"
I spoke in a light and rather humorous tone in order to take the edge
off my dissent from his opinion, reflecting that even between friends
and equals a demand for frankness is most safely to be regarded as a
danger signal to impulsiveness; but it was too late, I had evidently
overstepped the mark, for Mr. Pulitzer turned abruptly from me without
replying, and began to talk to the gentleman on his left.
This had the twofold advantage of giving me time to reconsider my
strategy, and to eat some dinner, which one of the footmen, evidently
the kind with a memory for former experiences, had set on one side and
kept warm against the moment when I would be free to enjoy it.
As I ate I listened to the conversation. It made my heart sink. The
gentleman to whom Mr. Pulitzer had transferred his attentions was a
Scotchman, Mr. William Romaine Paterson. I discovered later that he was
the nearest possible approach to a walking encyclopedia. His range of
information was--well, I am tempted to say, infamous. He appeared to
have an exhaustive knowledge of French, German, Italian, and English
literature, of European history in its most complicated ramifications,
and of general biography in such a measure that, in regard to people as
well known as Goethe, Voltaire, Kossuth, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Bismarck,
and a score of others, he could fix a precise day on which any event or
conversation had taken place, and recall it in its minutest details.
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