March pretended to prefer a table full of Germans, who were unmistakably bourgeois, and yet of intellectual effect.

He chose as his favorite a middle-aged man of learned aspect, and they both decided to think of him as the Herr Professor, but they did not imagine how perfectly the title fitted him till he drew a long comb from his waistcoat pocket and combed his hair and beard with it above the table.
The wine wrought with the Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them.

One old gentleman had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between.

Suddenly he choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up before him, and-- "Noblesse oblige," said March, with the tone of irony which he reserved for his wife's preoccupations with aristocracies of all sorts.

"I think I prefer my Hair Professor, bourgeois, as he is." The ladies attributively of central Massachusetts had risen from their table, and were making for the door without having paid for their supper.