian will do
well to drink a bottle of the elixir of life every morning before
breakfast, and stave off dissolution as long as he can.
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