We were a fashionable and highly cultured party. We had on our best
clothes, and we talked pretty, and were very happy - all except two young
fellows, students, just returned from Germany, commonplace young men, who
seemed restless and uncomfortable, as if they found the proceedings slow.
The truth was, we were too clever for them. Our brilliant but polished
conversation, and our high-class tastes, were beyond them. They were out
of place, among us. They never ought to have been there at all.
Everybody agreed upon that, later on.
We played MORCEAUX from the old German masters. We discussed philosophy
and ethics. We flirted with graceful dignity. We were even humorous -
in a high-class way.
Somebody recited a French poem after supper, and we said it was
beautiful; and then a lady sang a sentimental ballad in Spanish, and it
made one or two of us weep - it was so pathetic.
And then those two young men got up, and asked us if we had ever heard
Herr Slossenn Boschen (who had just arrived, and was then down in the
supper-room) sing his great German comic song.
None of us had heard it, that we could remember.
The young men said it was the funniest song that had ever been written,
and that, if we liked, they would get Herr Slossenn Boschen, whom they
knew very well, to sing it.
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