Chapter 2

one corner to whisper something in my ears. He has a way sometimes of ending his whispering revelations with a loud, "Do not you think so?" then whisper again, and then aloud, "But you know that person," then whisper again. The thing would be well enough if Peter whispered to keep the folly of what he says among friends; but, alas! he does it to preserve the importance of his own thoughts. It is a wonderful thing that, although he is never heard to talk about things in nature, and never seen with a book in his hand, yet he can whisper something like knowledge of what has and of what now passes in the world, which one would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him worthy to receive the whole story. But the truth is, he deals only in half accounts of what he would entertain you with. A help to his discourse is, "That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely, and he had it from persons too considerable to be named, what he will tell you when things are riper." He informs you as a secret that he designs in a very short time to reveal you a secret; you must say nothing to any one. The next time you see him the secret is not yet ripened, he wants to learn a little more of it, and in a fortnight's time he hopes to tell you everything about it.

You may sometimes see Peter seat himself in a company of eight or ten persons whom he never saw before in his life; and after having looked about to see that no one overheard, he has communicated unto them in a low voice, and under the seal of secrecy, the death of a great man in the country, who was perhaps at that very moment travelling in Europe for his pleasure. If upon entering a room you see a circle of heads bending over a table, and lying close to one another, it is almost certain that Peter Hush is among them. Peter has been known to publish the whisper of the day by eight o'clock in the morning at one house, by twelve at a second, and before two at a third. When Peter has thus effectually launched a secret, it is amusing to hear people whispering it to one another at second hand, and spreading it about as their own; for it must be known that the great incentive to whispering is the ambition which every one has of being thought in the secret and being looked upon as a man who has access to greater people than one would imagine.

Besides the character of Peter Hush, as a whisperer, there is Lady Blast, about whom a word or two must be said. She deals in the private transactions of the sewing circle, the quilting party, with all the arcana of the fair sex. She has such a particular malignity in her whisper that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation it breathes upon. She has a most dexterous plan at making private weddings. Last winter she married about five women of honour to their footmen. Her whisper can rob the innocent young lady of her virtue; and fill the healthful young man with diseases. She can make quarrels between the dearest friends, and effect a divorce between the husband and wife who never lived on any terms but the most peaceful and happy. She can stain the character of the clergymen with corruption, against which no one could ever utter the faintest moral delinquency. She can beggar the wealthy, and degrade the noble. In short, she can whisper men base or foolish, jealous or ill-natured; or, if occasion requires, can tell you the failings of their great-grandmothers, and traduce the memory of virtuous citizens who have been in their graves these hundred years.

A few words more respecting the Whisperer taken from the Bible. The Psalmist regarded those who whispered against him as those who hated him. "All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt" (Ps. xli. 7). "A whisperer separateth chief friends," is the declaration of the wise man (Prov. xvi. 28). And again, he says, "Where there is no whisperer (marginal reading) the strife ceaseth" (Prov. xxvi. 20). "Whisperers" is one of the names given by St. Paul to the heathen characters which he describes in the first chapter of Romans. Let my reader, then, beware of the Whisperer. Give no ear to his secrets. Guard against an imitation of his example. Favour the candid and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable, and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the mischievous consequences in others.

XIV.

_THE HYPERBOLIST._

"He was owner of a piece of ground not larger Than a Lacedemonian letter."--LONGINUS.

"He was so gaunt, the case of a flagelet was a mansion for him."--SHAKESPEARE.

The habit of this talker is to exaggerate. He abides not by simple truth in the statement of a fact or the relation of a story. What he sees with his naked eye he describes to others in enlarged outlines, filled up with colours of the deepest hues. What he hears with his naked ears he repeats to others in words which destroy its simplicity, and almost absorb its truthfulness. A straw is a beam, a mole-hill a mountain. His ducks are geese, his minnows are perch, and his babes cherubs. The fading light of the evening he merges into darkness, and the mellow rays of the morning into the dazzling sunshine of noonday. He turns the pyramid on its apex, and the mountain on its peak. If he has a slight ache in the head, he is distracted in his senses, and a brief indisposition of his friend is a sickness likely to be of long duration and serious consequence.

Simple truth is not sufficient for the Hyberbolist to set forth his views and feelings in conversation. He wishes to convey the idea that _he_ has seen and experienced things in number, quality, and circumstances exceeding anything within the range of your knowledge and experience. He is wishful that you should "_wonder_" and utter words of exclamation at his statements. If you do not, he may perchance repeat himself with enlarged hyperbolisms; and should you then hear in a matter-of-course manner, he may give you up as one stoical or phlegmatic in your temperament.

The following lines, written by Dr. Byrom in the last century, will serve to show the nature and growth of hyperbolism in many instances; especially in the repetition of facts:--

"Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand, One took the other briskly by the hand; 'Hark ye,' said he, ''tis an odd story this, About the crows!' '_I don't know what it is_,' Replied his friend.--'No! I'm surprised at that; Where I come from, it is the common chat. But you shall hear: an odd affair indeed! And, that it happen'd, they are all agreed; Not to detain you from a thing so strange, A gentleman that lives not far from 'Change, This week, in short, as all the Alley knows, Taking a puke, has thrown up _three black crows_.'

'_Impossible!_' 'Nay, but it's really true; I have it from good hands, and so may you.' '_From whose, I pray?_' So having nam'd the man, Straight to enquire his curious comrade ran. '_Sir, did you tell?_'--relating the affair. 'Yes, sir, I did; and if it's worth your care, Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me,-- But, by-the-bye, 'twas _two_ black crows, not _three_.'

Resolv'd to trace so wondrous an event, Whip, to the third, the virtuoso went. '_Sir_,'--and so forth. 'Why, yes; the thing is fact, Though in regard to number not exact; It was not _two_ black crows, but only one; The truth of _that_ you may depend upon. The gentleman himself told me the case.'-- 'Where may I find him?'--'Why, in such a place.'

Away goes he, and having found him out, 'Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt;' Then to his last informant he referr'd, And begg'd to know, if _true_ what he had heard, 'Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?'--'Not I.' 'Bless me! how people propagate a lie! Black crows have been thrown up, _three_, _two_, and _one_: And here, I find, all comes, at last, to _none_! Did you say _nothing_ of a crow at _all_?' 'Crow--Crow--perhaps I might, now I recall The matter over.'--'And, pray, sir, what was't?' 'Why I was horrid sick, and, at the last, I did throw up, and told my neighbour so, Something that was--_as black_, sir, as a crow.'"

An Englishman and a Yankee were once talking about the speed at which the trains travelled in their respective countries. The Englishman spoke of the "Flying Dutchman" travelling sixty miles an hour.

"We beat that hollow," said the Yankee. "Our trains on some lines travel so fast that they outgo the sound of the whistle which warns of their coming, and reach the station first."

Of course the "Britisher" gave the palm to his American cousin, and said no more about English locomotive travelling.

Hyberbolism is a fault too much cultivated and practised among the "young ladies" of our schools and homes. They think it an elegant mode of speaking, and seem to rival each other as to which shall best succeed. An ordinary painting of one of their friends is "an exquisitely fine piece of workmanship, and really Reynolds himself could scarcely exceed it." And that bouquet of wax flowers on the side-board "are not surpassed by the products of nature herself." That young man lately seen in company at the house of Mrs. Hood "is one of the handsomest young gentlemen that I ever beheld; indeed, Miss Spencer, I never saw any one to equal him in reality or in picture." To tell the truth, courteous reader, this said "young gentleman" was scarcely up to an ordinary exhibition of that sex and age of humanity; but this young lady, for some reason or other, could not help speaking of him as the "_highest style_ of man."

Our children are even found indulging in this exaggerated mode of speech, as the following may illustrate:--

"Oh, mother," said Annie, as she threw herself into a chair, on her return from a walk, "_I cannot stir another step._"

"Why, Annie," answered her mother, "I thought your walk was pleasant, and not tiring at all."

"It was such a long one," said Annie; "_I thought we should never have got home again._ I would not walk it again _for all the world_."

"But did you not enjoy the walk in the fields, Annie?"

"Oh, no; there were so many cows that _I was frightened to death_."

"What a little angel our baby is," said Nancy, one day to her sister, "_I feel as though I could eat it up._"

"O what a _monstrous brute_ our governess is!" said Marian to a school-fellow one afternoon, because she had corrected her rather sharply for some misdemeanour.

"I say, Fred, we have strawberries in our garden _as big as my fist_," said David one day to him.

Fred opened his eyes in wonder, and said, "I should like to see them."

Fred went to see them, and David's garden strawberries were found to be no larger than one of his ordinary-sized marbles.

"Come," says James to Harry, "let us go and get some blackberries; there are _oceans_ of them on yonder hedge."

"Oceans!" said James in wonder.

"Yes, oceans; only you must mind in getting them that you don't fall into the ditch, or you will be _over your head_ in mud."

James went with Harry, and found that the blackberries were as sparse on the hedge as plums in his school pudding, and as for mud to cover him, he saw scarcely enough to come over his boots.

Another boy says, "I am so thirsty, I could drink the _sea dry_." Another, "I learned my lessons to-day in _no time_." Another, standing in the cold, says, "I am _frozen to death_." Another, in the heat, says, "I am _as hot as fire_." "My father's horse is _the best in the kingdom_," says John. "My father's is _the best in the world_," says Alexander in reply. "Oh, how it did hail in our parts yesterday," said a boy to his schoolmate; "the hail-stones were as _big as hens' eggs_." "That's nothing," said his rival in return; "in our parts it rained _hens and chickens_." "Well," said the other, despairing of going beyond that, "that was wonderful; I never heard of it raining like that before."

The above kind of talk may by some be regarded as only "inoffensive ebullitions" of childhood and youth. It is not said that moral guilt may be its immediate consequence; but is it a kind of talk altogether innocent? Does it sound truthful? Is it a habit to be encouraged or connived at? Should not all who have the education and training of young persons correct the evil when it appears, and in the place of it cultivate that speech which is made up of words of "truth and soberness"?

The Hyperbolist not only shows himself in talk which _magnifies_ beyond the natural, the simple, and the true; but which also _diminishes_. "He said nothing of any account--nothing worth your hearing," observed one friend to another, respecting a certain lecturer; when perhaps he uttered thoughts of weight and force worthy the attention of highest wisdom. He expressed this hyperbolism to allay some disappointment which his friend felt in not hearing him. "The affair is really of such little consequence that it is not worth your while to think about it;" at the same time it involved questions of vital importance to him. This he said to divert his mind from brooding over it to his injury. "I never saw such a small watch in all my life; it was hardly bigger than a sixpence;" and yet it was of the ordinary size of a lady's watch. "It is no distance to go, and the hill is nothing to climb; you will get there in the time you are standing hesitating;" and this a father said to induce his son to go into the country on an errand for which he showed strong disinclination. "The duties are of such a trifling nature, you may perform them with perfect ease;" so said a minister to persuade a member of his church to undertake a responsible office against which he had conscientious objections.

Thus the Hyperbolist stands on either side of truth, and takes from or adds to, according to the temper of his mind and the object he wishes to accomplish. On whichever side he stand his talk is alike blamable.

Let me, in conclusion, caution my readers, and especially my young readers, against the formation and practice of this intemperate habit in talking. It is of no service to truth. It does no good to you or others, but harm. It will grow upon you, and may end in the habit of absolute _false speaking_. You do not mean now to be recognized as telling lies: you would perhaps shudder at the thought; but what you now shudder at, you may fall into, by the inadvertent formation of habitual exaggerated talk. Therefore guard against these excessive and thoughtless hyperbolisms of speech. Speak of things, persons, and places as you _see_ them, not as you fancy; speak to convey correct views, not to excite wonder or to rival others in "large talk," and in "strange things." _Simple truth_ is always more welcome in society than swollen fiction. The frog in the fable killed itself by trying to be as big as the ox; so you are in danger of killing truth when you inflate it beyond its own natural proportions. Truth needs no extraneous aids to commend it; or, as Cowper says,--

"No meretricious graces to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile, From ostentation as from weakness free, Majestic in its own simplicity."

"The apocrypha," says the Rev. J. B. Owen, "into which you may elaborate your observations will ultimately be sifted from the canonical, and you will appear before society as _interpolaters_, inserting your own spurious statements among the genuine records of facts already received as simple, authentic truths. Have the modesty to suppose that others know a thing or two as well as yourselves. The scraps of facts which may lie scattered among the profusion of your hyperbolisms may be old acquaintances of your hearers. Let them speak for themselves in their own artless, ingenuous way, and take their own chance of success to whatever branch of the lovely family of truth they may belong.

"Hyperbole is a fault of no trivial importance in conversation. Carried, as it generally is, to such an extent, it is nothing more nor less than equivalent to lying. It frequently places the Hyperbolist in a position of distrustful scrutiny and strong doubt, on the part of those with whom he converses. His authentication of a rumour reacts as its contradiction. He himself robs it of a large amount of evidence, by welcoming the proof of anybody else as better than his own. He anticipates the discount which will be made off his commodity, and so adds exorbitancy to his statements, which will leave a balance in hand after all. But people will not be deceived again and again. His credit becomes damaged. His moral bill returns dishonoured. His extravagance of diction, like extravagance in expenditure, involves him in difficulties, and thus the immediate fate of mendacity symbolizes that awful retribution which will finally exclude all liars from the society of the good and true."

"Old Humphrey," in speaking of a painter who over-coloured his pictures, was wont to express the defect by saying, "Too much red in the brush." It would be well for the Hyperbolist to have some friend at his elbow, when he over-colours things, to say, "Too much red in the brush."

XV.

_THE INQUISITIVE._

"The Inquisitive will blab: from such refrain; Their leaky ears no secret can retain."--HORACE.

The Inquisitive is a talker whose capacity is for taking rather than giving. To ask questions is his province, and not to give answers. He is more anxious to know than he is to make known. Though in some instances he may have the ability to speak good sense, yet he cannot or will not exercise himself in so doing. He must pry into other people's stock of knowledge, and find out all that he can for his satisfaction. If he come to anything which is labelled "Private," he is sure to be the more curious to ascertain what is within. He is restless and dissatisfied until he knows. He pauses--he resumes his interrogations--he circumlocutes--he apologizes, it may be, but make the discovery he will if possible. His inquisitiveness is mostly in regard to matters of comparatively minor importance in themselves, but which, at the same time, you do not care for _him_ to know. Your pedigree--your relations--your antecedents--your reasons for leaving your former occupation--your prospects in life--your income--your wife's maiden name and origin--with a hundred similar things.

His inquisitiveness often turns into impertinence and impudence, which one does well to resent with indignancy; or, if not, to answer him according to his folly.

The two or three following instances will illustrate this talker:--

A gentleman with a wooden leg, travelling in a stage-coach, was annoyed by questions relative to himself and his business proposed by his fellow-passengers. One of them inquired how he came to lose his leg. "I will tell you," he replied, "on condition that you all ask me no other question." To this there was no objection, and the promise was given. "As to the loss of my leg," said he, "_it was bit off_!" There was a pause. No more questions were to be asked; but one of the party, unable to contain himself, exclaimed, "But I should like to know _how_ it was bit off." This is an old story, but here is one of a similar kind, of a more recent date. It occurred in San Francisco, where a genuine Yankee, having bored a new comer with every conceivable question relative to his object in visiting the gold country, his hopes, his means, and his prospects, at length asked him if he had a family.

"Yes, sir; I have a wife and six children in New York; and I never saw one of them."

After this reply the couple sat a few moments in silence; then the interrogator again commenced,--

"Was you ever blind, sir?"

"No, sir."

"Did you marry a widow, sir?"

"No, sir."

Another lapse of silence.

"Did I understand you to say, sir, that you had a wife and six children living in New York, and had never seen one of them?"

"Yes, sir; I so stated it."

Another and a longer pause of silence. Then the interrogator again inquired,--

"How can it be, sir, that you never saw one of them?"

"Why," was the response, "_one of them_ was born after I left."

A gentleman in America, riding in an eastern railroad car, which was rather sparsely supplied with passengers, observed, in a seat before him, a lean, slab-sided Yankee; every feature of his face seemed to ask a question, and a little circumstance soon proved that he possessed a more "inquiring mind." Before him, occupying an entire seat, sat a lady dressed in deep black, and after shifting his position several times, and manoeuvring to get an opportunity to look into her face, he at length caught her eye.

