An American firm had bought at the price of waste paper a hundred thousand copies of The Dictionary of Electricity written when electricity was new,—­and it had turned out that even at the time its author had not rightly grasped his subject,—­the firm had paid L10,000 to a respectable English paper (no other in fact than the Briton) for the use of its name, and to obtain orders for The Briton Dictionary of Electricity was the occupation of my unfortunate friend.  He seems to have had a way with him.  Apparently he knew by a glance at a man, or a look round at his garden, whether to recommend the book as “an absolutely up-to-date achievement, the finest thing of its kind in the world of modern science” or as “at once quaint and imperfect, a thing to buy and to keep as a tribute to those dear old times that are gone.”  So he went on with this quaint though usual business, putting aside the memory of that night as an occasion on which he had “somewhat exceeded” as they say in circles where a spade is called neither a spade nor an agricultural implement but is never mentioned at all, being altogether too vulgar.  And then one night he put on his suit of dress clothes and found the three jokes in the pocket.  That was perhaps a shock.  He seems to have thought it over carefully then, and the end of it was he gave a dinner at the club to twenty of the members.  The dinner would do no harm he thought—­might even help the business, and if the joke came off he would be a witty fellow, and two jokes still up his sleeve.

Whom he invited or how the dinner went I do not know for he began to speak rapidly and came straight to the point, as a stick that nears a cataract suddenly goes faster and faster.  The dinner was duly served, the port went round, the twenty men were smoking, two waiters loitered, when he after carefully reading the best of the jokes told it down the table.  They laughed.  One man accidentally inhaled his cigar smoke and spluttered, the two waiters overheard and tittered behind their hands, one man, a bit of a raconteur himself, quite clearly wished not to laugh, but his veins swelled dangerously in trying to keep it back, and in the end he laughed too.  The joke had succeeded; my friend smiled at the thought; he wished to say little deprecating things to the man on his right; but the laughter did not stop and the waiters would not be silent.  He waited, and waited wondering; the laughter went roaring on, distinctly louder now, and the waiters as loud as any.  It had gone on for three or four minutes when this frightful thought leaped up all at once in his mind:  it was forced laughter! However could anything have induced him to tell so foolish a joke?  He saw its absurdity as in revelation; and the more he thought of it as these people laughed at him, even the waiters too, the more he felt that he could never lift up his head with his brother touts again.  And still the laughter went roaring and choking on.  He was very angry.  There was not much use in having