'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia: About 1889-1890' [‎690v] (1401/1486)

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have opened my eyes to what was to follow; but M.’s jumps at conclu
sions have always been happy, and I verily believe 1 ascribed her
cleverness on this occasion to a psychological phenomenon she had
explained to me, and her name for which is “sympathy.” I had no
more wedding-gifts for some days ; but another bachelor friend
dropped in on me one night and asked me to choose an article
for myself at a Regent street shop, He mentioned the price limit,
but, with a folly that 1 now chafe at, I told him not to bother giving
me anything. Next forenoon came, with his card, a biscuit box, and in the
evening I had a letter from M. telling me that among her gifts was a biscuit-
box. I remember laughing heartily at this before replying, “ Fancy our
having three biscuit boxes 1 ” 111 advised jester that I was : we have’ now
seventeen.
i he biscuit boxes kept rolling in, round biscuit-boxes, square
biscuit-boxes, oblong biscuit-boxes, silver, glass, and china biscuit-
boxes. During those last days I seemed to be doing nothing but
carrying biscuit-boxes between my table and the cupboard. At first
I carried them lovingly; but a time came when I shoved them
in. \\ hen I opened the cupboard door one or more biscuit-boxes
fell out. I got to know biscuit-boxes in their brown paper, however
their covering might disguise them, with as much certainty as they say a
dramatic critic can tell the plot of a play after glancing at the stage furniture.
Only once (after I became good at it) do I remember being deceived.
I thought my present this time was a box of cigars, for, having stripped
off the brown paper, I came upon a cigar-box with “Best wishes from J. J.
W arwick ” scribbled on it. A\ arwick is a great smoker, and my delight at
that moment made me forget his tasteless sneers at my favourite mixture.
But my joy was short lived, for, no sooner had I forced open the lid than a
biscuit-box jumped up. 'ihe expression is not an exaggeration, for it was
a patent biscuit box, and the spring had slipped, thus enabling the box to
expand suddenly. We cannot discover how the spring works; but that is
no great matter. I have four other patent biscuit-boxes.
A Dublin lady sent me a letter, saying that she had forwarded me that
day a little wedding-gift. It has never reached me ; but I did not like to
tell her so. She did not say what the little gift was, and after a few days
I wrote her a reply, thanking her for “her charming present.” I have
since seen her husband, and from a casual remark he let fall I learn that
the present was a biscuit-box. Only to ladies did I reply in this courteous
manner. Where the donors were men I took to acknowledging their biscuit-
boxes stiffly on a post-card, and in my mind I even drew up a lithographed A lithograph is an image reproduced from a printing plate whose image areas attract ink and non-image areas repel it.
form of reply: “ Dear (space left for name), I thank you heartily for the
biscuit-box you so kindly sent me. Yours makes the "(space for
“tenth,” or “ fifteenth,’ - as the case may be).
It must not be thought that we only got seventeen biscuit-boxes in all.
I got sixteen (including the two awaiting my return from the wedding
journey), and M. got seven ; so that we really received twenty-three. M., how^
ever, exchanged all hers except one, and she wanted me to ask my friends to
exchange mine. Unfortunately, though I knew who had sent me biscuit-
boxes, I could not say who was the donor of any particular box. By way
of experiment I sent back one box to my old friend Lindsay, explaining to
him that I would feel obliged if he would send something else in its place