"In affliction?"

"Yes, sir," responded the lady.

"Parent?--father or mother?"

"No, sir."

"Child, perhaps?--a boy or a girl?"

"No, sir, not a child; I have no children."

"Husband, then, I expect?"

"Yes," was the curt answer.

"Hum! cholery? A tradin' man may be?"

"My husband was a seafaring man, the captain of a vessel; he didn't die of cholera; he was drowned."

"O, drowned, eh?" pursued the inquisitor, hesitating for a brief instant. "Save his _chist_?"

"Yes; the vessel was saved, and my husband's effects," said the widow.

"_Was_ they?" asked the Yankee, his eyes brightening up. "_Pious_ man?"

"He was a member of the Methodist Church."

The next question was a little delayed, but it came.

"Don't you think that you have great cause to be thankful that he was a pious man, and saved his _chist_?"

"I do," said the widow abruptly, and turned her head to look out of the window.

The indefatigable "pump" changed his position, held the widow by his glittering eye once more, and propounded one more query, in a lower tone, with his head slightly inclined forward, over the back of the seat,--

"Was you calculating to get married again?"

"Sir," said the widow, indignantly, "you are impertinent!" And she left her seat and took another on the other side of the car.

"'Pears to be a little huffy?" said the ineffable bore. Turning to our narrator behind him, "What did they make you pay for that umbrella you've got in your hand?"

* * * * *

A person more remarkable for inquisitiveness than good-breeding--one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuff, pry into everything--took the liberty to question Alexander Dumas rather closely concerning his genealogical tree.

"You are a quadroon, Mr. Dumas?" he began.

"I am, sir," replied M. Dumas, who had seen enough not to be ashamed of a descent he could not conceal.

"And your father?"

"Was a mulatto."

"And your grandfather?"

"A negro," hastily answered the dramatist, whose patience was waning.

"And may I inquire what your great-grandfather was?"

"An ape, sir," thundered Dumas, with a fierceness that made his impertinent interrogator shrink into the smallest possible compass. "An ape, sir; my pedigree commences where yours terminates."

* * * * *

"Where have you been, Helen?" asked Caroline Swift of her sister, as Helen, with a package in one hand and some letters in the other, entered the parlour one severe winter's day.

Caroline had been seated near the fire, sewing; but as her sister came in with the package, up the little girl sprang; and, allowing cotton, thimble, and work to find whatever resting-place they could, she hurried across the room; and, without so much as "By your leave, sister," she caught hold of the letters and commenced asking questions as fast as her nimble tongue could move.

"Which question shall I answer first?" asked Helen, good-humouredly, trying, as she spoke, to slip a letter out of sight.

"Tell me whose letter you are trying to hide there," cried Caroline, making an effort to thrust her hand into her sister's pocket.

Helen held the pocket close, saying gravely, "Suppose I should tell you that this letter concerns no one but myself, and that I prefer not to name the writer?"

"Oh dear! some mighty mystery, no doubt. I didn't suppose there was any harm in asking you a question."

Caroline's look and tone plainly indicated displeasure.

"There is harm, Caroline, in trying to pry into anything that you see that another person wishes to keep to herself; for it shows a meddling disposition, and is a breach of the command to do as you would be done by."

"You're breaking that command yourself," retorted Caroline, "for you won't let me see what I want to see."

"God's commands do not require us to forget our own rights. I am not bound to do to you what you have no right to require of me. We have all a perfect right to request of each other whatever is perfectly conducive to our welfare and happiness, provided it does not improperly infringe upon that of the person of whom the request is made. You trespass upon _my rights_ when you attempt to pry into my private affairs."

"Mercy, Helen! don't preach any more. I guess I'm not the only meddlesome person in the world. One half the people I know need nothing more to make them take all possible pains to learn about a thing than to know the person whom it concerns wishes it kept secret. But where have you been, pray? and what have you in that bundle?" and Caroline tore off the paper cover from the package which Helen had laid upon the table.

"Caroline," said the mother of the two young girls, "why do you not wait to see whether your sister is willing for you to open her package? From your tone, my dear, one would judge that you were appointed to cross-question Helen, and had a right to be angry if she declined explaining all her motives and intentions to you."

"For pity's sake! mother, haven't I a right to ask my sister all the questions I please? I tell her everything I do, and I think she might show the same confidence in me."

"You have a right, my daughter, to ask any proper question of any one; but it is unmannerly to ask too particularly about things that do not concern you; or to speak _at all_ respecting a thing which you see that another desires should pass unobserved. It shows a small and vulgar mind to seek to pry into the affairs of another, unless there be some great necessity for doing so. Never press a matter where there is a disposition to be reserved upon the subject. Be refined, my child; remember that courtesy is as much a command of the Bible as is honesty. I have often heard you, my thoughtless Carrie, mention impatiently the annoying habits of one who is often here. You have said in great anger that no one of the family could have a new shoe, or a neck ribbon, or could go across the street twice, without being questioned and cross-questioned by that young lady, until she became possessed of all the particulars concerning the purchase or the walk. It is not well to be violent in condemning one's neighbour, my children; but it is not wrong to take notice enough of their faults to determine to shun them in our own conduct, and also to try, if a proper season offers, to help them to amend. I never wish to hear you speak again so harshly of the person to whom I refer; but I very earnestly desire that you should begin in season to check habits which, if suffered to go on, will render you just as far from a favourite with your friends as she, poor orphan girl, is with hers. She had no one to point out to her her faults and her dangers; therefore the condemnation will be nothing to compare with yours, if you forget that the spirit of the golden rule, which is the true spirit of Christianity, requires attention just as close and constant to all the little hardly noticed habits of heart and life as to those of the more marked and noticeable:--

''Tis in these little things we all can do and say, Love showeth best its gentle charity.'"

Boldness and impudence are the twin features in the inquisitive talker. Were these counterbalanced by education in the ordinary civilities of life, he would be more worthy a place in the company of those whom now he annoys with his rude and impertinent interrogatories. Few men care to have the secrets of their minds discovered by the probing questions of an intruder. The prudent man has many things, it may be, in his mind, in his family, in his business, which are sacred to him, and to attempt an acquaintance with them by stealth is what no one will do but he who is devoid of good manners, or, if he ever had any, has shamefully forgotten them. There are proper times and places in conversation for questions; but even then they should be put with discretion and frankness. A man should have common sense and civility enough to teach him when and what questions to ask, and how far to go in his questions, so that he may not seem to meddle with matters which do not concern him.

XVI.

THE PEDANT.

"Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books, and a total ignorance of men."--MACKENZIE.

The Pedant is a talker who makes an ostentatious display of his knowledge. His endeavour is to show those within his hearing that he is a man of study and wisdom. He generally aims higher than he can reach, and makes louder pretensions than his acquirements will justify. He may have gone as far as the articles in English Grammar, and attempts to observe in his speech every rule of syntax, of which he is utterly ignorant; or he may have learned as far as "_hoc--hac--hoc_" in Latin, and affect an acquaintance with Horace, by shameful quotations. He may have reached as far as the multiplication table in arithmetic, and try to solve the problems of Euclid as though he had them at his finger-ends. If he has read the "Child's Astronomy," he will walk with you through the starry heavens and the university of worlds, with as much confidence as though he was a Ross or a Herschel. He labours at the sublime and brings forth the ridiculous. He is a giant according to his own rule of measurement, but a pigmy according to that of other people. He thinks that he makes a deep impression upon the company as to his literary attainments; but the fact is, the impression is made that he knows nothing as he ought to know. He may, perchance, with the lowest of the illiterate, be heard as an oracle, and looked up to as a Solon; but the moment he rises into higher circles he loses caste, and falls down into a rank below that with which he would have stood associated had he not elevated himself on the pedestal of his own folly. He is viewed with disgust in his fall; and becomes the object of ridicule for the display of his contemptible weakness. His silence would have saved him, or an attempt commensurate with his abilities; but his preposterous allusions to subjects of which he proved himself utterly ignorant effected his ruin.

The _Spectator_, in No. 105, gives an illustration of a pedant in _Will Honeycomb_. "Will ingenuously confesses that for half his life his head ached every morning with reading of men over-night; and at present comforts himself under certain pains which he endures from time to time, that without them he could not have been acquainted with the gallantries of the age. This Will looks upon as the learning of a gentleman, and regards all other kinds of science as the accomplishments of one whom he calls a scholar, a bookish man, or a philosopher.

"He was last week producing two or three letters which he wrote in his youth to a lady. The raillery of them was natural and well enough for a mere man of the town; but, very unluckily, several of the words were wrongly spelt. Will laughed this off at first as well as he could; but finding himself pushed on all sides, and especially by the Templar, he told us, with a little passion, that he never liked pedantry in spelling, and that he spelt like a gentleman, and not like a scholar. Upon this Will had recourse to his old topic of showing the narrow-spiritedness, the pride, and arrogance of pedants; which he carried so far, that upon my retiring to my lodgings, I could not forbear throwing together such reflections as occurred to me upon the subject.

"A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. But methinks we should enlarge the title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his profession and particular way of life.

"What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the town? How many a pretty gentleman's knowledge lies all within the verge of the court? He will tell you the names of the principal favourites; repeat the shrewd sayings of a man of quality; whisper an intrigue that is not yet blown upon by common fame; or, if the sphere of his observations is a little larger than ordinary, will perhaps enter into all the incidents, turns, and resolutions, in a game of _ombre_. When he has gone thus far, he has shown you the whole circle of his accomplishments; his parts are drained, and he is disabled from any further conversation. What are these but rank pedants? and yet these are the men who value themselves most on their exemption from the pedantry of the colleges.

"I might here mention the military pedant, who always talks in a camp, and is storming towns, making lodgments, and fighting battles from one end of the year to the other. Everything he speaks smells of gunpowder; if you take away his artillery from him, he has not a word to say for himself. I might likewise mention the law pedant, that is perpetually putting cases, repeating the transactions of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to be convinced of the distance of a place, or of the most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of argument. The state pedant is wrapped up in news, and lost in politics. If you mention either of the kings of Spain or Poland, he talks very notably; but if you go out of the _Gazette_, you drop him. In short, a mere courtier, a mere soldier, a mere scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic character, and equally ridiculous.

"Of all the species of pedants which I have mentioned, the book pedant is much the most supportable; he has at least an exercised understanding, a head which is full, though confused--so that a man who converses with him may often receive from him hints of things that are worth knowing, and what he may possibly turn to his own advantage, though they are of little use to the owner. The worst kind of pedants among learned men are such as are naturally endued with a very small share of common sense, and have read a great number of books without taste or distinction.

"The truth of it is, learning, like travelling, and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable, by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.

"Shallow pedants cry up one another much more than men of solid and useful learning. To read the titles they give an editor or a collator of a manuscript, you would take him for the glory of the commonwealth of letters, and the wonder of his age; when perhaps upon examination you find that he has only rectified a Greek particle, or laid out a whole sentence in proper commas.

"They are obliged to be thus lavish of their praises that they may keep one another in countenance; and it is no wonder if a great deal of knowledge, which is not capable of making a man wise, has a natural tendency to make him vain and arrogant."

* * * * *

Arthur Bell was a young man of excellent qualities; and generally respected by all who knew him. He had received his education, which was of a superior order, at one of the Oxford colleges. Nevertheless, he was modest and unassuming; shunning any display of his learning, excepting under circumstances which justified him from vanity and self-importance. Sidney Rose was a young man of the same village as Arthur, but of different origin and training. In early boyhood they were often playmates together; and the acquaintance thus formed continued more or less up to manhood. Sidney was of another spirit to Arthur, naturally high-minded, blustering, and self-conceited. His education was only such as he had received in a country classical academy, and in this he had not succeeded to the extent his pretensions led one to suppose.

Arthur and Sidney once met in an evening party at the house of Mr. Grindell. The company consisted mostly of young ladies and young gentlemen. During the conversation of the evening, in which Sidney took a prominent part, he made an attempt to quote the following line from Ovid, with no other intention than to exhibit his learning:--

"Dulcia non ferimus; succo renovamur amaro,"

in which he made the most glaring blunders.

"Dulcam non farimas, succor amarum reno,"

he said, with the most ostentatious air and bombastic confidence. Two or three of the company could not refrain from laughing at his airs, not to say his blunders.

"What are you laughing at?" inquired Sidney, in his independent tone, and as though he was highly insulted.

"I beg your pardon, Sidney, but I think they were smiling at a mistake or two which you have made in that Latin quotation," said Arthur, quietly.

"Mistake, indeed! I have made no mistake," said Sidney, in an angry tone.

"I think you have," observed Arthur, modestly.

"Show me, then, if you can. I guess that is out of your power," said Sidney, more excited.

"Don't be excited, my friend," said Arthur; "I think I can give the line correctly."

Arthur quoted the line as it occurs in the book. The difference appeared to Sidney; but he would make no acknowledgment. Nor would he give up the exhibition of his academic learning. He thought he would be a match for Arthur and the young gentlemen who seemed to ridicule what _he_ knew they could not mend, so he made another attempt.

"Which of you," he inquired, "can tell me in what part of Horace the following line occurs:--

'Amor improbe non quid pectora mortalia cogis'?"

A faint smile passed over the countenance of Arthur, while Bonner, an educated young collegian, could not restrain his risible powers, and broke out in a loud laugh, at the expense of his good manners.

"What's that Bonner laughing at?" asked Sidney, in a manner which betrayed his indignation and chagrin.

"It strikes me," said Skinner, "that that line is very much corrupted in its quotation. It does not seem to be such Latin as is found in the classics, even from what I know of them."

"And with all my study of Horace," observed Judson, "I never met with the line in him, even if it was given correctly. And then I think, with Skinner, that it is not correctly quoted. What do you think, Arthur?"

"Of course it is not in Horace," replied Arthur; "nor is it correctly quoted. If Sidney has no objection, I will give the correct words from the right author."

Sidney was sullenly silent.

"In Virgil's 'Æneid,' Book iv., line 412," said Arthur, "the words of which Sidney intends his to be a quotation may be found. They are as follows:--

'Improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis.'"

"You are quite right, Arthur," said Bonner.

Here the subject ended. A short time after, during the evening, Sidney was observed holding conversation with Miss Boast, a young lady of some pretensions, but of no more than ordinary education. Sidney seemed to be much at home with her in conversation. She gave a willing ear to all his pedantic talk; and he used the opportunity much to his own gratification. He was repeating to Miss Boast a list of his studies in the classics, mathematics, history, geology, astronomy, etc., when Arthur walked into that part of the room where they were sitting. He saw that Sidney was recovered from his temper shown in the former conversation, and had subsided into his own natural element, and was pouring into the credulous ear of the young lady his pedantic effusions.

"Are you at all acquainted with Milton's 'Paradise Lost'?" inquired Sidney of Miss Boast.

"I have read a little of it, but it is not my favourite book," she replied.

"But it is an admirable book," said Sidney; "I have read it again and again. Why, I know it almost line by line. It is a grand poem, of course of the tragic style, full of strong sentiment and bold figure. Milton, you know, wrote that poem in German. The translation into English is a good one--incomparably good. I forget who the translator was. Do you not remember those exquisitely fine lines which run thus,--

'Ah, mighty Love----'

Why, now, it is strange I should forget them. Let me see (with his hand to his forehead). Now I have them,

'Ah, mighty Love, that it were inward heat Which made this precious limbeck sweet! But what, alas! ah, what does it avail!'

I need not repeat any more. This will give you an idea of the style and sentiment of that wonderful poem."

"It is certainly very fine," said the young lady, innocently. "Did you not hear those beautiful lines, Arthur, which Sidney has just quoted from Milton?" asked Miss Boast.

"Yes, I heard them."

"Are they not fine?" said Sidney to Arthur.

He evaded an answer.

"Are you sure that the quotation is from Milton?" inquired Mr. Smith, who was listening to the conversation.

"Certainly," said Sidney.

"Are they, Arthur?" asked Smith, who had his suspicions, and apprehended another display of Sidney's pedantry, and was determined if possible to put a check on his folly.

"If you require me to be candid in my answer," said Arthur, quietly, "I do not think that they do belong to Milton at all."

"Whose are they, then?" asked Sidney, rather petulantly.

