His Servant Would Then Place A Cup Of Coffee Before Him, And,
Like A Laputian Flapper, Touch Him Gently On The Shoulder.
He would at once begin to talk, while others listened.
The
first time I witnessed this curious resurrection, I whispered
something to my neighbour, at which he laughed. The old
man's eye was too sharp for us.
'You are laughing at me,' said he; 'I dare say you young
gentlemen think me an old fellow; but there are younger than
I who are older. You should see Tommy Moore. I asked him to
breakfast, but he's too weak - weak here, sir,' and he tapped
his forehead. 'I'm not that.' (This was the year that Moore
died.) He certainly was not; but his whole discourse was of
the past. It was as though he would not condescend to
discuss events or men of the day. What were either to the
days and men that he had known - French revolutions, battles
of Trafalgar and Waterloo, a Nelson and a Buonaparte, a Pitt,
a Burke, a Fox, a Johnson, a Gibbon, a Sheridan, and all the
men of letters and all the poets of a century gone by? Even
Macaulay had for once to hold his tongue; and could only
smile impatiently at what perhaps he thought an old man's
astonishing garrulity. But if a young and pretty woman
talked to him, it was not his great age that he vaunted, nor
yet the 'pleasures of memory' - one envied the adroitness of
his flattery, and the gracefulness of his repartee.
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