Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: enemies' upbraidings were silenced—a courtesy worthy of knight-errantry, a lesson to princes. A thoroughly loveable man, he held his friends to him with blithe and unstinted affection. He was a staunch ally. Those who once stepped over the threshold of his acquaintance had difficulty in resisting the glamour of the temptation to become his friend, drawn by his wan smile. Even when bores put themselves upon him, he, with smiling good-humour and facile craft, slept through the tedium of their conversation without betraying his boredom— or that he slept. He was accounted a good listener, wherein he accepted the ruling of that American wit who pointed out that in the design of creation, whilst we had been given two ears, we had been significantly adorned with but one mouth. To his Saturday-night supper-parties in that room of his theatre that had beenthe dining-place of old of " the Sublime Society of Beef-Steaks," he drew the wits and genius of his age. He had the quick fence of words, the grim retort—skill to use the " sabre- cuts of Saxon speech." As when he sent for the horse-dealer and asked him whether he had a safe horse on which to take the stage. The dealer, smelling a handsome bargain, swore by all the gods of jockeydom that he had one horse that had trod the stage for fifteen years. " Hein ! " said Irving, his black eyebrows whimsically uplifting — " an actor, eh ?" " Yes, sir." " Has he any ugly faults, hein ?" " Well, sir—I must tell the truth—he pitched Mr Shose amongst the footlights on his first night, a while ago." " Hein ! A critic, too ! "... The impertinent rarely blundered a second time into drawing the embarrassing scowl from the deep shadow ofhis piercing dark eyes—but with the humorous he was ever quick to toss back the sardonic quip, the grim fanta...