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Sandy Black rode with a cool, sober, sedate air, looking interested and attentive, but with that peculiar twinkle of the eyes and slightly sarcastic droop at the corners of the mouth which is often characteristic of the sceptical Scotsman.
Among the members was V. Topsoee, afterwards well known as an editor and author, at that time a cautious and impudent freshman, whose motto was: "It is protection that we people must live by." He read the society a paper On the Appearance, dealing with how one ought to dress, behave, speak, do one's hair, which revealed powers of observation and a sarcastic tendency.
In the untidy salon of his bachelor apartments in the Boulevard Maupassant Estermen awaited the coming of his master in veritable fear and trembling. In all his experience he had never been compelled to face a crisis such as this. There had been small failures, punished, perhaps, by a sarcastic word or biting sentence. There had been no failure to compare with this one!
His qualities, alike in physique and mind, easily gave him that position. His tall, massive form, with the imperturbable good-humored smile that, even when annoyed by an opponent, he could hardly dismiss from his face, except, perchance, by a blend of the sarcastic; his deliberate manner in speaking, and his sonorous voice, gave him this surpassing influence.
He felt once more the inescapable grip of destiny fastening upon him. "Why are you in such a hurry?" he asked, after a long time. "I told father I should be back at a quarter-past nine." This statement threw George into a condition of total dark disgust. He made no remark. But what remarks he could have made sarcastic, bitter, unanswerable!
He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. "Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to me!" it seemed to say. "What does this signify?"
After this personage has read his score or more pages of jokes, sarcastic allusions, and ridiculous recommendations, the discussion of the message takes place, during which any one who thinks of a bright remark may get up and fire it at the gallery; and many very lame attempts pass for good wit, and much private spite goes for harmless fooling.
Then he threw up his head and smiled a slow, sarcastic smile at Mr. Moffat. O my soul's joy! If after every tempest come such calms May the winds blow till they have wakened death! Othello. I had always loved her; that I knew even in the hour of my darkest suspicion but now I felt free to worship her. As the thought penetrated my whole being, it made the night gladsome.
There seemed to be a sarcastic note of interrogation after the last word. "Eh? What was that?" and he looked round at the mummy-case. Her long-dead Majesty was still reclining in it, silent and impassive. "Oh, this won't do at all! Hartley and the fourth dimension be hanged! It strikes me that this way madness lies if you only go far enough. I'll have that night-cap at once and go to bed."
It is said that he was a handsome man, with bright golden locks, such as painters in that age loved to perpetuate upon the canvas; hilarious and cheerful, fond of good cheer, yet a close student, obnoxious only to learned dunces and narrow pedants and treadmill professors and bigoted priests, all of whom sought to molest him, yet to whom he was either indifferent or sarcastic, holding them and their formulas up to ridicule.
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