"They are Cowley's, to be found in vol. i., p. 132, of his works."

"I never knew that Milton's poem was tragedy, and that he wrote it in German until now," observed Mr. Smith, ironically.

"Who said he did?" asked Arthur.

"Sidney."

"That is new historical fact, if fact it be," said Arthur. "I always thought he wrote it in English, and that the poem was of the epic order."

"I always thought so too," said Smith.

Sidney sat confounded, but not conquered in his fault. He would not admit his error, nor would he cease his pedantic exhibitions. He gave two or three more displays before the party separated, and with similar results. Enough, however, has been given here to show the excessive folly of this habit, and the just ridicule to which it is exposed.

* * * * *

"What a pity that Sidney makes such preposterous pretensions to learning in his conversation," said Smith the next day to Arthur.

"It certainly is," answered Arthur; "but he is generally so when in the company of any he thinks educated. He aims at equality with them, and even to rise above them, with his comparatively limited acquirements. He rarely, or ever, attains his end. His folly almost invariably meets with an exposure in one way or another. I have met with him on several occasions previous to last night, and he was the same on every one."

"It is to be hoped he will grow wiser as he grows older," said Smith.

"I hope so," said Arthur. "If he do not, he will always be contemptible in the eyes of the wise and learned; and they will do their utmost to shun his society and keep him out of their reach. Were his professions of learning to accord with his real abilities there would be no objection--nothing unseemly; but he aims at that which he has little competency to reach, and so makes himself ludicrous in his attempts. And then he does it withal in such self-confidence and ostentation as is perfectly revolting to good taste. As his friend, I feel very much for him, and wish he may get a knowledge of his real acquirements, and make no display of his learning beyond what he can honourably sustain, and in which he will be justified by wisdom and propriety. In this way he might obtain a position in which he would receive the respect of society according to the real merits of which he gave obvious proof."

"Those are exactly my views," said Smith, "and I wish they were the views of Sidney too."

XVII.

_THE DETRACTOR._

"The ignoble mind Loves ever to assail with secret blow The loftier, purer beings of their kind." W. G. SIMMS.

"Detraction's a bold monster, and fears not To wound the fame of princes, if it find But any blemish in their lives to work on." MASSINGER.

A detractor is one whose aim is to lessen, or withdraw from, that which constitutes a good name or contributes to it.

The love of a good name is natural to man. He who has lost this love is considered most desperately fallen below himself.

To acquire a good name and to maintain it, what have not men done, given, and suffered in the world of Literature, Labour, Science, Politics, and Religion?

And who has blamed them for it? It is declared by the highest wisdom, that "A good name is better than great riches," and "better than precious ointment." "The memory of the just shall be blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot." "Whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things."

"It is," as one says, "that which gives us an inferior immortality, and makes us, even in this world, survive ourselves. This part of us alone continues verdant in the grave, and yields a perfume."

Considering, then, the worth of a good name, we cannot wonder that a man should wish to preserve and guard it with all carefulness.

"The honours of a name 'tis just to guard; They are a trust but lent us, which we take, And should, in reverence to the donor's fame, With care transmit them to other hands."

As the work of the detractor is the tarnishing, or, it may be, the destruction of a man's good name, the evil nature of it may be seen at one view. Can he commit a greater offence against his brother? Can he be guilty of a more heinous motive and aim?

"No wound which warlike hand of enemy Inflicts with dint of sword, so sore doth light As doth the poisonous sting which infamy Infixeth in the name of noble wight; For by no art, nor any leeches' might, It ever can re-curéd be again."

"Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands: But he who filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

Let us notice some of the ways in which this talker seeks to accomplish his work.

1. _He represents persons and actions under the most disadvantageous circumstances he can_, speaking of those which may appear objectionable, and passing by those which may be commendable. There is no person so excellent who is not by his circumstances forced to omit some things which would become him to do if he were able; to perform some things weakly and otherwise than he would if he had the power. There is no action so worthy, but may have some defect in matter, or manner, incapable of redress; and he that represents such persons or actions, leaving out those excusing circumstances, tends to create an unjust opinion of them, taking from them their due value and commendation. Thus, to charge a man with not having done a good work, when he had not the power or opportunity, or is by unexpected means hindered from doing it according to his desire; to suggest the action was not done exactly in the best season, in the wisest mode, in the most proper place, with expressions, looks, or gestures most convenient--these are tricks of the detractor, who, when he cannot deny the metal to be good, and the stamp true, clips it, and so would prevent it from being current.

2. _He misconstrues ambiguous words or misinterprets doubtful appearances of things._ A man may speak never so well, or act never so nobly, yet a detractor will make his words bear some ill sense, and his actions tend to some bad purpose; so that we may suspect his meaning, and not yield him our full approbation.

3. _He misnames the qualities of persons or things, and gives bad appellations or epithets to good or indifferent qualities._ The names of virtue and vice do so nearly border in signification that it is easy to transfer them from one to another, and to give the best quality a bad name. Thus, by calling a sober man sour, a cheerful man vain, a conscientious man morose, a devout man superstitious, a free man prodigal, a frugal man sordid, an open man simple, a reserved man crafty, one that stands upon his honour and honesty proud, a kind man ambitiously popular, a modest man sullen, timorous, or stupid, is a way in which the detractor may frequently be known.

4. _He imperfectly characterises persons_, so as purposely to veil, or faintly to disclose, their excellencies, but carefully to expose and to aggravate their defects or failings.

Like an envious painter, he hides, or in shady colours depicts, the graceful parts and goodly features, but brings out the blemishes in clearest light, and most prominent view. There is no man who has not some blemish in his nature or temper; some fault contracted by education or custom; something amiss proceeding from ignorance or misapprehension of things. These (although in themselves small and inconsiderable) the detractor seizes, and thence forms a judgment calculated to excite contempt of him in an unwary spectator; whereas, were charity to judge of him, he would be represented as lovely and excellent.

5. _He does not commend or allow anything as good without interposing some exception to it._ "The man, indeed," he says, "does seem to have a laudable quality; his action has a fair appearance;" but, if he can, he raises some spiteful objection. If he can find nothing plausible to say against him, he will _seem_ to know and to suppress something. He will say, "I know what I know; I know more than I'll say;" adding, perhaps, a significant nod or strong expression, a sarcastic sneer or smile, of what he cannot say in words.

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without seeming, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."

6. _He suggests that good practices and noble dispositions are probably the effects of sinister motives and selfish purposes._ As, for instance, a liberal man, in his gifts is influenced by an ambitious spirit or a vain-glorious design; a religious man, in his exercises of devotion, is influenced by hypocrisy, and a desire to gain the good opinion of men, and to promote his worldly interests. "He seems to be a good man," says the detractor, "I must admit; but what are his reasons? Is it not his interest to be so? Does he not seek applause or preferment thereby? _Doth Job serve God for nought?_" So said the father of detractors more than two thousand years ago.

7. _He detracts from good actions by attempting to show their defects_, or to point out how they might have been much better. "In some respects they are excellent and praiseworthy; but they might have been better with no more labour and pains. Pity that a thing, when done, is not done to the best of his ability." Thus Judas blamed the good woman who anointed the Saviour's feet. "Why," said he, "was not this ointment sold, and given to the poor?" His covetous heart prompted him to detract from that action which Jesus, in His love, pronounced as a _good work_, which should be spoken of as such, wherever the gospel was preached.

8. _A detractor regards not the general good character of a man's conversation_ or discourse which is obvious, but attacks the part which is defective, though less discernible to other eyes than his own; like a man who, looking upon a body admirably beautiful, sees only a wart on the back of one hand to attract his particular attention; or like the man who overlooks the glories of the sun because of its spots.

Such are the chief particulars composing the character of the detractor.

We may now briefly notice some of the _causes_ which influence the detractor in his talk.

1. _Ill nature and bad humour._--As good nature and ingenuous disposition incline men to observe and commend what appears best in our neighbour; so malignity of temper and heart prompt to seek and to find the worst. One, like a bee, gathers honey out of any herb; the other, like a spider, sucks poison out of the sweetest flower.

2. _Pride and inordinate self-importance._--The detractor would draw all praise and glory to himself; he would be the only excellent person; therefore he would jostle the worth of another out of the way, that it may not endanger his; or lessen it by being a rival, that it may not outshine his reputation, or in any degree eclipse it.

3. _Envy._--A detractor likes not to see a brother stand in the good esteem of others, therefore he aims at the deterioration of his character; his _eye_ is _evil_ and _sore_, hence he would quench or becloud the light that dazzles it.

4. _Ungodly revenge._--His neighbour's good practice condemns his bad life; his neighbour's worth disparages his unworthiness; this he conceives highly prejudicial to him; hence in revenge he labours to vilify the worth and good works of his neighbour.

5. _Sense of weakness, want of courage, or despondency of his own ability._--He who is conscious of his own strength and industry will allow to others the commendation becoming their ability. As he would not lose the fruits of his own deserts, so he takes it for granted that others should enjoy theirs also. To deprive them were to prejudice his own claims. But he that feels himself destitute of worth, and despairs of reaching the good favour of society, is thence tempted to disparage and defame such as do. This course he takes as the best soother of his disappointed feelings and the chief solace for his conscious defects. Seeing he cannot rise to the standard of others, he would bring down that of others to his. He cannot directly get any praise, therefore he would indirectly find excuse by shrouding his unworthiness under the blame of others. Hence detraction is a sign of a weak, ignoble spirit; it is an impotent and grovelling serpent, that lurks in the hedge, waiting opportunity to bite the heel of any nobler creature that passes by.

Notice the _consequences_ of detraction.

1. _It discourages and hinders the practice of goodness._ Seeing the best men disparaged, and the best actions spoken against, many are deterred from doing or being good in a conspicuous and eminent degree. Especially may this be so with such as are not independent and superior to what detractors may say about them.

2. _Detraction is injurious to society in general._ Society is maintained in peace and progress by encouragement of mutual and personal virtues and gifts; but when disparagement is cast upon them, they are in danger of languishment and decay; so that a detractor is one of the worst members of society; he is a moth, a canker therein.

3. _Detraction does injury to our neighbour._ It robs him of that reputation which is the just reward of goodness, and chief support in the practice of it; it often hinders him in undertaking a laudable deed; and keeps those from him or sets those against him who would be his friends.

4. Detraction injures those into whose ears it instils its poisonous suggestions, requiring them to connive at the mischief it does to worth and virtue, and desiring them to entertain the same unjust and uncharitable thoughts as itself.

5. The detractor _is an enemy to himself_. He raises against himself animosity and disfavour. Men of self-respect, conscious of their own honest motives and upright actions, will not submit to his unrighteous detraction. They will stand on their own consciousness of rectitude, and, with Right on their side, will cause him to fall into the pit which he has digged for others.

6. The detractor is likely to have given him the same that he gives to others. If he has in him that which appears laudable, how can he expect commendation for it, when he refuses it to others with similar claims? How can any one admit him to have real worth who will not admit another to have any?

The preceding observations are sufficient to exhibit the nature, causes, and effects of the fault of the detractor. This fault is wide-spread in its existence. It affects nearly all classes of society. Does it not too widely prevail in circles of Christian professors? Is there not too much of this kind of talk in the companies of ministers of religion? Among men of all ranks, occupations, and ages of life this spirit is too frequently and too powerfully operating. In the courts of princes, in the halls of science, in the schools of literature, the detractor may be found with his deteriorating and damaging tongue. The evening social circle, the festive board, the railway carriage, the two or three walking or sitting in the garden's shades, are not exempt from the presence of this detracting demon.

My reader, be you among the honourable exceptions, with whom detraction shall find no life. And as you would not possess it in yourself, do not patronize it in others, although mixed in a sweet liquor, and offered in a golden cup.

Covet to be among those charitable spirits which put the best interpretation upon everything rather than the worst; which approve and praise rather than censure and condemn; which offer the fragrance of the rose rather than wound with the thorn; which present the jewel rather than point out the flaw in it; which take the fly out of the pot of ointment rather than put one in.

This is the spirit of nobleness, because the spirit of charity and of God.

XVIII.

THE GRUMBLER.

"Still falling out with this and this, And finding something still amiss; More peevish, cross, and splenetic, Than dog distract, or monkey sick." BUTLER.

The Grumbler is a talker who may frequently be known by his countenance as well as by his tongue. The temper of his mind gives form and expression to the features of his face. His contracted brow bespeaks his contracted brain. His nose inclines to an elevation of disgust at the things which lie beneath. His mouth is awry with its peculiar exercise, and those deeply indented wrinkles on either side are the sad effects of its long-continued use in its chosen service. His aspect is one of chagrin, trouble, and disappointment.

There are a few more traits of the grumbling talker which may be specified for the benefit of those concerned.

1. The grumbling talker _is generally indolent_. He loiters or strolls about without any specific or profitable occupation. He can see nothing worth his attention, and if he does, he defers it until the future, meanwhile busy in grumbling with himself and with others. He gossips among his neighbours, or lounges about places of publicity, engaging those like himself, or, it may be, some of the better sort, with his grumbling conversation. Listen a moment: "His son John was not up at the right time this morning; his wife spoiled his breakfast; those orders were not made up yet, and ten o'clock; his business was very poor--can't make both ends meet, hope times will get better--he doesn't know how in the world he will pay his way unless he can get in his debts; his neighbour's chimney smokes so badly that if he doesn't mend it he must complain; he wishes his friend Wilkes would keep his cats away from his house, for they catch all the mice, and leave none for his cat; he would make things very different in their day-school if he was the master; he thinks Mr. Stock over the way doesn't conduct his business right, or he would prosper more than he does."

2. The grumbling talker _generally attributes his want of success in his calling to other causes rather than to himself_. "No one gives him encouragement. He has to do the best he can by his own means. He is always at it, and yet he does not succeed. Dr. Squibbs, Squire Bumble, Parson Sturge, and Lawyer Issard, all send their custom to his rival in Castle Street. Everybody else is favoured, while he is held back by unfriendly and adverse influences."

William Goodwin was an industrious, economical, and obliging tradesman. With these qualities he succeeded in his business, and attained to a position of respectability which nearly everybody thought he deserved. Robert Careless was in the same line of business, and had the same opportunities of success, but he did not attain to it. He grumbled dreadfully against Goodwin and his own slow prosperity. "Goodwin," he said, "was patronized more than he was. The people owed him a grudge, and they wouldn't trade with him. If he had the same chance as Goodwin, he should prosper as he does. Goodwin is no more acquainted with his business, and has no more wisdom, economy, and affability than he; his clerk was very dull and disobliging; his own wife didn't seem to take any interest in his business; the situation of his shop wasn't good," etc.

3. The grumbling talker _is usually independent_. He cares for nothing and for nobody. Although he cannot have everything he wants, yet he will not mind. He is determined to do as he likes. He will have his own way after all. He has a will, a knowledge, a purse, friends of his own. He will let the world see that he can get along with his own resources. Barnabas Know-nothing may talk as he please, Job Do-nothing may do all he can, and Richard Bombast may swagger because he thinks matters are done as he planned; but Mr. Grumbler is independent of them all, and will, by-and-by, demonstrate it beyond dispute.

4. The grumbling talker _is easily frightened_. He may seem very large, and appear very strong in his independence; he may bluster about his determination to carry out his plans despite Mr. This and Mr. That; but he is soon reduced to his just proportions. His fever heat falls suddenly down to zero, if not twenty degrees below. You may soon raise a lion in his way--soon make him believe that fate is against him--soon open his eyes to see breakers ahead; and then he would have done it but for the consequences which he foresaw. It is well to look before you leap. He looked and saw the gulf, and he prefers not to leap. It is better to suffer a little injury than bring a greater one. You may be sure nothing would have kept him from doing as he positively said he would, excepting those insuperable difficulties which he did not anticipate at the time, and which he defies any one to remove out of the way. The fact is, things are just the same as they ever were, only he has got into another element which has changed his temperament and resolutions.

5. The grumbling talker _is generally endowed with a most capacious appetite for personal favours_. If you can by any means administer to his necessities in this respect you will very much allay his craving, and, in a measure, stop his grumbling. It is the intensity of the appetite which often gives rise to the grumbling. Grumbling is the way in which he expresses his want. Every beast has a way of its own in making known its wants, and grumbling is the way some men have in expressing the deep hunger of their minds for special or ordinary favours. The grumbler is always on hand to receive the gift of a friend. The motto which he carries in the foreground of his grumblings is, "Small favours thankfully received, and larger ones in proportion."

