His wit has left the world sparkling with the shafts it has let fly on
every side. They are taken up continually and sent out again both by
those who heard him utter them and by those who repeat them, unmindful
of their origin.
His attention was turned on some occasion to a young aspirant for
artistic fame. He referred to the youthful person later as "one who
performed a little on the lead pencil." He said to me one day, "I've
sometimes made new words. In 'Elsie Venner' I made the word
'chrysocracy,' thinking it would take its place; but it didn't:
'plutocracy,' meaning the same thing, was adopted instead. Oddly
enough, I had a letter from a man to-day, asking if I did not make the
word 'anaesthesia,' which I certainly did."
In the sick-room he was always a welcome guest. A careful maid once
asked if he minded climbing two flights of stairs to see his friend.
"I laughed when she asked me," he said; "for I shall have to climb a
good many more than that before I see the angels."
"I gave two dinners to two parties of old gentlemen just before I left
town," he said, the year before his death; and then added, "our baby
was seventy-three!"
His letters in the later years were full of feeling. He says in one of
them, written on a Christmas day, speaking of an old friend: "How many
delightful hours the photographs bring back to me!... Under his roof I
have met more visitors to be remembered than under any other.
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