Indeed, nothing put him in such good humor as
to discover a cleft in your intellectual armor, provided that you really
possessed some talent, faculty, or resource which was useful to him.
My dinner, considered as a dinner, was as great a failure as my
conversation, considered as an exhibition of learning. I got no more
than a hasty mouthful now and again, and got that only through a device
often resorted to by the secretaries under such circumstances, but which
seldom met with much success.
J. P. himself had to eat, and from time to time the butler, who always
stood behind J. P.'s chair, and attended to him only, would take
advantage of an instant's pause in the conversation to say, "Your fish
is getting cold, sir."
This would divert J. P.'s attention from his victim long enough to allow
one of the other men to break in with a remark designed to draw J. P.'s
fire. It worked once in a while, but as a rule it had no effect whatever
beyond making J. P. hurry through the course so that he could renew his
attack at the point where he had suspended it.
On the particular occasion I am describing I was fortunate enough toward
the end of dinner to regain some of the ground I had lost in my
disorderly flight across the field of scholarship.
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