6. The grumbling talker _is generally very jealous_. He does not approve of the promotion of his friend to any honour above himself. He is afraid lest it should exalt him beyond measure. Besides, he does not see that he is any more qualified or deserving than he. He is surprised at the judgment of the "powers that be" when they placed Mr. So-and-So in such a responsible office. They could not certainly have known that he was not the man for the office, nor the office for the man. He must have been a favourite. He had helped them into their position, and, "One good turn deserves another, you know." He knows how these sort of things are managed, "Kissing goes by favour, you know." He happened to be out of their "good books," and they were determined to punish him. Had his esteemed friend, Squire Impartial, been in authority, he didn't doubt for a moment but he would have been promoted to the place where So-and-So now stands. Well, he congratulates himself that his time _will_ come, and when it does he will make everybody wonder and regret that he wasn't advanced before.

"Do you know," said he one day to Mr. Content, "how it is that people talk so much about the superior abilities of our town councillor, Mr. Workman? For my part, I see nothing in him which is above mediocrity."

"Mr. Workman is, indeed, generally reputed as being a clever man, and I certainly think he is," said Mr. Content.

"He may be clever, but I do not think that he is any cleverer than most ordinary men."

"I have every opportunity of judging, and I do most candidly think that we could not have found his equal in the entire town," said Mr. Content again.

"That may be your opinion, and the opinion of others; but still my opinion is the same, and I am amazed at his reputation," replied Mr. Grumbler.

7. The grumbling talker _is often long-lived_. The philosophy of the fact, if fact it be, I will not attempt to explain. It is a pity it should be so, but it does sometimes occur that the least desirable men are continued, while the most lovable are taken away. Were Providence to suspend or change the law which protracts the grumbler's existence beyond the length of better men, I am sure no one would complain of it except the grumbler himself.

8. The grumbling talker _is found everywhere in some one or all of his developments_. He seems to be endowed with a spirit of ubiquity. You find him in all ages of time, in all ages of persons, in all places of resort, in all circumstances of life, in all nations of humanity, and in all varieties of mind. On the throne of the prince, in the chair of the president, in the gathering of Parliament or Congress, in the counting-house and in the store, in the tradesman's shop and the lawyer's office, in the school, the college, the lecture-room, and even in the precincts of the house of God, you may find the spirit of the grumbling talker. Heaven, perhaps, is the only place in the universe where he cannot be found.

9. The grumbling talker _can rarely improve or make things better, even if he tries_. Place him to fill the office which he says is so ineffectively filled by some one else, and its functions will be neglected or far more ineffectively performed. He "can preach a better sermon than the minister preached the other Sunday morning." Let him try, and others judge. He "can superintend the Sunday-school with more authority and keep better order than he who now is in that position." Place him there, and see what are the results.

In forty-nine instances out of fifty in which the grumbler has been taken as a substitute for the one against whom he has complained, there has been failure, through his want of competency for the place.

It is not, however, often that he reaches his end by his grumbling. He frustrates his own wish. Sound judgment in others pronounces against him. Wisdom knows that weakness is the main element of grumbling; that to instal in office a person who is a grumbler will not cure him; that one evil is better than two--his grumbling out of office than his grumbling in, with an inefficient performance of its duties.

His grumbling is sometimes so chronic and habitual, that no one takes any notice of him. He attracts far more attention when he is out of this rut than when he is in it. The majority know that things are right when he grumbles; but when he is silent they suspect them to be wrong, and when he approves they are quite sure.

10. The grumbling talker _includes everything within his grumbling_. He grumbles against God and His Providence, His Word and His ministers. The devil does not even please him. He grumbles about politics, religion, the Church, the state, books, periodicals, papers. He grumbles against trade, commerce, money; against good men and bad men; against good women and bad women; against babes and children, young ladies and old maids. He grumbles about the weather, about time, life, death, things present, and things to come. It would appear that as he is endowed with universal presence, he is endowed with universal knowledge also, which leads him to universal grumbling.

11. The grumbling talker _is afflicted with a most revolting disease_. It is dangerous in its nature, and most unpleasant in its influence. It is injurious in its operation upon all who come within its reach. Persons who are not troubled with it, and are not accustomed to see it, never wish to catch a sight or a scent of it the second time. It is rather contagious. If the law regulating the case of the leper was to be enforced in the case of the grumbler, it might have a salutary effect. But as there is no probability of this, and as it is important that the disease should be arrested before it spread farther and prove more disastrous than it has, I shall, _pro bono publico_, as well as for the grumbler himself, presume to copy an American prescription that I have in my possession, and which never failed to cure any grumbler who scrupulously carried it out.

"1. Stop grumbling.

"2. Get up two hours earlier in the morning, and begin to do something outside of your _regular profession_.

"3. Stop grumbling.

"4. Mind your own business, and with all your might; let other people alone.

"5. Stop grumbling.

"6. Live within your means. Sell your horse. Give away or kill your dog.

"7. Stop grumbling.

"8. Smoke your cigars through an _air_-tight stove. Eat with moderation, and go to bed early.

"9. Stop grumbling.

"10. Talk less of your own peculiar gifts and virtues, and more of those of your friends and neighbours.

"11. Stop grumbling.

"12. Do all you can to make others happy. Be cheerful. Bend your neck and back more frequently when you pass those outside of 'select circles.' Fulfil your promises. Pay your debts. Be yourself all you see in others. Be a _good_ man, a _true Christian_, and then you cannot help _finally to_

"13. Stop grumbling."

The above is an admirable receipt for the grumbling disease. It is composed of ingredients each of which is the best quality of healing medicine. Every grumbler should take the whole as prescribed, and he will soon experience a sensible change in his nature for the better; his friends also will observe him rapidly convalescent, and after a short time will rejoice over his restoration to a sound healthy condition, called by moral physicians--"CONTENTMENT."

"Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content-- The quiet mind is richer than a crown; Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent-- The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown. Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss, Beggars enjoy when princes oft do miss.

The homely house that harbours quiet rest, The cottage that affords no pride nor care, The mean that 'grees with country music best, That sweet consort of Mirth's and Music's fare. Obscuréd life sits down a type of bliss; A mind content both crown and kingdom is."

XIX.

_THE EGOTIST._

"What cracker is this same, that deafs our ears With this abundance of superfluous breath?" SHAKESPEARE.

"For none more likes to hear himself converse." BYRON.

This is a talker whose chief aim is the exhibition of himself in terms and phrases too fulsome and frequent for the pleasure of his hearers. _I_ was, _I_ am, _I_ shall be, _I_ have, etc., are the pronouns and verbs which he chiefly employs. He is all _I_. I is the representative letter of his name, his person, his speech, and his actions. There is nothing greater in the universe to him than that of which _I_ is the type. There is not a more essential letter in the English alphabet to him than the letter _I_. Destroy this, and he would be disabled in his conversation; he would lose the only emblem which he has to set himself off before the eyes of people. He is nothing and can do nothing without _I_. This stands out in an embossed form, which may be felt by the blind man, as well as be seen by those who have eyesight. If you tell him of an interesting circumstance in which a friend of yours was placed, "_I_" is sure to be the beginning of a similar story concerning himself. Speak of some success which your friend has made in trade or commerce, and "_I_" will be the commencement of something similar, in which he has been more successful. You can inform him of nothing, but "_I_" is associated with what is equal or far superior. Were one required to give an etymology of the egotist, it would be in the words of the Rev. J. B. Owen: "One of those gluttonous parts of speech that gulp down every substantive in social grammar into its personal pronoun, condensing all the tenses and moods of other people's verbs into a first person singular of its own."

* * * * *

Mr. Slack, of the town of Kenton, was egregiously given to egotism. He was a man of ordinary education, but somewhat elevated above his neighbours in worldly circumstances. He carried himself with an air of imposing importance, as though he was lord of the entire county. In his conversation he assumed much more than others who knew him conceded. It was a little matter for him to ignore the abilities of other people. His own prominent self made such demands as almost absorbed the rights of everybody else. Whenever opportunity occurred, he set himself off as _most_ learned, _most_ wealthy, _most_ extensively known, numbering among his acquaintances the _most_ respectable. He rarely talked but to exhibit himself, alone, or in some aristocratic connections.

Mr. Dredge was a neighbour of Mr. Slack's, but of an opposite turn of mind. They were accustomed to make occasional calls upon each other. Dredge was quiet and unassuming, and often allowed Slack to go on with his egotistic gibberish unchecked, which rather encouraged him in his personal weakness.

One morning Mr. Slack called upon Mr. Dredge to spend an hour in a friendly way, as he often did, and, as usual, the conversation was principally about himself, and things relating to the same important personage.

"Have you seen the French Ambassador yet, Mr. Dredge?"

"No. Have you?"

"Indeed I should think so. I have been in his company several times, and had private interviews with him; and do you know, Mr. Dredge, he showed me more respect and attention than any one else in his company at the same time. He gave me a most pressing invitation to dine with him to-morrow afternoon, at six o'clock; but really, Mr. Dredge, my engagements, you know, are so numerous and important that I was compelled respectfully to decline the honour."

"You must have felt yourself highly flattered," said Mr. Dredge calmly.

"Not at all! not at all! It is nothing for me, you know, to dine with ambassadors. I think no more of that than of dining with you."

"Indeed!" said Dredge in a sarcastic tone. "I thank you for the compliment."

"No compliment at all, Mr. Dredge. It is the truth, I assure you; and were you to see the heaps of invitations which cover my parlour table, from persons equally as great as he, and more so, in fact, you would at once see the thing to be true. I feel it no particular honour to have an invitation from such a quarter, because so common. The Ambassador took to me as soon as he saw me. He saw me, you know, to be one of his own stamp. I put on my best grace, and talked in my highest style, and I saw at once that he was prejudiced in my favour. It was my ability, you know, my ability, Mr. Dredge, which made an impression on his mind."

"I see, my friend," said Mr. Dredge, "you have not lost all the egotism of your former years."

"Egotism, egotism, Mr. Dredge! _I_ am no egotist--and never was. It is seldom I speak of myself. No man can help speaking of himself sometimes, you know. If you are acquainted with Squire Clark, he's the man, if you please, for egotism. Talk of egotism, sir, he surpasses me a hundred per cent. I am no egotist."

"I hope no offence, Mr. Slack," said Mr. Dredge.

"None at all, sir; I am not so easily offended. I am a man too good-tempered for that. I and you understand each other, you know."

"Have you been to the City lately?" inquired Mr. Dredge.

"I was there only last week; and whom do you think I travelled with in the train? His Grace the Duke of Borderland. He was delighted to see me, you know, and gave me a pressing invitation to call on him at his London residence. Did you not know that I and the Duke were old cronies? We went to school together; and he was never half so clever as I was in the sciences and classics. He was a dull scholar compared with me."

"You must have felt yourself somewhat honoured with his presence and attention."

"Well, you know, Mr. Dredge, it is just here. I am so much accustomed to high life, that the presence of dukes, lords, etc., is little more to me than ordinary society. Had my friend Mr. Clarke been thus honoured, he would have blazed it all about the country. _I_ would not have mentioned it now, only your question called it up."

The fact is, Mr. Dredge had heard of it before from a number of people to whom Mr. Slack had already told it.

At this stage of the talk between Messrs. Dredge and Slack a rap was heard at the front door. It was Mr. Sweet, a friend of Mr. Dredge, who had called on his way to an adjacent town.

Mr. Dredge introduced his friend to Mr. Slack, who gave him one of his egotistic shakes of the hand, and said, "How are you this morning?"

"Mr. Sweet," observed Mr. Dredge to Mr. Slack, "is an intimate friend of mine, and a professor in Hailsworth College."

"Indeed! I am very happy, extremely happy, to make his acquaintance," said Mr. Slack, with an air and voice which made the Professor open his eyes as to who he was. And without any more ceremony, Mr. Slack observed, "I know all the professors in that seat of learning. Drs. Jones, Leigh, Waller, I am intimately acquainted with--special friends of mine."

To be candid, he had met with them on one occasion, and had received a formal introduction to them; but since then had not seen them.

"Are you at all acquainted with music, Professor Sweet?" asked Mr. Slack.

"I know a little of it, but am no adept."

"O, sir, music is a noble science. It is the charm of my heart; it is enchantment to my inmost soul. Ah, sir, I have been nearly ruined by it many times! I carried it too far, you know. Not content with one instrument, I procured almost all kinds; and, sir, there is scarcely an instrument but I am perfectly at home with. And, sir, there is not a hymn or song but I can play or sing. Would you believe it, sir, that I stood first in the last grand oratorio which took place in the great metropolis? I sang the grand solo of the occasion. Allow me, sir, to give you a specimen of it." And here he struck off with the solo, much to the amusement of the Professor. "Ah, sir, that is a noble piece. Does not go so well in this room, you know, as it did in Exeter Hall. The audience was so enraptured, sir, with my performance, that they encored me again and again."

"Indeed, sir!" observed the Professor in a tone of keen sarcasm and strong unbelief.

"Of course, Professor, you are familiar with the classics," said Mr. Slack.

"Somewhat," replied the Professor, in a manner which indicated his disgust at the impertinence of the man.

"The classics, sir, are a fine study--hard, but interesting to those who have the taste--so refining--give such a polish to the mind, sir. I once had a great taste for the classics--studied them fully; and even now, sir, I know as much about them as many who profess to teach them. Would you believe me, sir, that I have the entire list of the classics in my library?"

The Professor smiled at the man's preposterous egotism.

"The sciences," continued Mr. Slack, "are grand studies for the mind. Geology, astronomy, astrology, phrenology, psychology, and so on, and so on--you know the whole list of them, Professor. Why, sir, I do not know the first science that I did not study at college; and even now, sir, after the lapse of years spent in the stir of a political life, there are few with whom I would be willing to stand second in my knowledge of them."

In this style of impertinent egotism he continued to waste the precious moments and to torment the company, until the Professor could bear it no longer, and suggested to his friend Mr. Dredge that he had some business of importance upon which he would like to see him, if he could spare a short time alone. Mr. Slack took the hint, and made his departure, much gratified at the impression he thought he had made of himself upon the mind of his new acquaintance, Professor Sweet.

"What a prodigious egotist your friend is, Mr. Dredge," observed the Professor, as soon as he had gone out of hearing. "He exceeds anything I ever heard. It is perfectly nauseous to hear him. He appears more like a fool to me than a wise man. I have not felt so repulsed and disgusted in the presence of a man for a long time. From the first moment of my entrance into your house until the last second of his departure he has talked about nothing except himself in the most bombastic way. I would rather dwell in mountain solitude than be compelled to live in his society."

"I am accustomed to him," replied Mr. Dredge, "and do not think so much of it as you, being a stranger; but he is without doubt an exceedingly vain man and brimful of egotism. I am sorry you were obliged to hear so much of him."

"I am very pleased he is gone, and hope never to meet him in company again, excepting as a reformed character. He may be a good neighbour; he may be wealthy; he may be a little wise and educated; but none of these things justify the excessive vanity and self-setting-off which are so prominent in his conversation."

The views of the Professor were such as others entertained who knew Mr. Slack. Few cared for his company; and those who did, _endured_ more than _enjoyed_ it. Himself occupied so much space in conversation, that other persons and things were crowded out. He thought so much of himself, that it was unnecessary for other people to think anything of him. He filled up so much room in society, that others could scarcely move their tongues. In fact, the ego within him was so enormous that those around him were Liliputians in his estimation. The _U_ of other people was absorbed in his great _I_. He was known generally by the name of "_Great I_;" and when one repeated anything that Mr. Slack of K---- had said, the answer was, "_O, Mr. Great I said it, did he?_" and so it passed away as vapour. Some called him a "fool." Others said, "Pity he knew no better." The universal sentiment was that he spoke a hundred per cent. too much of himself, when of all men he should be last to say anything.

* * * * *

Mr. Snodgrass is a man who, without any injustice to him, may be referred to as an egotist.

