Sort of a way I have, and I
never make mistakes, you know."
Then go and watch, as I have, Henri Rochefort as he laboriously
forms the opinions that are to appear later in one of his "SALONS,"
realizing the while that he is FACILE PRINCEPS among the art
critics of his day, that with a line he can make or mar a
reputation and by a word draw the admiring crowd around an unknown
canvas. While Rochefort toils and ponders and hesitates, do you
suppose a doubt as to his own astuteness ever dims the self-
complacency of White Waistcoat? Never!
There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. By a special
dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one side of a
subject, so are always convinced that they are right, and from the
height of their contentment, look down on those who chance to
differ with them.
A lady who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of many
years' careful study and tireless "weeding" will ask anxiously if
you are quite sure you like the effect of her latest acquisition -
some eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably,
from the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to
your verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by
contract, with the latest "Louis Fourteenth Street" productions,
conducts you complacently through her chambers of horrors, wreathed
in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that smug assurance
granted only to the - small.
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