The Timorous Reporter ventured to suggest that when the note of admiration was named, to admire meant, not to esteem, but to wonder—that Milton so uses it in relating the meeting of Satan and Death at the gates of Hell. There was no reason, he said, why the germ of egotism or self-esteem should have the shape of that point. “Having discovered and isolated the germ of egotism,” continued the Curmudgeon Philosopher, apparently addressing some exalted intelligence behind the Timorous Reporter, “the physicians will naturally cast about for a serum that will be powerful enough to beat it.” The Curmudgeon Philosopher had the condescension to darken his environment with a smile. “I should suppose that this might be made from the blood of a whale, a rhinoceros, a tiger and an anaconda, all, of course, duly inoculated with the germ till silly. If a few gallons of this mighty medicament were injected into the veins of a patient not more than two years of age it might so check his self-esteem that on growing up he would emblazon the violet on his coat of arms.” The Curmudgeon Philosopher manifested his sense of his own distinction as a wit by a gesture singularly and appropriately elephantine. He had the goodness to continue: “A few years ago, before a just appreciation of the dignity of my position as a philosopher had compelled my withdrawal from the clubs and taverns, I used to observe that of a half-dozen men sitting about a table and engaged in the characteristic industry of smoking and drinking, four were commonly talking of themselves, one, with an impediment in his enterprise, was endeavoring to ‘get the floor’ in order to talk about _him_self, and the other (I trust it is needless to name him) was vainly asking attention to matters of interest and importance. “It was customary among these gentlemen to interrupt one another in the middle of a sentence by ordering drinks or entering into a colloquy with the waiter, or addressing a trivial question to another of the party. Habitually the person speaking had the mortification to see his interlocutor turn squarely away from him and himself begin a monologue, only to be disregarded in his turn. There is something singularly pathetic in the spectacle of a man with an unfinished discourse turning to the only one of the party that has the civility to hear him out. It is one of the minor tragedies of social life, demanding an infinite compassion. Sometimes the sufferer would signify a just resentment by abruptly rising and leaving the table, but the rebuke was never even observed.