I once waited upon him to consult him in his professional capacity respecting a matter in which I had a deep interest. But ere I could possibly reach the question, he occupied the greater part of the time I was in his company in making known to me the multiplicity of his labours in the past; his engagements for the time to come; what invitations he was obliged to decline; how for years he had kept up his popularity in one particular town; how he was busy studying the mathematics; how he had succeeded in a critical case, in which the most eminent men in the city had failed; how he had been written to concerning questions of the most vital importance. In fine, his great _I_ stood out so full and prominent that my little _i_ was scarcely allowed to make its appearance, and when it did it was despatched with an off-handedness which amounted to, "Who are you to presume to stand in the way of Me, so much your superior?" Of course my little _i_ had to be silent until his great _I_ was pleased to give permission for him to speak.

I have been with him in company when he has spoken in such tones of egotism as have made me feel pity for him. He had acquirements which no one else could lay claim to. He had attained professional honours which put every one of his class in the shade. He could give information which no one present had heard before from any of their ministers or teachers. He criticised every one, but no one could criticise _him_. He put every one right in politics, divinity, medicine, exegesis of Scripture. What had he not read? Where had he not been? Was not he a philosopher? an historian? a theologian? a physician? In fact, was not he _the_ wise man from the East? and when he died, would not wisdom die with him?

* * * * *

Mr. Fidler is a young man given to egotism in his own peculiar way. He is fond of putting himself forward in company by telling tales and repeating jests as original and of his own creation, when they had an existence before he was born, and are perhaps as well or better known by some to whom he repeats them than they are to himself. It would not be so objectionable did he not exhibit himself in such airs of self-conceit, and speak in a manner which indicated that he was in his own estimation the chief personage of the company. On one occasion he was apparently gulling his hearers with a tale as new to them, with all the egotism he could command, when, as soon as he had done, one present, disgusted with his vanity, quietly observed, "That is an old thing which I remember hearing in my childhood." But, nothing daunted by this, he still went on with his egotistic talk and manner, until another gentleman well read in books recommended him when he reached home to procure a certain book of jests and read it, and he would find every one of his pleasantries which he had told on that occasion there inserted. This advice being taken, he found that all his jokes and puns which he thought were new, or wished to pass as new, had been published and gone through several editions before he or his friends were ever heard of.

* * * * *

When a man's conversation is principally about himself, he displays either ignorance of men and things, or is inflated with vanity and self-laudation. He must imagine himself and his doings to be of such consequence that if not known it will be an irreparable loss to the world. He shows himself in the social circle in an air which indicates that he would, were he able, either compel others to retire, or eclipse them with his own moonshine glare.

Such a talker must necessarily be a person at great discount in all well-informed and respectable society. They resent his disgusting trespasses upon their general rights; and they are just in so doing. What authority has he for his intrusions? He has none, either in himself or in his associations. His inventions, of which he speaks, will not sustain the test of examination. His great and numerous acquaintances of which he boasts are not all of the genuine stamp. The cards which lie on his table, thick as autumnal leaves, and to which he points for your particular observation, are not of the kind he would lead you to believe.

"I was to dine with the Admiral to-night," said a naval lieutenant once; "but I have so many invitations elsewhere that I can't go."

"I am going, and I'll apologise," said a brother officer.

"O, don't trouble yourself."

"But I must," said the officer, "for the Admiral's invitation, like that of the Queen, is a command."

"Never mind; pray don't mention my name," rejoined the lieutenant.

"For your own sake I certainly will," was the reply.

At length the hero of a hundred cards stammered out, "Don't say a word about it; I had a hint to stay away."

"A hint to stay away! Why so?"

"The fact is, I--wasn't invited."

The man who prides himself in his aristocratic acquaintances betrays little respect for himself. A wise man knows that if he have true distinction, he must be indebted to himself for it. The shadow of his own body is more valuable to him than the _substance_ of another man's. In the mirror of self-examination he beholds the imperfections of his own doings and virtues, which will not for conscience' sake allow him to parade his small apparent excellencies or acquisitions before society.

Lord Erskine was a great egotist; and one day in conversation with Curran he casually asked what Grattan said of himself.

"Said of himself!" was Curran's astonished reply. "Nothing. Grattan speak of himself! Why, sir, Grattan is a great man. Sir, the torture could not wring a syllable of self-praise from Grattan; a team of six horses could not drag an opinion of himself out of him. Like all great men, he knows the strength of his reputation, and will never condescend to proclaim its march like the trumpeter of a puppet-show. Sir, he stands on a national altar, and it is the business of us inferior men to keep up the fire and incense. You will never see Grattan stooping to do either the one or the other." Curran objected to Byron's talking of himself as a great drawback on his poetry. "Any subject," he said, "but that eternal one of self. I am weary of knowing once a month the state of any man's hopes or fears, rights or wrongs. I would as soon read a register of the weather, the barometer up to so many inches to-day and down so many inches to-morrow. I feel scepticism all over me at the sight of agonies on paper--things that come as regular and notorious as the full of the moon."

"In company," says Charron, "it is a very great fault to be more forward in setting one's-self off and talking to show one's parts than to learn the worth and to be truly acquainted with the abilities of other men. He that makes it his business not to know, but to be known, is like a tradesman who makes all the haste he can to sell off his old stock, but takes no thought of laying in any new."

"A man," says Dr. Johnson, "should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage; people may be amused and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered and brought up against him upon subsequent occasions."

"Speech of a man's self," says Bacon, "ought to be seldom and well chosen. I knew one who was wont to say in scorn, 'He must needs be a wise man, he speaks so much of himself;' and there is but one case wherein a man may commend himself with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another especially if it be such a virtue whereunto himself pretendeth."

Solomon says of the egotist, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him" (Prov. xxvi. 12). That is, he thinks he knows so much that you can teach a fool more easily than him. He be taught indeed! Who is so wise as he? If he want knowledge, has he not funds yet untouched, or powers equal to any discovery? Nevertheless, it is an old saying, "He that is his own pupil shall have a fool for his tutor."

How suitable are the words of Divine Wisdom spoken to such: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others" (Phil. ii. 4). That is, whatever you have of your own, be not vain and proud of, to boast of and trust in; but rather look upon what others have to learn from, wisely to commend, and never to covet. Study the well-being of others rather than the exhibition of yourself. Again, it is said, "Be not wise in your own conceits." "Be not high-minded, but fear." "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted, but he that exalteth himself shall be abased."

XX.

_THE TALE-BEARER._

"He that rails against his absent friends, Or hears them scandalized and not defends, Sports with their fame, and speaks whate'er he can, And only to be thought a witty man, Tells tales and brings his friends in disesteem, That man's a knave; be sure beware of him." HORACE.

There are two things which the tale-bearer does: he first collects his tales, and then carries them abroad for distribution. Although always distributing, his stock on hand remains unexhausted. One feature of his business is _bartering_. He exchanges his own ware for that of other people, of which he can dispose when occasion serves. He is an adept at his trade, and is seldom cheated in his bargains. It is immaterial to him what articles he takes in exchange, so that they can be disposed of in private market. Fragments of glass, old rusty nails, rotten rags, cast-away boots and shoes, and such-like things are received by him, either for immediate disposal or for manufacture into new commodities to meet special demands. He is agreeable in his manners, and careful lest he give offence. He enters with delicate feet into his neighbour's house. His tongue is smooth as oil, and his words as sweet as honey, by which he wins the ear of his listener. On his countenance is the smile of good humour, by which he ingratiates himself into the favour of his customer. And now you may see him Satan-like, when squatted at the ear of Eve, pouring in the tales which he has either received from abroad or manufactured in his own establishment. Whichever they are, he has labelled them with his own signature under the words, "_Not transferable, but at the risk of a violation of the most sacred confidence_." Having found a willing receiver of his goods in this neighbour, he asks remuneration, not in pounds, shillings, and pence, but in an equivalent--some fact or fiction, lie or rumour (he is not particular), which he can turn to account in another market. Having received payment, he bids adieu to his friend, and passes on to the next house and does his business there in a similar way.

The tongue of the tale-bearer is like the tail of Samson's foxes, it carries fire-brands wherever it goes, and is enough to set the whole field of the world in a blaze. What Bishop Hall says of the busy-body may be said of the tale-bearer. "He begins table-talk of his neighbour at another man's board, to whom he tells the first news and advises him to conceal the reporter; whose angry or envious answer he returns to his first host, enlarged with a second edition; and as is often done with unwilling mastiffs to excite them to fight, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. He labours without thanks, talks without credit, lives without love, dies without tears and pity, save that some say it was a pity he died no sooner."

The stories of the tale-bearer never lose in their transmission from person to person. Their tendency is to accumulate like the boys' snow-ball rolled about in a field of thawing snow, so that by the time it has gone its round none of the primary features shall be recognised. This may be illustrated by the following:--

"A friend advised me, if ever I took a house in a terrace a little way out of town, to be very careful that it was the centre one, at least if I had any regard for my reputation. For I must be well aware that a story never loses by telling; and consequently, if I lived in the middle of a row of houses it was very clear that the tales which might be circulated to my prejudice would only have half the distance to travel on either side of me, and therefore could only be half as bad by the time they got down to the bottom of the terrace as the tales that might be circulated by the wretched individuals who had the misfortune to live at the two ends of it, so that I should be certain to have twice as good a character in the neighbourhood as they had. For instance, I was informed of a lamentable case that actually occurred a short time since. The servant of No. 1 told the servant of No. 2 that her master expected his old friends, the Bayleys, to pay him a visit shortly; and No. 2 told No. 3 that No. 1 expected to have the Bayleys in the house every day; and No. 3 told No. 4 that it was all up with No. 1, for they couldn't keep the bailiffs out; whereupon No. 4 told No. 5 that the officers were after No. 1, and that it was as much as he could do to prevent himself being taken in execution, and that it was nearly killing his poor dear wife; and so it went on increasing and increasing until it got to No. 32, who confidently assured the last, No. 33, that the Bow-street officers had taken up the gentleman who lived at No. 1 for killing his poor dear wife with arsenic, and that it was confidently hoped and expected that he would be executed."

* * * * *

Mr. Eadie, of the village of Handley, was a man very much addicted to the practice of collecting tales and then disposing of them wherever he could. It was his habit whenever he had a spare hour (and this was rather often, for it must be understood he was not any too industrious), to go at one time into the house of neighbour A., and at another time into the house of neighbour B. Sometimes he would sit gossiping in these houses for hours together. He managed to keep on good terms with both of them, although between B. and A. there existed anything but a good feeling. And, by-the-by, Eadie was the agent of producing it, through carrying tales to each respecting the other. If A. ever happened to show temper at a tale which he repeated as originating with B. about him, he would be sure to have a gentle corrective in telling a tale which he had heard on "most reliable authority" respecting B., which tale would be sure to be worse than the one he had told A. as spoken by B. Thus he did from time to time with either party, so as to keep on good terms with both.

He was known in the whole village and neighbourhood as a person given to the gathering of tales and the telling of them. Some of the people were too wise and peaceable to give him any patronage and encouragement. Others, however, were of different temperament. With curious mind and itching ears they always gave Eadie a welcome into their house. He was sure to bring news about neighbour Baxter and neighbour Mobbs, and somebody else of whom they were anxious to know a little matter or two. Miss Curious was always glad to see him, because he could answer her inquiries about Miss Inkpen's engagement with young Bumstead--about the young gentleman who was at church the last Sabbath evening, and sat opposite to her in the gallery, ever and anon casting a glance at her as though he had some "serious intentions." Mrs. Allchin was another who always greeted Eadie with a smile into her house. They were, in fact, on very intimate and friendly terms. Whenever they met, mutual tale-bearing occupied their chief time and attention. Now and then Mrs. Allchin would ask Eadie to have a friendly cup of tea, which when accepted was always a high time for both. On such occasions they exchanged goods to the last articles manufactured in Fancy's shop or received from Scandal's warehouse.

The next day Mrs. Allchin might be seen busy in making her calls upon her friends, doing business with the new goods received from Eadie over her tea-table; and Eadie might be seen moving about among his friends, disposing of the new goods he had received from Mrs. Allchin at the same time. But it must be understood that the quality of them in each case was generally adulterated.

Mr. Steeraway was another who gave a hearty reception to Eadie whenever he called upon him. He would give close attention to the recital of Eadie's tales, much closer than he was in the habit of giving to the sermon at church or to the godly advice of the minister when he called on pastoral duties. One day Eadie told a tale about B. and S., two persons living as neighbours in the village, and who were living on the best terms of friendship. The day after Steeraway went to B. and told him what S. had been saying about him. He then went to S. and told him what B. had been saying about him. They were hard to believe the things which they heard; but Steeraway substantiated everything with such evidence as could not be denied. They met for explanation in the presence of Steeraway, who feigned to be the friend of both. Instead of clearing up matters, they made things darker, and parted, each thinking that there was some truth in what one had been saying of the other. Reserve sprang up between them; mutual confidence was lost; a separation of friendship took place; and it became a notorious fact in the village that B. and S. were now as much at variance as they were aforetime friendly and united. But Eadie was the main cause of it by telling his scandal to Steeraway, who he knew would repeat it the first opportunity, and could no more keep it secret than a child can keep from the candy-shop a penny given it by its Uncle Moses.

Mr. Musgrove was a tradesman in the village. He was generally believed to be an honest man, making full measure and just weight to little children as well as to adults. He was a tradesman who had a high sense of honour, and withal a mind sensitive to any attack upon his moral principles. Nothing affected him more than to have his integrity as a man of business called in question. One day Eadie, the tale-bearer, called at his shop (Musgrove was not at this time acquainted with Eadie's character and business), and after buying a small article, he said to him in a most grave manner,--

"Mr. Musgrove, I am a comparative stranger to you, and you are to me; but I am always concerned for the welfare of honest and good citizens. Now, I would like you to succeed in trade as well as anybody else, and I hope you will; but you know it is difficult for a man in your business to get along if it is ever rumoured that he makes short weight and measure, and takes advantage of children and ignorant persons."

"What do you mean, Mr. Eadie?" inquired Mr. Musgrove, as though he understood the remark to apply to himself.

"I will tell you, Mr. Musgrove. Now, I hope you will not think that I am the inventor of what I am about to tell you, or that I even _believe_ it, for I have no reason for doing so."

"What is it, Mr. Eadie? What is it?"

"I would not dream of telling you, if I did not desire that you might stand well before the public and your customers in particular."

"That is what I am anxious to do; and what I am always studying to do; and I never yet had any fears about the matter."

"Nor have I, Mr. Musgrove; but it is said that you make short weight and measure."

"This is the first time that ever anything of the kind came to my ears since I have been in business," said Mr. Musgrove, with considerable feeling.

"The thing has been told me by several individuals; and I fear the report is going the round of the village, much to your injury."

"I am exceedingly sorry for it. But, Mr. Eadie, I must know the name of the party who has thus suffered from my dishonesty. I must trace this matter out, for my honour and happiness are dependent upon it. I scorn such a thing in the very thought."

"Yes, and it is said to have been in connection with a little child, too, and that makes the thing so much the worse."

"Well, now, Mr. Eadie, I must know the name of the party," said Mr. Musgrove, very warmly.

"I feel considerable reluctance to give names," replied Eadie.

"You need not fear of being involved in any unpleasantness," answered Musgrove.

"So far as that goes, you know, I have no fear. But if you must know, I will tell you. It is in connection with the family of Bakers."

"Is it possible!" exclaimed Mr. Musgrove. "Do you know, Mr. Eadie, that I and that family are on the most friendly terms. We visit each other often; and they are most regular and frequent customers of mine. I can hardly believe, Mr. Eadie, that there is any truth in the report."

"I hope it may not be true, but it is strange so many should talk about it, if it were not. But I have no interest in telling you of this, I do it for your good."

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Eadie."

