I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of moisture! I was astounded.

I closed the lecture at last with one despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of supernatural atrocity full at him! Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.
The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water, and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last ?" I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the second row." And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and dumb, and as blind as a badger!" Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger and orphan like me?
I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way for him to do?
THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869] He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.
And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the "Sanctum" door and let him in.

He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting, perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem.

Then he begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.
He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad, and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the arm of the chair.

But it is still observable that with all his changes of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of dignity.