More Happy Thoughts, Etc., Etc
By . Boston : Roberts Brothers.
. BURNAND has already made himself a very pretty reputation as one of the lightest sort of humorists, in his book called “ Happy Thoughts,” and he naturally follows up his good fortune with something more of the same kind. Something more in quantity is very apt to be something less in quality, and it may surprise the admirers of his first book to find this quite as good. It is quite as good, and very amusing. It is even more than amusing, and shows a fine feeling for human nature as one finds it through one’s self in one’s friends. The book opens with a little about the Happy Thinker’s married life, then some adventures in his efforts to get his work on Typical Developments published in London, and for the rest is made up of sketches of Englishmen and other invalids, native and foreign, at Aix-la-Chapelle. Most of the sketches are decidedly caricatured, and none of them are so neat as the little episode with Miss Millar at the Royal Academy. The manner of all and the flavor of a great deal of the book can be given in some passages of this best part of it: —
“. . . I see two ladies whom I know. Miss Millar and her Mamma.
“Happy Thought. -— O ffer Mamma a seat, and walk with Miss Millar. Opportunity for artistic conversation. Clever girl, Miss Millar, and pretty. ‘ Do I like pictures ? ’ Yes, I do, I answer, with a reservation of ‘ Some, — not all.’ ‘ Have I been here before ? ’ I’ve not. Pause. Say, ‘ It’s very warm, though.’ (Why ‘though’? Consider this.) Miss Millar, looking at a picture, wants to know ‘ Whose that is ? ’ I say, off-hand (one really ought to know an artist’s style without referring to the Catalogue), ‘Millais.’ I add, ‘I think.’ I refer to Catalogue. It is n’t. We both say, ‘ Very like him, though.’
“Miss Millar observes there are some pretty faces on the walls.
“ Happy Thought.—To say, ‘ Not so pretty as those off it.' I don’t say this at once, because it does n’t appear to me at the moment well arranged as a compliment; and, as it would sound flat a few minutes afterwards, I don’t say it at all. Stupid of me. Reserve it. It will come in again for somebody else, or for when Miss Millar gives me another opportunity.
“ Portrait of a Lady. —The opportunity, I think. Don’t I admire that? ‘ Not so much as-’ If I say, ‘ As you, ’ it’s too coarse, and, in fact, not wrapped up enough. She asks — ‘ As what ? ’ I refer to Catalogue, and reply, at a venture, ‘ As Storey’s Sister.' Miss Millar wants to know who she is? I explain — a picture of ‘Sister,’by G. A. Storey.
“... . As we are squeezing through the door, we come upon Mrs. and Miss Millar again. Meeting for the third time, I don’t know what to do.
“ Happy Thought. —Safest thing to smile and take off my hat. Miss Millar acknowledges it gravely. Pity people can’t be hearty. She might have twinkled up and nodded. ....
“ Meet Mrs. and Miss Millar again. Awkward. Don’t know whether to bow, or smile, or nod, or what this time. I say, as we pass, ‘ Not gone yet ? ’ I don’t think she likes it. I did n’t say it as I should like to have said it, or as I would have said it, if I had the opportunity over again. I daresay it sounded rude.
“ Happy Thought. — ‘ We met: ’t was in a crowd. ’ Old song.
“I say this so as to give a pleasant turn to the apology and the introduction. I don’t think Miss Millar is a good-tempered girl. Somebody is nudging me in the back, and somebody else is wedging me in on either side. As she is almost swept away from me by one current, and I from her by another, I say, hurriedly, ‘ Miss Millar, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Dilbury,—an Academician.’ She tries to stop: I turn, and lay hold of some one who ought to be Dilbury, in order to bring him forward. It isn’t Dilbury at all, but some one else, — a perfect stranger, who is very angry, and wants to kick or hit, I don’t know which (but he can’t, on account of the crowd), and I am carried on, begging Miss Millar’s pardon and his pardon, and remonstrating with a stout, bald-headed man in front, who will get in the way. ”