Eadie had now done his business, so off he started, and left Mr. Musgrove reflecting. "Strange," thought he to himself, "that the Bakers have never said anything to me; that they should continue so friendly; that they should still send to my shop for everything they need. I cannot account for it." He continued the subject of considerable emotion and anxiety. He informed his wife of the matter; but she did not credit the first word. She was of different temper to him. He was very anxious during the night, and slept little. How could he, when his character for probity was implicated, and his business was likely to suffer? The first opportunity he had he went to see Mrs. Baker, to inquire into the facts of the case. She was glad to see him. Upon the statement of the story, as told by Eadie, she was amazed, and exceedingly grieved. After a brief pause, she said to Mr. Musgrove, "I think I can tell you how the matter originated. My little girl went to your shop the other day for two pounds of butter, and when she brought it home, Miss Nancy, who is rather given to suspicion, thought the butter didn't weigh two pounds, so she at once weighed it, and found that the weight was perfectly right. Mrs. Allchin called in the day after, and in conversation I happened to mention the circumstance to her. I ought to have known better; for I seldom tell her anything of the kind, because I know her gossiping humour. Mrs. Allchin and Eadie, who you say told you about it, are very intimate friends; I have no doubt she informed him in her way of exaggeration and wonder; and then he would tell you in his own peculiar way, which is far from being a way of truthfulness. If you knew him as well as I do, you would not have heard his tale at all; and I am sure you would not have been disturbed in your mind by it, because you would not have believed him. And as to the tale being circulated through the village, that may be partly true; for when anything gets into Mrs. Allchin's or Eadie's hands, it spreads like wildfire; but you may rest assured that no one will believe it, when it is known to come from either the one or the other. Do not be alarmed, Mr Musgrove, neither your character nor business will suffer. You stand as high as ever you did with us, and with everybody else, for aught I know. I am exceedingly sorry that the thing should have occurred." Musgrove left Baker's fully satisfied as to the fabrication of the tale, and still conscious of his own integrity; but he could not help feeling about it, nor could he help observing a slight decline in business from those parties who gave credence to the tale of Mrs. Allchin or Mr. Eadie.

These miserable habits of tale-bearing and meddling, of backbiting and whispering, are the source of the greater part of the quarrellings, alienations, jealousies, and divisions in families. The smallest, plainest bit of wire may become by such malicious working a sword that pierces, to the destruction of peace and happiness. The least possible authority is enough to give them warrant to set a-going an evil report, which, as it rolls, gathers from every point it touches.

As in the case of Jeremiah, "Report, say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take revenge on him" (Jer. xx. 10). As in the case also of Nehemiah, "It is reported among the heathen, _and Gashmu saith it_, that thou and the Jews think to rebel; and now shall it be reported to the king according to these words" (Neh. vi. 6, 7).

Gashmu saith it, anybody says it, is authority enough. What did Nehemiah know about Gashmu? What did any one know? But there are always plenty of Gashmus for the tale-bearer's purpose. But although Gashmus be as plenty as blackberries, God's law is absolute and explicit; it hedges this wickedness around with many provisions, and walls it in, so that a man who commits it is as if he had broken through flaming gates for the purpose. "Thou shalt not raise nor receive a false report. Put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment (Exod. xxii. 1, 2). Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour" (Ps. xv.).

Then observe the vagueness and indefiniteness of the accusation, founded on what in the nature of things was absolutely impossible to be known, except by overt action; founded on suspicion or conjecture of men's thoughts. "That thou and the Jews think to rebel!" There was no pretence that they _had_ rebelled. There is no need to begin the lie in so gross and bungling a manner; it was bad enough to set _the conjecture of an intention in motion_. Whoever took that report to the king would be sure to present it thus:--

"It is said that there is rebellion in Jerusalem."

"Rebellion! Who is at the head of it?"

"Nehemiah, the Governor."

"And where is the proof of this thing?"

"O, Gashmu saith it."

"And who is Gashmu?"

"O, nobody knows anything about him; but doubtless he is some responsible person!"

"A whisper broke the air,-- A soft light tone, and low, Yet barbed with shame and woe; Now, might it only perish there, Nor further go! Ah me! a quick and eager ear Caught up the little meaning sound! Another voice has breathed it clear, And so it wandered round From ear to lip, from lip to ear, Until it reached a gentle heart, And that--_it broke!_"

In reflecting upon these and similar results following the work of the tale-bearer, one cannot but recommend to his attention these words of Scripture: "Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people." "A tale-bearer revealeth secrets; but he that is a faithful spirit concealeth the matter." "The words of a tale-bearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly." "He that goeth about as a tale-bearer revealeth secrets, therefore meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips." "Where there is no tale-bearer, the strife ceaseth." "They learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idlers, but tattlers also, and busy-bodies, speaking things which they ought not."

The following recipe is said to be an effectual cure of the mouth-disease of the tale-bearer. It is given in the hope that all who are so affected will give it a fair trial:--

"Take of good nature, one ounce; mix this with a little 'charity-for-others' and two or three sprigs of 'keep-your-tongue-between-your-teeth;' simmer them together in a vessel called 'circumspection' for a short time, and it will be fit for application. The symptom is a violent itching in the tongue and roof of the mouth, which invariably takes place when you are in company with a species of animals called 'Gossips.' When you feel a fit of the disorder coming on, take a teaspoonful of the mixture, hold it in your mouth, which you will keep closely shut till you get home, and you will find a complete cure. Should you apprehend a relapse, keep a small bottleful about you, and on the slightest symptom repeat the dose."

XXI.

_THE ASSENTER._

"And there's one rare, strange virtue in his speeches, The secret of their mastery--they are short." HALLECK.

This is a talker of a very accommodating kind. He is pliable as an elastic bow. He takes any shape in sentiment or opinion you please to give him, with most obliging disposition. As you think, so he thinks; as you say, so he says. If you deny, he denies; if you affirm, he affirms. He is no wrangler or disputant, no dogmatist or snubber. You may always rely upon having a hearing from him, whatever you say. And observe this, what he is to you, so he is to others, however averse they may be in sentiment to yourself. He is very much of a weathercock-make in his intellect. It seems to be fixed on a pivot, and from whichever point of the compass the wind blows in the talking world he veers round to that quarter. His pet expressions are, "Yes, truly;" "Just so;" "I believe that;" "Nothing is truer;" "That is what I have said many a time," etc. I am not, however, disposed to think that this vacillation is owing to moral weakness so much as to want of mental calibre in independent and manly exercise.

In some it is a habit formed as the result of a desire to stand on friendly terms with everybody they hold conversation.

"It is a very fine morning, Mr. Long," said Mr. Oakes, as he met him one day in Bond Street.

"Very fine, indeed," said Mr. Long.

"I think we are going to have settled weather now after such a succession of storms."

"O, yes, I think so, Mr. Oakes."

"Did you mind that picture of Wellington as you came by Brown's shop. Is it not fine? Did you ever see a better likeness of the glorious hero of Waterloo than that? Is it not grand?"

"It is indeed grand. I never saw anything like it. I think with you, Mr. Oakes."

"That is a magnificent building, Mr. Long, which is in course of erection in Adelaide Street. It will be an honour to the architect, the proprietor, and the city."

"It is indeed a magnificent building, and it will do honour to the architect, the proprietor, and the city," replied Mr. Long.

"Did you hear Mr. Bowles lecture the other night? Was it not a grand piece of eloquence, of originality, and of literary power? I think that it was super-excellent."

"Just so, Mr. Oakes. It was, as you say, super-excellent; that is the exact idea. It was everything you describe. I fully concur in your remarks."

"But I did not think much of the man that supplied our pulpit on Sunday morning. He was too long, too loose, and too loud; a very poor substitute for our beloved pastor."

"Those are exactly my views upon that subject," responded Long.

"My opinion is that the probability of the restoration of Popery in this country was never so strong as now, and unless something be done to interpose, it will become more probable still."

"Just so, Mr. Oates. My opinion is precisely the same as yours upon that point. We agree exactly."

"I think Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees is likely to produce a reactionary effect upon the patronage of the Romanists in his future support as the Liberal leader."

"That is what I think too, Mr. Oakes. It is very likely, as you say, to be so. Your mind and mine agree upon that particular also."

"I have a strong impression that the Public Worship Act will have little effect in arresting the progress of Ritualism, because of the apathy of the Bishops."

"That is just my impression, Mr. Oakes."

"Do you not think, Mr. Long, that the scepticism of the age is very subtle, powerful, and dangerous?"

"Yes, truly, Mr. Oakes, I do indeed think that the scepticism of the age is all you say it is."

"I did not say it was so; you mistook my question for a statement, Mr. Long."

With some little tremor, as though he had given offence, Mr. Long said, "Oh dear no; you did not say so: I have made a mistake; do pardon me, Mr. Oakes."

"That notion of George Eliot, taught in the following lines, is full of atheistic teaching, and likely to be mischievous in its influence. Speaking of his wish to have an immortality, his notion of it is only that of living in the minds of others in subsequent ages:--

'O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead, who live again In minds made better by their presence: So to live is heaven.'

His notion of a heaven, you see, is limited to a life of immortality among the dead, who live in others made better by them--a posthumous influence for good is his only heaven."

"Yes, I see, Mr. Oakes," answered Long. "Just so: I believe all you say. You have expressed what I think about the atheistic theory of George Eliot."

It was in this way that Mr. Long assented to Mr. Oakes in everything he said. They separated, and each went on his way. As Mr. Long walked down the street, who should meet him but Mr. Stearns? and he began his conversation somewhat in the same order as Mr. Oakes, only he happened to take in almost every particular an opposite view. But this was of no consequence to Mr. Long. Both Mr. Oakes and Mr. Stearns were his intimate friends, though not friends of each other, and he did not wish to disagree with either, so he assented to everything Stearns said with as much readiness and affability as he did to what Oakes said.

The above is a brief specimen of the assenter in conversation. His fault shows itself to every observer; and if it is not a moral fault, it certainly is an intellectual one. Every man in conversation ought to have a mind of his own for free and independent thought; and while he does not dogmatically and doggedly bring it into contact with others, he should avoid making it the tool of another man's. He should not throw it, as clay, into everybody's mental mould which comes in his way, to receive any shape which may be given to it. This is _softness_ which a healthful state of any mind does not justify--which the natural intellectual rights of man condemn. It is a _pliability_ of mind which no honourable man requires in conversation, and which he does not approve. It is mental stultification. It confines the action of mind to one party, and limits the circle of conversation to the compass which that mind pleases to give it. The proper contact of mind in conversation is mutual stimulus to action. Friction produces fire, and when there are wise hands to supply suitable material on both sides, a genial glowing heat is the result, which thaws out the frigidness that otherwise might exist. Each one warms himself at the other's fire; all who listen feel the influence, and lasting are the benefits which flow from such conversation.

XXII.

_THE LIAR._

"A false witness shall not be unpunished; and he that speaketh lies shall not escape."--SOLOMON.

This is a talker who voluntarily speaks untruth with an intention to deceive. He is a _painter_, giving to subjects colours and views that he knows are false to the original, but which he means to be understood as true by the spectators. He is a _dramatist_, making representations which do not belong to the characters in the drama, and thereby imposing upon the credulity of the beholders. He is a _legerdemain_, showing black to be white, and white to be black, and red to be no colour--a _factor_, producing works which he vends as real, when he knows them to be shams--a _witness_, bearing testimony to things which have no existence--a _tradesman_, carrying on business in a fictitious name and with an imaginary capital.

This talker may be met with in a variety of aspects and relations: in the shop, telling his customer that his goods are the best in town, and cheapest in price, when he knows that they are far from being either one or the other; in the market, declaring that the fruit is fresh gathered and fish just arrived, when he knows that both are on the eve of decay and rottenness from long keeping; in the manufactory, stating that the article is pure and unadulterated, when he knows that one half or three parts are impure and corrupt. "You shall have it at cost price," when perhaps the price is ten or twenty per cent. above it. "Selling at twenty-five below cost," when the proprietor knows he will make a large profit. "They are salvage goods," or they are "damaged goods from a great fire in Manchester or Edinburgh," when they are old things which have been damaged in the owner's own warehouse or cellar. "William, if Mr. Cash calls to inquire if I am at home, tell him I am gone out for the day," said Mr. Brush to his servant, while he was the whole day engaged in some pet diversion in the bagatelle-room. "You shall most certainly have your new coat by Thursday evening," says the tailor to Mr. Shaw, upon which promise he makes a special engagement to meet company. Thursday evening comes, and Mr. Shaw finds the promise unfulfilled by the tailor, who knew at the time he should not do as he said. "O, yes, I will meet you at four o'clock on Monday at Mr. Nuncio's," when he knew that he was purposing to go in quite an opposite direction at that very hour. "I certainly cannot pay your bill to-day: call on Friday, and I will pay you," when he knows he has the money on hand, and that when you call on Friday he will not pay you.

There are yet three more aspects in which this talker appears before society--as _jocular_, as _officious_, as _pernicious._ As _Jocular_, he talks with a view to amuse and create merriment by telling stories of his own invention, or what he has heard others repeat, and which he knows not to be true. As _Officious_, he talks with a view, as he says, to benefit others. He may do it as a parent to benefit his children; or as a husband to benefit his wife; or as an officer in Church or State to benefit those who are subject to him. He thinks the end justifies the means, and he can do evil that good may come. But this is an egregious mistake; for the Divine injunction is that we must _not_ do evil that good may come. "And therefore," says Bishop Hopkins, "although thine own life or thy neighbour's depends upon it; yea, put the case it were not only to save his life, but to save his soul, couldest thou by this means most eminently advance the glory of God, or the general good and welfare of the Church, yet thou oughtest not to tell the least lie to promote these great and blessed ends." As _Pernicious_, he talks things that are false with a view to injure his neighbour, or any one towards whom he has an evil feeling. It is immaterial to him what the invention is, so that it will answer his malicious design. He can create rumours by wholesale, and dispense them to all who will degrade themselves by accepting them. Aspersions, detractions, slanders, defamations, and calumnies he can conjure in his mind and pour out of his lips without the shadow of a justification. And as there are always persons with ready minds to receive whatever is said to the injury of others, and to circulate it as truth, the liar often succeeds in the accomplishment of his evil purpose. I will give briefly the traits of his character.

1. _He is a child of the devil._--"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John viii. 44). The liar, then, is a legitimate son of this lying father. He speaks as he is inspired by that black spirit of perdition. "Thou never liest," says Bishop Hopkins, "but thou speakest aloud what the devil whispered softly to thee; the Old Serpent lies folded round in thy heart, and we may hear him hissing in thy voice. And therefore, when God summoned all His heavenly attendants about Him, and demanded who would persuade Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead, an evil spirit that had crowded in amongst them steps forth and undertakes the office as his most natural employment, and that wherein he most of all delighted. 'I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets' (I Kings xxii. 22). Every lie thou tellest, consider that the devil sits upon thy tongue, breathes falsehood into thy heart, and forms thy words and accents into deceit."

2. _He acts contrary to the Divine mind and nature._--God is truth and in Him is no falsehood at all. What He hath said He will do; what He hath promised He will fulfil. All His thoughts are according to the perfect reality of things; and all His words are in exact accord with His thoughts. Hence the sin of lying is contrary to His very nature, and an abomination in His sight. "These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: A proud look, A LYING TONGUE, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A FALSE WITNESS THAT SPEAKETH LIES, and he that soweth discord among his brethren" (Prov. vi. 16-19). "LYING LIPS are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are His delight" (Prov. xii. 22).

3. _He gives indubitable evidence of a depraved nature._--He is the opposite in nature to a child of "our Father which is in heaven." "Surely," says the Lord of His children, "they are My people; children that WILL NOT LIE: so He became their Saviour" (Isa. lxiii. 8). On the contrary, it is affirmed of the wicked that they "are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Ps. lviii. 3). Again it is said, "Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good, and lying rather than to speak righteousness" (Ps. lii. 2, 3). The wicked "delight in lies; they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly" (Ps. lxii. 4). Again it is said, "Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood" (Ps. vii. 14). Jeremiah's description of his people answers to the character of the liar in our day. "They bend their tongues like their bow for lies; but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth, for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, saith the Lord." "They will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity" (Jer. ix. 3, 5).

4. _He is generally a coward in respect to men, and a contemner of God._--"To say a man lieth," says Montaigne, "is to say that he is audacious towards God, and a coward towards men." "Whosoever lies," observes Hopkins, "doth it out of a base and sordid fear lest some evil and inconvenience should come unto him by declaring the truth." "A liar," remarks Bacon, "is brave towards God and a coward towards man. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man." "The meanness of lying," says Gilpin, "arises from the cowardice which it implies. We dare not boldly and nobly speak the truth, but have recourse to low subterfuges, which always show a sordid and disingenuous mind. Hence it is that in the fashionable world the word _liar_ is always considered as a term of peculiar reproach."

