The gentleman who sat next me was Mr.X.X.
He was very hard of hearing, and he had a habit common to deaf people of shouting his remarks instead of delivering them in an ordinary voice.

He would handle his knife and fork in reflective silence for five or six minutes at a time and then suddenly fetch out a shout that would make you jump out of the United States." By this time the insurrection at Mrs.Dodge's table--at least that part of it in my immediate neighborhood--had died down, and the silence was spreading, couple by couple, down the long table.

I went on in a lower and still lower mumble, and most impressively-- "During one of Mr.X.X.'s mute intervals, a man opposite us approached the end of a story which he had been telling his elbow-neighbor.

He was speaking in a low voice--there was much noise--I was deeply interested, and straining my ears to catch his words, stretching my neck, holding my breath, to hear, unconscious of everything but the fascinating tale.

I heard him say, 'At this point he seized her by her long hair--she shrieking and begging--bent her neck across his knee, and with one awful sweep of the razor--' "HOW DO YOU LIKE CHICA-A-AGO ?!!!" That was X.X.'s interruption, hearable at thirty miles.