Either he will laugh less loudly than you hoped, or he will say
something which reveals to you that it amuses him and you not in quite
the same way. Or perhaps he will laugh so long and loudly that you are
irritated by the suspicion that you have not yourself gauged the full
beauty of it. In one of his books (I do not remember which, though
they, too, I suppose, are all numbered) Mr. Andrew Lang tells a story
that has always delighted and always will delight me. He was in a
railway-carriage, and his travelling-companions were two strangers,
two silent ladies, middle-aged. The train stopped at Nuneaton. The two
ladies exchanged a glance. One of them sighed, and said, `Poor Eliza!
She had reason to remember Nuneaton!'... That is all. But how much!
how deliciously and memorably much! How infinite a span of conjecture
is in those dots which I have just made! And yet, would you believe
me? some of my most intimate friends, the people most like to myself,
see little or nothing of the loveliness of that pearl of price.
Perhaps you would believe me. That is the worst of it: one never
knows. The most sensitive intelligence cannot predict how will be
appraised its any treasure by its how near soever kin.
This sentence, which I admit to be somewhat mannered, has the merit of
bringing me straight to the point at which I have been aiming; that,
though the public is composed of distinct units, it may roughly be
regarded as a single entity.
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