"Lie not, but let thy heart be true to God, Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both.

Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod; The stormy working soul spits lies and froth."

Again, says the poet:--

"Dishonour waits on perfidy. The villain Should blush to think a falsehood; 'tis the crime Of cowards."

5. _As a rule he is the most condemned and shunned of all the talkers in society._--Those who have any self-respect avoid him. The noble and virtuous stand aloof from his company. He is regarded as a dangerous person, possessed of deadly weapons, subject to a deadly malady. He is not depended upon at any time, or in anything. Even his veracity is suspected, if not discredited altogether; so that when he does speak the truth there is little or no confidence reposed in what he says _as_ the truth. Aristotle, being asked what a man would gain by telling a lie, answered, "Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth."

The poet, in a dialogue with Vice, thus represents the liar or falsehood as the greatest fiend on earth. Vice inquires of Falsehood:--

"And, secret one! what hast thou done To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me? _I_, whose career, through the blasted year, Has been tracked by despair and agony."

To which Falsehood replies:--

"What have I done? I have torn the robe From Baby Truth's unsheltered form, And round the desolated globe Borne safely the bewildering charm: My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon floor Have bound the fearless innocent, And streams of fertilizing gore Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, Which this unfailing dagger gave.... I dread that blood!--no more--this day Is ours, though her eternal ray Must shine upon our grave. Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given To thee the robe I stole from heaven, Thy shape of ugliness and fear Had never gained admission here."

In view of the enormity of this sin, the language and feeling of the good is, "I hate and abhor lying;" "A righteous man hateth lying;" "The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity nor speak lies, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth." They pray against the sin, "Remove from me the way of lying;" "Remove far from me vanity and lies." They do not respect those who are guilty of the sin. "Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies;" "He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house; he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight." It would be well if all professing Christians would act upon this resolution of the Psalmist, and exclude all liars from their presence.

6. _He is generally characterized for other evils as associated and produced by his lying._--The degeneracy of moral principle which can impose upon the credulity of mankind by the invention and statement of what is known to be untrue is capable of other acts of vice and immorality. Hence the prophet Hosea, in speaking to the Israelites of the judgments that should come upon them, declares that "the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is NO TRUTH, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery they break out, and blood toucheth blood." Here we see the brood of evils associated with lying. "A lying tongue," says Solomon, "hateth those that are afflicted by it." It not only afflicts, but hates them whom it does afflict--hates them under the calamity of which itself has been the cause. "A liar," he again says, "giveth ear to a naughty tongue." He listens to lies, to slander, to cursing, to profanity, and the various evils constituting a "naughty tongue."

7. _He often tries to conceal his previous sins by lying, and to conceal his lying by subsequent sins._--Ananias and Sapphira sinned in keeping back part of the price, and then they lied in endeavouring to cover that (Acts v.). Cain sinned in murdering his brother, and then lied in the attempt to hide it (Gen. iv. 9). Jacob did wrong in appearing before his father as Esau, and sustained his wrong by a lie. The brethren of Joseph transgressed in dealing unkindly with him and selling him into the hands of the Ishmaelites, and then to conceal the matter they deceived their father by lying (Gen. xxxvii. 31, 32). Samson committed sin by throwing himself into the power of Delilah, and sought his deliverance from her hands by telling lies (Judges xvi. 10).

And so the liar has to resort to additional sin in defending himself against his lying. One lie begets another lie to sustain it. Sometimes it calls forth an oath, a blasphemy, a curse, perjury, and other kinds of sin. Gehazi lied to Naaman concerning his master, and then to clear himself before his master he lied a second time (2 Kings v. 22, 25). Peter also lied in saying that he knew not Jesus, and to sustain himself in it, when discovered, he cursed and swore, and thus doubled his crime (Matt. xxvi. 72).

"One lie," says Owen, "must be thatched with another, or it will soon rain through." "He who tells a lie," remarks Pope, "is not sensible how great a task he undertakes, for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one." "When one lie becomes due," says Thackeray, "you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day."

It is astounding to a serious mind to observe how some persons can run on in the repetition of falsehoods; and who, upon an apprehension of discovery, will yet go on paying the price of what they have told by continuing to lie on. It is also humiliating to one's humanity to notice oftentimes the cunning, subtlety, paltry tricks resorted to in order to cover over the lies which are exposed to detection.

"This is the curse of every evil deed,-- That, propagating still, it brings forth evil."

8. _He is almost invariably discovered in his sin._--"The lip of truth," says the wise man, "shall be established for ever; but a lying tongue is but for a moment" (Prov. xii. 19). The moral government of God is maintained by truth. It is engaged in the promulgation and defence of truth. He who lies is a violator of its sacred laws, and exposes himself to the searching and grasping power of justice. The agents of the justice of God are numerous, and by one or the other the rebel is sure to be discovered and brought to public exposure in his criminality. There is a general love to truth and hatred to lies among mankind, and the belief or suspicion of a lie leads at once to the use of means to find it out, in order to know the truth and expose the falsehood. Truth known as truth is never questioned. It remains inviolable and eternal. It stands as the admiration of the intelligent universe. But falsehood is transient in its power and reign, and exists while it does exist as the object of execration to all the rational beings of heaven and earth.

9. _He cannot go unpunished._--He is punished in the remorse and condemnation of his conscience; in the abhorrence of him in the judgment of every respectable member of society; in the continual fear he has of shameful discovery. None can trust him. It is against the moral instinct of human nature to confide in a liar. Children cannot trust their parents when they know they lie. Even the ties of kindred, however close, cannot create mutual assurance in the face of habitual falsehood.

Fidelity in every authority visits lying with punishment. Children are punished by parents; servants by their masters. A liar is such a mischievous member of the community that the almost unanimous feeling towards him is one of condemnation.

The Scriptures contain most fearful words expressive of the retribution which shall come upon the liar:--

"I will be a swift witness against false-swearers, and them that fear not Me, saith the Lord of hosts." "Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man." "What shall be given unto, or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper." "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape." "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and ALL LIARS, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." "And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh A LIE." "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, AND WHOSOEVER LOVETH AND MAKETH A LIE."

In illustration of some of the preceding sentiments, I give the following:--

An American lawyer says: "On entering college, I promised my mother, whom I loved as I have never loved another mortal, that while there I would not taste of intoxicating liquor, nor play at cards, or other games of hazard, nor borrow money. And I never did, and never have since. I have lived well-nigh sixty years, yet have never learned to tell a king from a knave among cards, nor Hock from Burgundy among wines, nor have I ever asked for the loan of a single dollar. Thanks to my mother!--loving, careful, anxious for me, but not over-careful nor over-anxious. How could she be, when I was so weak and ignorant of my weakness, feeling myself strong because my strength was untried, and such a life as human life is, such temptations as beset the young, before me.

"She did not ask me to promise not to swear. She would not wrong me by the thought that I _could_ swear; and she was right. I could not. How can any one so insult the Holy, the All-Excellent, our Father, and best friend? Nor did she ask me not to lie. She thought I _could_ not _lie_. Had she thought otherwise, my promise would have been of little value to her. And I also thought I could not. I despised lying as a weakness, cowardice, meanness, the concentration of baseness. I felt strong enough, manly enough, to accomplish my end without it. I had no fear of facing my own acts. Why should I shrink before my fellows for anything I had done? Lie to them to conceal myself or my acts? Nay, I would not have faults to be concealed. My own character, my own life, was more to me than the esteem of others. I would do nothing fit to have hidden, or which I might wish to hide. I thought I could not lie, and I could not for myself.

"During my second college year there was a great deal of card-playing among the students. The Faculty tried to prevent it, but found it difficult. Though I never played, my chum did, and sometimes others played with him in our room when I was present. I not unfrequently saw the students at cards. One of the professors questioned me upon the subject.

"'Have you ever seen any card-playing among the students?'

"'No, sir,' I answered firmly, determined not to expose my fellows. 'A lie of honour!' I said to myself. What coupling of contradictions! As well talk of 'honest theft!' 'innocent sin!'

"'You are ignorant of any card-playing in the college building, Brown?'

"'Yes, sir,'

"'We can believe _you_, Brown.'

"I was ready to sink. Nothing else could have smitten, stung me, like that. Such confidence, and I so unworthy of it. Still I held back the truth.

"But I left the professor's room another person than I entered it--guilty, humbled, wretched. That one false word had spoiled everything for me. All my past manliness was shadowed by it. My ease of mind had left me, my self-respect was gone. I felt uncertain, unsafe. I stood upon a lie, trembling, tottering. How soon might I not fail? I was right in feeling unsafe. It is always unsafe to lie. My feet were sliding beneath me. One of the students had lost a quarter's allowance in play, and applied to his father for a fresh remittance, stating his loss. His father had made complaint to the college Faculty, and there was an investigation of the facts. The money had been staked and lost in my room. I was present.

"'Was Brown there?' asked the professor.

"'He was.'

"The professor's eyes rested on me. Where was my honour _then_--my manliness? and where the trust reposed in me? Did any say, 'We can believe _you_, Brown,' after that? Did any excuse my lie--any talk of my honour then? Not one. They said, 'We didn't think it of you, Brown!' 'I didn't suppose Brown would lie for his right hand!'

"It was enough to kill me. But there was no help. I had to bear my sin and shame as best I might, and try to outlive it. No one trusted me as before. No one could, for who knew whether my integrity might not again fail? I could not trust myself until I had obtained strength as well as pardon from God, nor even then, until I had many times been tried and tempted, and found His strength sufficient for me."

* * * * *

Bessie was a little girl, not very old. One morning, as she stood before the glass pinning a large rose upon her bosom, her mother called her to take care of the baby a few minutes. Now Bessie wanted just then to go out into the garden to play, so she went very unwillingly.

Her mother bade her sit down in her little chair, placed the baby carefully in her lap, and left the room. The red rose instantly attracted the little one's attention, and quick as thought the chubby little fingers grasped it, and before Bessie could say, "What are you about?" the rose was crushed and scattered. Bessie was so angry that she struck the baby a hard blow. The baby, like all other babies, screamed right lustily. The mother, hearing the uproar, ran to see what was the matter. Bessie, to save herself from punishment, told her mother that her little brother Ben, who was playing in the room, had struck the baby as hard as he could.

Ben, although he declared his innocence, received the punishment which Bessie so richly deserved. Bessie went to school soon after, but she did not feel happy.

That night, as she lay in her bed, she could not go to sleep for thinking of the dreadful wrong she had committed against her brother and against God; and she resolved that night to tell her mother the next morning. When morning came, however, she felt as if there was something kept her back; she could not make up her mind to confess the sin; it did not seem so great as the night before. It was not much, after all, her silly heart said. As day after day passed, Bessie felt the burden less and less, and she might have fallen into the same sin again had a temptation presented itself, but for a sad event. One morning, when she came home from school, she found Ben ill with a frightful throat distemper. He had been so all the forenoon. He continued to grow worse, and the next evening he died.

Poor Bessie! it seemed as if her heart would break. Kind friends tried to comfort her. They told her that he was happy; that he had gone to live with the Saviour who loved little children; and if she was good, she would go to see him, though he could not come again to her.

"O!" said the child, "I am not crying because he has gone to heaven, but because I told that lie about him; because he got the punishment which belonged to me."

For a long time she refused to be comforted.

Several years have passed. Bessie is now of woman's size; but the remembrance of that lie yet stings her soul to the quick. It took less than one minute to utter, but many years have not effaced the sorrow and shame which followed it.

* * * * *

A mother sat with her youngest daughter, a sprightly child, five years of age, enjoying an afternoon chit-chat with a few friends, when a little girl, a playmate of the daughter of Mrs. P., came running into the sitting-room, and cried,--

"Where is Jane? I've got something for her."

"She is out," said the mother.

"What have you got? Show it to me," eagerly exclaimed Hannah, the mother's favourite. "I'll give it to her."

The little girl handed Hannah a bouquet of flowers, which she had gathered for Jane, and returned home with the faith that her kindness had not been misapplied. She had scarcely left the room, when Hannah, standing by her mother's chair, talking to herself, said, loud enough to be heard across the room,--

"I like flowers--she often calls me Jane--she thinks I am Jane--I'm going to keep this bouquet."

The mother made no objection to the soliloquy, and Hannah immediately began to pick the leaves from the handsome rose, for the purpose of making rose water. She had not completed her task when Jane bounded into the room, and seeing Hannah with flowers, exclaimed,--

"I'm going to have a bouquet pretty soon. Sally Johnson said she would bring me one this afternoon."

"But she won't," said Hannah.

"I'll go and see," returned Jane, tripping as she spoke towards the front door.

"Here, Jane," said the mother, "Sally brought this bouquet for you, but you were not in, and she gave it to Hannah."

The tears started in Jane's eyes. She felt that she had been robbed, and she knew that Hannah had been preferred to her. Hannah had been encouraged in a deliberate falsehood and in deception towards her sister. Many a time since has that mother felt herself obliged to punish her daughter for prevarications, and often has she been heard to say that she wondered where so small a child learned so much deceit.

This is a small affair at best, some may say; but do not

"Large streams from little fountains flow-- Tall oaks from little acorns grow?"

And do not the "small beginnings" of instruction lay the foundation of man's or woman's character?

The following lines are a solemn admonition against this sin, spoken by one who had committed it and fallen under its terrible punishment:--

"My sin, Ismenus, has wrought all this ill; And I beseech thee to be warned by me, And do not lie, if any man should ask thee But how thou dost, or what o'clock 'tis now; Be sure thou do not lie, make no excuse For him that is most near thee; never let The most officious falsehood 'scape thy tongue; For they above (that are entirely Truth) Will make the seed which thou hast sown of lies Yield miseries a thousandfold Upon thine head, as they have done on mine."

XXIII.

_THE CENSORIOUS._

"Judging with rigour every small offence."--HAYWARD.

He is a judge passing sentence upon persons and things without justice or charity. Benevolent works in Church or State are failures unless he has been a prominent party in their execution. Personal motives are weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thoughts, ere they are expressed, are even seen and censured. Actions are pronounced false and defective. Appearances are judged as realities, and realities as nonentities. Things straight are seen as crooked, and things beautiful as deformed. Where wiser men perceive order, strength, utility, he perceives confusion, weakness, and uselessness. An enterprise of which the community approve and co-operate in he stands aloof from, and satisfies his unhappy disposition with carping criticisms and ungenerous censures. A neighbour who does not reach his standard of moral excellence in character and action he pronounces lax in principles and delinquent in life. One who does not agree with him in his peculiar views of some disputed doctrine of Christian faith or principle of Church discipline he judges to be little better than a heretic or a heathen.

It seems the instinct of his nature to find fault. He hears no preacher, reads no book, looks upon no work of art, without some expression of disapproval. God, Providence, the Bible, Religion, do not escape his sharp and keen criticisms. His perception is so fine and his taste so exquisite that points of failure which a generous mind would overlook he discerns and speaks of with unfailing fidelity. He would at any time rather rub his nose against a thistle than smell at a flower.

"Mr. Smith is a very excellent man," said a friend of mine one day in conversation to Mr. Pepper.

"Yes, he may be," said Pepper in an indifferent way; "but perhaps you don't know him as well as I do."

"What a noble gift of Lord Hill to the town of Shenton, that park of one thousand acres!"

"True, it was; but what were his motives in its bestowment? Did he not expect to gain more than its value in certain ways that I need not mention?"

"How sad that the family of Hobson have come into such circumstances."

"It is only a judgment upon them for the old man's sins."

"Have you heard that young Dumas has entered the ministry?"

"Yes, and what for? Only for the loaves and fishes."

"What a kind Providence it was that provided so suitably for widow Bonsor and her family."

"Providence, indeed! Was it not rather the benevolence of Mr. Lord and his friend Squance?"

"What an admirable picture that is in Mr. Robinson's window in Bond Street. It is a splendid piece of workmanship. Don't you think so?"

"A bad sky--very bad! Cold as winter. That trunk of a tree on the right is as stiff and formal as a sign-post. It spoils the whole picture."

"Then you don't like it?"

"There are a few good points in it; but it is full of faults."

"The Rev. Mr. Benson, of Queen's-road Church, is, in my judgment, an eloquent and powerful preacher. Don't you think so, Mr. Pepper?"

