By the time I had reached that place in my mumblings Mrs.Dodge's dining-room was so silent, so breathlessly still, that if you had dropped a thought anywhere in it you could have heard it smack the floor.[18] When I delivered that yell the entire dinner company jumped as one person, and punched their heads through the ceiling, damaging it, for it was only lath and plaster, and it all came down on us, and much of it went into the victuals and made them gritty, but no one was hurt.

Then I explained why it was that I had played that game, and begged them to take the moral of it home to their hearts and be rational and merciful thenceforth, and cease from screaming in mass, and agree to let one person talk at a time and the rest listen in grateful and unvexed peace.
They granted my prayer, and we had a happy time all the rest of the evening; I do not think I have ever had a better time in my life.

This was largely because the new terms enabled me to keep the floor--now that I had it--and do all the talking myself.

I do like to hear myself talk.
Susy has exposed this in her Biography of me.
Dean Sage was a delightful man, yet in one way a terror to his friends, for he loved them so well that he could not refrain from playing practical jokes on them.

We have to be pretty deeply in love with a person before we can do him the honor of joking familiarly with him.
Dean Sage was the best citizen I have known in America.