Even when he merely reproduced what the great writers had said perfectly, he added a new colouring.

And already his characteristic humour was beginning to illumine every topic with lambent flashes.
It was at our first lunch, I think, that he told me he had been asked by Harper's to write a book of one hundred thousand words and offered a large sum for it--I think some five thousand dollars--in advance.

He wrote to them gravely that there were not one hundred thousand words in English, so he could not undertake the work, and laughed merrily like a child at the cheeky reproof.
"I have sent their letters and my reply to the press," he added, and laughed again, while probing me with inquisitive eyes: how far did I understand the need of self-advertisement?
About this time an impromptu of his moved the town to laughter.

At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke.

Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of which was smouldering.
"Please put it out, Mr.Wilde," she said, "it's smoking." Oscar turned to do as he was told with the remark: "Happy lamp!" The delightful impertinence had an extraordinary success.
Early in our friendship I was fain to see that the love of the uncommon, his paradoxes and epigrams were natural to him, sprang immediately from his taste and temperament.