A friend was telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had suffered from this class.He spoke with much feeling, as he is the soul of amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and afflicted with a hopelessly bad memory for faces.For the last few years, he has been in the habit of spending one or two of the winter months in Washington, where his friends put him up at one club or another.
Each winter on his first appearance at one of these clubs, some kindly disposed old fogy is sure to present him to a circle of the members, and he finds himself indiscriminately shaking hands with Judges and Colonels.As little or no conversation follows these introductions to fix the individuality of the members in his mind, he unconsciously cuts two-thirds of his newly acquired circle the next afternoon, and the following winter, after a ten-months'
absence, he innocently ignores the other third.So hopelessly has he offended in this way, that last season, on being presented to a club member, the latter peevishly blurted out:
"This is the fourth time I have been introduced to Mr.Blank, but he never remembers me," and glared coldly at him, laying it all down to my friend's snobbishness and to the airs of a New Yorker when away from home.If instead of being sacrificed to the introducer's mistaken zeal my poor friend had been left quietly to himself, he would in good time have met the people congenial to him and avoided giving offence to a number of kindly gentlemen.