'I really don't think you did,' I assured him.
I should have felt equally confident had I not been present."
"You were quite correct," returned the Minor Poet. "I have a
distinct recollection of having made one or two observations myself.
Indeed, if I may say so, I talked rather well."
"You may also recollect," continued the Woman of the World, "that
the next time we met I asked you what he had said, and that your
mind was equally a blank on the subject. You admitted you had found
him interesting. I was puzzled at the time, but now I begin to
understand. Both of you, no doubt, found the conversation so
brilliant, each of you felt it must have been your own."
"A good book," I added--"a good talk is like a good dinner: one
assimilates it. The best dinner is the dinner you do not know you
have eaten."
"A thing will often suggest interesting thought," observed the Old
Maid, "without being interesting. Often I find the tears coming
into my eyes as I witness some stupid melodrama--something said,
something hinted at, will stir a memory, start a train of thought."
"I once," I said, "sat next to a country-man in the pit of a music-
hall some years ago.
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