Booth testified great compassion at this account; and, he having invited Robinson to dinner, they spent that day together.
This was not entirely an idle boast, this readiness to spend a large sum of money for a small thing--on the part of Will, as Philip and some of his classmates might have testified.
There was no doubt that they felt deeply for her; their very silence testified to that--but in every century, and ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy.
Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.
Mr. Perker had had a dinner-party that day, as was testified by the appearance of lights in the drawing-room windows, the sound of an improved grand piano, and an improvable cabinet voice issuing therefrom, and a rather overpowering smell of meat which pervaded the steps and entry.