Frascati's or Scenes in Paris Author:John Richardson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The seasons are not more variable than our dispositions. To-day the gloom of winter is seated upon our brow; to-morrow dawns on us in all the bri... more »ghtness of a summer sun; and the spirits play as lightly and freely as if they had never known what it was to droop. I fully expected that I should have been a sad moping, melancholy being for at least a week; and in truth, the events of the preceding day were sufficient to have rendered me so, yet at breakfast I had regained all my wonted elasticity of mind, and evencondescended to amuse myself with Domingo Rhymer. This, however, by the by, was a weakness, in which I should not have indulged, had I not been anxious to convince him that I was superior to anything like petty resentment for his wanton attack on my literary talent. " Well, Mr. Rhymer,'' I began, " how is your friend the major? I hope you enjoyed yourself last night." " Never was so happy in my life," returned the Barbadian poet. " Bob Spicer is, without exception, the pleasantest fellow in the world: a man of first rate talent too, and with such a delicate ear for poetry ! In short, he is au fait at every thing, quite an universal genius. He showed us a most ingenious system of his own invention, for reducing chance to certainty. The major and Watson approved of it highly, and with some difficulty prevailed on him to allow us all to join him in breaking the gaming tables. Spicer seemed at first to have great objection to this partnership, as he naturally wished to appropriate the whole of the profits to himself; but the major, who appears to have great influence with him, would have every thing his own way, and he was at length compelled to admit us all into a share of the transaction. By the by, the major is about to return here to-day. He was obliged ...« less