"Beau-tifully!"
Oh, the blessed glamour which invests a child whose father views her
"with a critic's eye"!
"Yes, _of course_; but look carefully, please; how is my dress?"
Another examination of apparently severest scrutiny.
"All right, dear! That's the new cloak, is it? Never saw you look
better. Come, we shall be late."
Confidingly I went to the hall; confidingly I entered; since the
concert-room was crowded with rapt listeners to the Fifth Symphony, I,
gingerly, but still confidingly, followed the author of my days, and the
critic of my toilet, to the very uppermost seat, which I entered, barely
nodding to my finically fastidious friend, Guy Livingston, who was
seated near us with a stylish-looking stranger, who bent eyebrows and
glass upon me superciliously.
Seated, the Dominie was at once lifted into the midst of the massive
harmonies of the Adagio; I lingered outside a moment, in order to settle
my garments and--that woman's look. What! was that a partially
suppressed titter near me? Ah! she has no soul for music! How such
ill-timed merriment will jar upon my friend's exquisite sensibilities!
Shade of Beethoven! A hybrid cough and laugh, smothered decorously, but
still recognizable, from the courtly Guy himself! What can it mean?
In my perturbation, my eyes fell and rested upon the sack, whose newness
and glorifying effect had been already noticed by my lynx-eyed parent.
I here pause to remark that I had intended to request the compositor to
"set up" the coming sentence in explosive capitals, by way of emphasis,
but forbear, realizing that it already staggers under the weight of its
own significance.
That sack was wrong side out!
Stern necessity, proverbially known as "the mother of invention," and
practically the step-mother of ministers' daughters, had made me eke out
the silken facings of the front with cambric linings for the back and
sleeves. Accordingly, in the full blaze of the concert-room, there sat
I, "accoutred as I was," in motley attire,--my homely little economies
patent to admiring spectators: on either shoulder, budding wings
composed of unequal parts of sarcenet-cambric and cotton-batting; and in
my heart--_parricide_ I had almost said, but it was rather the more
filial sentiment of desire to operate for cataract upon my father's
eyes. But a moment's reflection sufficed to transfer my indignation to
its proper object,--the sinful sack itself, which, concerting with its
kindred darkness, had planned this cruel assault upon my innocent pride.
A constitutional obtuseness renders me delightfully insensible to one
fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as
to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious;
but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of
fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as other men are," in
ability to comprehend the difference between my right and left foot.
Still, as already intimated, I have seen wise men driven mad by a thing
of leather and waxed-ends.
A little innocent of three years, in all the pride of his first boots,
was aggravated, by the perversity of the right to thrust itself on to
the left leg, to the utterance of a contraband expletive.
When reproved by his horror-stricken mamma, he maintained a dogged
silence.
In order to pierce his apparently indurated conscience, his censor
finally said, solemnly,--
"Dugald! God knows that you said that wicked word."
"Does He?" cried the baby-victim of reral depravity, in a tone of
relief; "then _He_ knows it was a doke" (_Anglicè_, joke).