The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-05-17


down in his diary when he got home. Had
he been man of many bottles he could
neither have remembered nor written. For
stories told in the French tongue he had a
great fondness. His delight in that language
was only second indeed to Thackeray y's-no
one ever read and enjoyed Thackeray with
out longing for familiar acquaintance with
the French.
The reader can open at almost any page of
the two great volumes of Moore's Memoirs
and find something to please him. Here are
few excerpts taken as Yorick reads ''by
the fingers" Riyarol once said to Talley-
rand who was both cynical and wicked:
''Je mai fdit qu'une Seule n6chancete dams
ma vie." GET celle-ld," said Talleyrand,
quand fnera-t-elle?" Talleyrand was by the
bedside of certain Monsieur NJ when the
latter was in great agony and thought to be
dying. ''Je sens les tourmens Peger!' ex-
claimed the sufferer "DGa?" asked Talley-
rand. Here is another, of an Informed man
who was boasting of his mothers beauty:
"C6tdit done rotre pere qui n'@tdit pas
6ien?" queried the brutal wit. Thinking of
that brutality one is rather pleased at the
strong and coarse comparison of Talleyrand
by Louis XVIII to ''une rieille lampe Qui pue
en- s'6teignant" These stories of the French
are tolerably familiar now, though they
were new when Moore told them, and first
saw print the year his diary was published.
The debut of a witticism still more familiar
was made in those pages. ''What was the
sermon about?" asked one guest of another
at table where Moore was sitting. "About
half-an-hour too long" This jest turns upin
most of the papers once or twice year, though
of late the great metropolitan. journals
have been little shy of it. Almost as IA
miliar is Poole's quip: Speaking phreno-
logically" he said II suppose a drunkard
must have barrel-organ." Often quoted
too without credit, is Luttrells idea of the
English climate" "On q fine day, like look
ing up chimney; on rainy day like look
ing down it." This week Yorick saw in the
"Fine-Cut' of an Aroostoob paper Erskine's
pun on the tea-chest, tu dOces. Those who
like that sort of thing will be pleased with
these other specimens of dog Latin, which
seem to have hugely amused Moore: Dia-
bolicus bonus socius; Vinciar ha6ebatis bo-
nan rinum. The poet himself, so good-na-
tured, took great delight in repeating the
ill-natured things Talleyrand said. Some of
these have been quoted above. Perhaps the
wittiest of those Moore repeats is the savage
comment-on Chateaubriand' S deafness: II Sc
croft soord parcequ' il NJ entend plus parler
dc hi"
For all its hugeness this book of Moores
must have been read by many people. The
anecdotes in it are copied everywhere, and
those of them that are susceptible of local
coloring have been freely appropriated by the
ephemerides. Moore, however, is not the on
ly victim of this sort of spoliation. The suffer
ers many. There was, in the reign of Lou
is Philippe, a aMademoiselle De Luzy, loved by
the Duke of Praslin, nobleman who, it has
been supposed, murdered his wife on her ac-
count The Duke was arrested, and pois-
oned himself while in prison. In the prog
ress of the trial the diary of Mile De Lucy
was put in evidence. The following extracts
from it were published at the time, and have
been published many times since, but with
out credit. Yorick hes seen two or three of
them within year in columns headed "Wise
or Otherwise or bearing similar titles.
Here are some of them: s'To fling yourself
from virtue is crime,-to fall from it only
a misfortune,,' 'Nothing is so easy rs to be-
gin an intimacy-nothing so difficult as to
break it off, even when both agree in wish
ing it, Il know nothing equal to the eff
frontery of letter! however passionately
written, it never bushes as you read it;'
eff you wish to escape man, stand still.
He will outrun you if you try to fy;'' cab
sence should only be used as coquetry by |
the men-they seem so handsome when they |
are not present. "Our love for one man
kills our affection for many,-we are worth |
more before we love-" ''When happy 1 pray.
When unfortunate blaspheme. Gratitude
is the most spontaneous of virtues" Here |
is another, often paraprhased, and indeed, |
not original with the Frenchwoman: "It is
droll, my angel, 1.-THE "angeP' was that devil, |
the Duke of Choiseul-Praslin] but the praises |
we love the best are for qualities we do not |
possess"
-Mademoiselle De Luzy somehow sug-
gests ''Ouida'-perhaps the weary cynicism
that diarist and novelist, mistress and maid,
have in common, provoke the suggestion.
"Ouida" is capable of writing some Of the
sentences aboutquoted. The Frenchwoman
might have written these passages to be
found in Friendship
Passion must be remembered to be known.
A very trustful woman believes in her low
er's fidelity with her heart; very vain wo-
man believes in it with her head.
Passion will pardon rage, will survive alb
sence, will forgive infdelity, will even thrive
on outrage, and will often condone a crime;
but when it dies of familiarity, it is dead for
ever and aye.
A man cannot perhaps know all that
woman suffers from his infdelity. Hers to
him may wiring his pride and his passions
with great agony, but it cannot seem all at
once to bring intense humiliation, intense
desecration, personal and spiritual with it
as does his to her. 1t cannot make him
ashamed to exist,-as it makes her.
The proverb that, between two, one is al
ways booted and spurred, the other always
saddled and bridled, is true. 1t is not SUI
periority of mind, or of character or of per-
son, that determines which shall ride and
which shall be ridden; it is generally rather
the result of a certain hardness of temper
which determines the question early the day
andneverl loses the supremacy. Taken roughly
it may be safely predicted that it will always
be the highest nature which will submit.
Often it is is the jade that rules the hero,
the fool that has his feet kissed by the ge-
MUS
You people who are very clever, or very
proud or very careless, never-pardon me
succeed with society. You make astir in it,
perhaps, but that never lasts long; you
won't take the pains to please it; and it
soon leaves you for people who do. A witty
thing comes into your head, and you say it,
careless whom it may hit. You are bored
by the vanity of other folk, and you show it,
Indifferent where you may offend. You
won't conciliate big little people, and they
in their spite set the big, big people against
you. So the SNOWFALL grows, and one day it
gets large enough and hard enough to knock
you out of society altogether. People must
make themselves agreeable to the world;
o,,1 AL 0f I,Yet hat