At the end Mr. Pulitzer said:
"Well, you see, you hadn't got them right, after all. But that's not so
bad. With a memory like that you might have known something by now if
you'd only had the diligence to read."
My second score was made just at the end of dinner, or rather when
dinner had been finished some time and J. P. was lingering at table over
his cigar. The question of humor came up, and someone remarked how
curious it was that one of the favorite amusements of the American
humorist should be to make fun of the Englishman for his lack of humor--
"Laugh, and all the world laughs with you, except the Englishman," and
so on. The usual defenses were made--Hood, Thackeray, Gilbert,
Calverley, etc.--and then Punch was referred to.
This gave me the chance of repeating, more or less accurately, a
paragraph which appeared in Punch some years ago, and which I always
recite when that delightful periodical is slandered in my hearing. It
ran something after this fashion:
"One of our esteemed contemporaries is very much worked up in its mind
about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, which it compares to that of the
camel, which, when pursued, buries its head in the sand. We quite agree
with our esteemed contemporary about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, but
we fear it is getting its metaphors mixed.
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