Read The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks for Free Online Page A

the charms of beauty, and readily attribute every virtue to its possessors, in spite of many disillusionments. I admire beautiful people, and I am strongly attracted by distinguished ugliness. It is the blank faces, empty of charm, distinction, beauty or meaning of any kind, which arouse my dislike.
    Yes, thank you, things are looking up at Marchbanks Towers. All of the lazars are able to get up for a few hours, and creep painfully from room to room, clutching their rags, blankets, mufflers and bandages about them. I realize that my brief period of supremacy is over, and that as soon as the news of their recovery gets about the golden stream of food and flowers will dry up, and life will be as it was before. Saddened by this reflection I went outside this afternoon and shoveled the first snow of winter, reflecting that many people drop dead while thus employed every year.
• A VOIRDUPOIS A C ROSS •
    I LUNCHED EARLIER today with several men, one of whom was of generous proportions; a former athlete, the passing of years had softened his contours, while adding to his physical magnificence. I watched him with aneagle eye, and he ate consideringly, without haste or greed; calory for calory, he probably ate a little less than the others. Yet they tormented him unmercifully all through the meal about his weight, and about his entirely imaginary voracity. Gaunt, lank men who stoked themselves like furnaces, paused only in their intensive fuelling to gird at him for his bulk. This is one of the great injustices of the world. A big man is always accused of gluttony, whereas a wizened or osseous man can eat like a refugee at every meal, and no one ever notices his greed. I have seen runts who never weighed more than 96 pounds when soaking wet, outeat 200 pounders, and poke fun at the fat man even as they licked their plates and sucked the starch out of their napkins. No wonder fat men are philosophers; they are forced to it.
• O F C RUELTY TO V EGETABLES •
    T HIS IS THE TIME of year when newspaper offices are embarrassed by gifts of deformed turnips, arthritic beets, spastic pumpkins and glandular potatoes. Whenever a farmer digs up something which should at once be returned to the merciful and all-covering earth, he rushes with it to his local paper, requesting that his shameful trophy be displayed in the window. I know what he wants; he wants people to laugh at that poor afflicted vegetable. Now it is several centuries since deformed people were regarded as objects of mirth. Even deformed animals are not the big attraction at the country fairs that they once were. Surely it is time that our pity was extended to include the Mongoloid, the moronic and the cretinous specimens of the root world? Has the Royal Society of Vegetarians and Nut Fooders nothing to say against this cruel practice?
•O F B LOODTHIRST IN THE Y OUNG •
    S OMEHOW OR OTHER the rumour has spread among some children I know that I am a conjuror, and they are always teasing me to do magic. My skill is not great, but their standards are very low, and usually I manage to satisfy them. This afternoon a little girl demanded that I should do something miraculous, so I swallowed a fork and after feigning indigestion very laughably, I produced it from the sole of my boot. She was impressed, but not completely satisfied. “There’s no blood on it,” said she.… Children have disgustingly literal minds, and hearts of stone.
• S COTTISH S PORTS AND P ASTIMES •
    T HIS IS ST. ANDREW ’ S DAY , and although I do not belong to the Scottish Branch of the family (it spells its name Marjoribanks, which is wasteful, and therefore un-Scotch) I can never let the day pass unnoticed. My uncle Hamish Marjoribanks was an implacable Jacobite to his dying day, and at breakfast on St. Andrew’s Day he would throw great gobs of porridge at the chromo of Queen Victoria which hung on his diningroom wall, crying “There’s for ye, Hanover!” in a fierce voice. His wife, who was