When we first
began housekeeping and gave our first small dinner-party we had
a brace of ducks cooked in honor of the company, and I, as host,
undertook to carve them. I never knew until then that a duck was
built like a watch--that his works were inclosed in a burglarproof
case. Without the use of dynamite the Red Leary-O'Brien gang could
not have broken into those ducks. I thought so then and I think
so yet. Years have passed since then, but I may state that even
now, when there are guests for dinner, we do not have ducks.
Unless somebody else is going to carve, we have liver.
I mention this fact in passing because it shows that I had learned
to revere carving as one of the higher arts, and one not to be
approached except in a spirit of due appreciation of the magnitude
of the undertaking, and after proper consideration and thought and
reflection, and all that sort of thing.
If this were true as regards a mere duck, why not all the more so
as regards the carving of a person of whom I am so very fond as I
am of myself? Thus I reasoned.
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