But, have a care. Be sure you mingle some of your own
dulness with their brighter matter, or you will overshoot the mark. You
will be too witty--a fatal error. True wits eat no dinners, save of their
own providing; and, depend upon it, it is not their wit that will
now-a-days get them their dinner. True wits are feared, not fed.
When you tell an anecdote, never ascribe it to a man well known. The time
is gone by for dwelling upon--"Dean Swift said"--"Quin, the actor,
remarked"--"The facetious Foote was once"--"That reminds me of what
Sheridan"--"Ha! ha! Sydney Smith was dining the other day with"--and the
like. Your ha! ha!--especially should it precede the name of Sam
Rogers--would inevitably cost you a hecatomb of dinners. It would be
changed into oh! oh! too surely, and too soon. _Verbum sat_.
I would have you be careful to _sort_ your pleasantries. Your soup jokes
(never hazard that one about Marshal _Turenne_, it is really _too_
ancient,) your fish, your flesh, your fowl jests--your side-shakers for the
side dishes--your puns for the pastry--your after-dinner excruciators.
Sometimes, from negligence (but be not negligent) or ill-luck, which is
unavoidable, and attends the best directed efforts, you sit down to table
with your stock ill arranged or incomplete, or of an inferior quality. Your
object is to make men laugh. It must be done. I have known a pathetic
passage, quoted timely and with a happy emphasis from a popular novel--say,
"Alice, or the Mysteries"--I have known it, I say, do more execution upon
the congregated amount of midriff, than the best joke of the evening.
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