"Well, as you ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a very good preacher _on the whole_. But, you know, he is far from perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is passable, and you may go a long way before you hear a better."

Thus the censor meets you in every topic which you introduce in conversation.

"All seems infected that the infected spy, And all seems yellow to the jaundiced eye."

If you ask reasons for his censures, he cannot give you any, excepting one similar in kind to the following:--

"I do not like you, Doctor Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But I do not like you, Doctor Fell."

"Canting bigotry and carping criticism," says Magoon, "are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. 'What,' said the hero, in reply, 'have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart?' He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own."

Again he says, "The Sandwich Islanders murdered Captain Cook, but adored his bones. It is after the same manner that the censorious treat deserving men. They first immolate them in the most savage mode of sacrifice, and then declare the relics of their victims to be sacred. Crabbed members of churches and other societies will quarrel a pastor or leading member away, and with snappish tone will complain of his absence, invidiously comparing him with his successor, and making the change they have caused the occasion of a still keener fight, simply to indulge the unslumbering malice of their unfeeling heart. The rancour with which they would silence one, the envy with which they hurry another into seclusion, and the inexorable bitterness under the corrosion of which a third is brought prematurely to the grave, proves how indiscriminate are their carping comments, and how identical towards all degrees of merit is their infernal hate."

Pollok speaks of the censor in the following lines:--

"The critics--some, but few, Were worthy men; and earned renown which had Immortal roots; but most were weak and vile; And as a cloudy swarm of summer flies, With angry hum and slender lance, beset The sides of some huge animal; so did They buzz about the illustrious man, and fain With his immortal honour, down the stream Of fame would have descended; but alas! The hand of time drove them away: they were Indeed a simple race of men, who had One only art, which taught them still to say, Whate'er was done might have been better done; And with this art, not ill to learn, they made A shift to live; but sometimes, too, beneath The dust they raised, was worth awhile obscured: And then did envy prophesy and laugh. O envy! hide thy bosom! hide it deep: A thousand snakes, with black, envenomed mouths, Nest there, and hiss, and feed through all thy heart!"

"The manner in which cynical censors of artistic and moral worth proceed is the same in every place and age. In Pope's time 'coxcombs' attempted to 'vanquish Berkely with a grin,' and they would fain do the same to-day. 'Is not this common,' exclaimed a renowned musician, 'the least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, pity this and pity that--this should have been attired, that omitted? Yea, with his wiry fiddle-string will he creak out his accursed variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no improvements in variations _then_.'"

The fault of which the censorious talker is guilty has been defined as a "compound of many of the worst passions; latent pride, which discovers the mote in a brother's eye, but hides the beam in our own; malignant envy, which, wounded at the noble talents and superior prosperity of others, transforms them into the objects and food of its malice, if possible obscuring the splendour it is too base to emulate; disguised hatred, which diffuses in its perpetual mutterings the irritable venom of the heart; servile duplicity, which fulsomely praises to the face, and blackens behind the back; shameless levity, which sacrifices the peace and reputation of the absent, merely to give barbarous stings to a jocular conversation: all together forming an aggregate the most desolating on earth, and nearest in character to the malice of hell."

The censorious talker, with all his criticisms and censures, never does any good, as none heed him but those who do not know him. His criticisms have no influence with the wise and judicious. Though he may swim against the stream of general opinion, he can never turn the stream of general opinion to run with him. Though he may talk contrary to others, he cannot persuade or constrain others to talk as he does. He may dissent in judgment from them, but he cannot bring them over to coincide with him; and it is a good thing for society that it is so. As he talks without wisdom and charity, so he talks to no purpose, excepting to prejudice weak and unwary minds, and degrade himself in the sober judgment of the intelligent and thoughtful.

"Voltaire said that the 'character of the Frenchman is made up of the tiger and the ape;' but even such a composition may be turned to some useful account, while the inveterate fault-finder neutralizes, as far as possible, every attempt made by others to do good. To perform any task perfectly to his liking, would be as impossible as to 'make a portrait of Proteus, or fix the figure of the fleeting air.' To speak favourably of anybody or anything is a trait of generosity entirely foreign to his nature; from temperament and confirmed habit, he 'must be cruel only to be kind.' The only benefit he occasions is achieved contrary to his intent; in his efforts to impede rising merit, he fortifies the energies he would destroy. Said Haydon, 'Look down upon genius, and he will rise to a giant--attempt to crush him, and he will soar to a god.'"

While the censorious man is most severe in judging others, he is invariably the most ready to repel any animadversions made upon himself; upon the principle well understood in medical circles, that the feeblest bodies are always the most sensitive. No man will so speedily and violently resent a supposed wrong as he who is most accustomed to inflict injuries upon his associates. Not unfrequently is a fool as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and for ever is he more incorrigible.

What an unhappy state of mind is that of the censorious talker! He is always looking with the eyes of jealousy, envy, or malice, to discern something for censure; and something he _will_ discern; true or false, it is of no consequence to him. He proceeds in direct opposition to the Divine injunction, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." "Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment." He is like the Pharisees of old, with two bags, one before and the other behind him. In the one before he deposits the faults of other people, and in the one behind he now and then, it may be, deposits the faults of himself. He is devoid of the charity which covereth a multitude of sins, which is the bond of perfectness, which "suffereth long, and is kind, which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, which doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." This charity has not so much as cast her passing shadow upon the soul of the censor; and did the shadow or body of charity come within the range of his vision, he would not discern either the one or the other, because of the blindness of his heart.

One of the finest expressions in the world is in the seventeenth chapter of Proverbs, "He that covereth a transgression _seeketh love_; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends." In what a delightful communion with God does that man live who habitually seeketh love! With the same mantle thrown over him from the cross, with the same act of amnesty, by which he hopes to be saved, injuries the most unprovoked, and transgressions the most aggravated are covered in eternal forgetfulness.

On the contrary, the censorious man often separates intimate friends by repeating a matter and digging up forgotten quarrels. The charity which is most divine is that which hides a multitude of faults. It is pure in itself, and labours to promote the peace and happiness of all. If one would be noble, he must be habitual in the cultivation of lofty principle and generous love.

What advantage comes of the uncharitable criticisms and judgments which are passed one upon the other? Is any one the better? Do they not rather result in mutual ill-humour and enmity? Who likes to have his motives called in question? Who can endure with meekness to have himself and his works put through the crucible of a mere mortal, as though that mortal were the Judge of eternal destinies? Let us remember that we are all frail, and as such should exercise towards each other that charity which we hope the Supreme One will exercise towards us.

"Oh what are we, Frail creatures as we are, that we should sit In judgment man on man? and what were we, If the All Merciful should mete to us With the same rigorous measure wherewithal Sinner to sinner metes."

XXIV.

_THE DOGMATIST._

"I am Sir Oracle: And when I ope my lips let no dog bark." SHAKESPEARE.

This talker is one who sits in company as a king whose words are law; or as a god whose communications are divine; or as a judge whose decisions are unalterable. There is, however, this drawback to his supremacy--it is only in his _own_ imagination. He is to himself an infallible oracle--infallible in all points of theory and practice on which he converses. He has surrounded himself with such fortifications of strength, that to attack him with a view to gain a surrender on any questions of dispute is like trying to break a rock with a bird's feather, or taking Gibraltar with a merchant ship's gun. He is invulnerable in everything. His words, like Jupiter's bolts, come down upon you in such fury that your escape is as likely as that of a gnat thrown into a caldron of flaming oil. Hercules crushing an infant in his grasp is a difficult task compared to the ease with which this giant talker grasps and crushes his opponent. In every mode of hostility he meets you as Goliath met David--with lips of scorn and words of contempt--to presume to stand before him in contradiction. Your logic is weak; or you beg the question; or you see only one side; or you want order of thought, breadth of view, clearness of perception; or you have not studied philosophy, or psychology, or history, sufficiently to judge of the question; or you are wrong altogether: you _must_ be so.

Thus his denunciations come down without mercy upon your poor soul; and alas for you if you have not enough of mental stamina, independence, and fortitude to stand up against them. If you are a lamb, you are torn to pieces as in the jaws of a lion; if you are trembling and diffident, you are overwhelmed as a dove in the claws of an eagle. He scathes with his lightning and awes with his thunder. He sweeps everything before him, and stands in the field as sole possessor. He is "Sir Ruler" of all opinion. He is "Lord Guide" of all thought; and to have a thought or an opinion of your own, contrary to his, is a presumption frowned upon with sternest ire.

Another trait in this talker is, he has nothing good to say of any one, or of anything that is of any one. He deals with others in the third person as he deals with you in the second person. "What do you think of so and so?" you ask: it may be of the highest personage in State or Church, in literature or politics.

"O, he is narrow, or he is selfish; or he is mean; or he is vain; or he is jealous; or he is little; or he is limited in his reading; or he is something else, which unfits him to be where he is or what he is."

No one pleases him; nothing pleases him. Everybody is wrong; everything is wrong. If there is a dark spot in the bright sky, he is sure to see it; if a thorn on the rose, he is bound to run his hand in it; if a hole in the garment, his finger will instinctively find its way there, and make it larger.

I have met this talker in company more than once or twice; and I must say that my conversation with him has been anything but pleasant or satisfactory. I have thought every time that he has increased in his idiosyncracy, that he has become more and more dogged, self-willed, and obstinate. I have wished that he might see himself as others see him. But to this he has been as blind as an owl in mid-day. Where is the salve that would give him this power of vision? He see himself as others see him! Can the blind be made to see, or the deaf to hear? Then may this miracle be wrought. He sees no one in his mirror but himself, and himself in full perfection. Should he, perchance, at any time see another, it is in a manner that only enlarges the perception of his own personal excellences, and strengthens his consciousness of self-importance and self-satisfaction.

* * * * *

"Do you think, Mr. Jones, that Dr. Sharpe's views of the natural immortality of the soul and the future condition of the wicked are tenable by reason and Scripture?" asked Mr. Manly.

"There is neither reason nor Scripture in them," replied Mr. Jones, with dogmatic emphasis. "He is hemmed in by your 'orthodoxy.' He is narrow in his conceptions. He lacks breadth of thought. His logic is feeble. He is deficient in true exegesis of Scripture. He has not looked into nature to catch its unfettered inspirations. His arguments are as weak as an infant's."

"But are you not forgetting the scholarship of the Doctor, underrating his powers, and losing sight of the general favour with which his work is received?" asked Mr. Manly.

"Forgetting his scholarship!" replied Jones, with a dogmatic sneer; "how can I forget what he never had, and underrate powers which he never possessed? And as for the favour with which his book has been received, that is nothing to me. I think for myself: I speak for myself. I care nothing for the opinion of others. I say, and when I say I mean what I say, that there is no force in the Doctor's arguments."

"Yes, but, Mr. Jones, all that is mere dogmatism on your part, and no argument," said Mr. Manly, calmly and firmly.

"You accuse me of dogmatism, do you?" roared Mr. Jones, "dogmatism indeed! Who are you, to be so bold? No argument, either! If I do not argue, who does? It is impudence on your part to say such a thing in my presence."

Mr. Manly thought it wise to say no more about Dr. Sharpe's book. After a brief pause Mr. Jones told a most marvellous account of two men in South Africa, to which Mr. Manly observed,--

"That is a strange story, and hard to believe, Mr. Jones."

"_It is so_, whether you believe it or no: _I_ know it is true, and _it is so_," replied Mr. Jones, positively.

"But your _ipse dixit_ does not make it true."

"My _ipse dixit_, indeed! Have not I read it? Do not I know it? Be it true or false, I believe it; and I wonder at your impudence to call in question anything that I say," said Jones, somewhat furiously.

"Do not excite yourself, Mr. Jones."

"Excite myself! isn't there enough to excite me? _I said so_, and that ought to have been enough without your contradiction."

Mr. Manly said no more on that point, but after a while observed,--

"The principle you advanced, Mr. Jones, a short time since, on geology seems to be altogether gratuitous, and can only be received for what it is worth."

"Gratuitous, indeed! Gratuitous! You affirm it to be gratuitous, do you? I should like to know what right you have to say it is gratuitous? Haven't I said it is so? and do you mean to insult me by saying it is only gratuitous?" roared out Jones.

"I do not mean to insult at all; but I was not prepared to receive it, as it is antagonistic to the views of the most eminent geologists of the present day," replied Mr. Manly, rather coolly.

"What is that to me? My views are my own. I have found them myself. I hold them sacred. I care not who they contradict. I believe they are right. I affirm them so to you, and you should not dispute them."

* * * * *

It is thus the dogmatist stands upon his self-confidence and presumption, his fancied superiority of knowledge and learning. He virtually ignores everybody else's right to think and to know. He flings denunciation at the man who dares contradict him. He is his own standard of wisdom, and erects himself as the standard for other people. "To the law and the testimony," as they are embodied in him; and if there is not conformity to these, it is because there is no light in you.

Sometimes the dogmatist seems to rule supreme in the company of which he forms a part. But his rule is not acquired by the force of logic or the convincing power of truth. It is assumed or usurped. It may be that some are too modest to contradict him, or others may not have sufficient intelligence, or others may not think it worth their while, or others may have wisdom to perceive his folly, and answer him accordingly. Hence he may imagine himself triumphant when no one disputes the field with him. He may think he reigns supreme in the circle, when, in fact, he reigns only over his own opinions, or rather is a slave to their despotic power.

The dogmatist is far from having influence with the wise and intelligent. Among the timid and ignorant he may rule in undisputed power; but to men of reason and thought he is repulsive. He is kept at arm's length as a piece of humanity whose "room is better than his person." In these days of free thought and free speech, who will submit to be hectored out of his right to think, and to speak as he thinks, by one who has nothing but his own dictatorial self-conceit to show as his authority, perhaps backed with a pretentious influence coming from a subordinate official position that he holds in Church or State?

Even when the dogmatist possesses that amount of intelligence and position which legitimately place him above most of the company into which he may go, he is seldom or ever welcomed as an acceptable conversationalist. But when he is a man below mediocre--a pedant--he is insupportable.

Were it required to state what are the causes of the fault of this talker, they might be summed up in two words--_ignorance and pride_. The man who assumes to himself authority over other people's thought and speech must indeed possess a large measure of these qualities. He must estimate his powers at the highest value, and set down those of others at the lowest. He is wise in his own conceit, and in others foolish. He occupies a position which has been usurped by the stretch of his self-importance, and from which he should be summarily deposed by the unanimous vote of pure wisdom and sound intelligence.

Cowper, in speaking of this talker, thus describes him:--

"Where men of judgment creep and feel their way, The positive pronounce without dismay; Their want of light and intellect supplied By sparks absurdity strikes out of pride. Without the means of knowing right from wrong, They always are decisive, clear, and strong; Where others toil with philosophic force, Their nimble nonsense takes a shorter course; Flings at your head conviction in the lump, And gains remote conclusions at a jump; Their own defect invisible to them, Seen in another, they at once condemn; And, though self-idolised in every case, Hate their own likeness in a brother's face. The cause is plain, and not to be denied, The proud are always most provoked by pride; Few competitions but engender spite, And those the most where neither has a right."

XXV.

_THE ALTILOQUENT._

"With words of learned length and thundering sound." GOLDSMITH.

This is a talker not content to speak in words plain and simple, such as common sense teaches and requires. He talks as though learning and greatness in conversation consisted in fine words run together as beads on a string. You would infer on hearing him that he had ransacked Johnson to find out the finest and loftiest words in which to express his ideas, so far as he has any. The regions in which ordinary mortals move are too mundane for him; so he rises aloft in flights of winged verbiage, causing those who listen below to wonder whither he is going, until he has passed away into the clouds, beyond their peering ken. At other times he speaks in such grandiloquence of terms as make his hearers open their eyes and mouths in vacant and manifold interjections! "How sublime! How grand! How surpassingly eloquent! Was it not magnificent?"

I will give the reader a few illustrations of this talker, as gathered from a variety of sources.

"That was a masterly performance," said Mr. Balloon to his friend Mr. Gimblett, as they came out of church one Sunday morning, when the Rev. Mr. German had been preaching on the _Relation of the Infinite to the Impossible_.

"Yes," replied Mr. Gimblett, "I suppose it was very fine; but much beyond my depth. I confess to being one of the sheep who looked up and were not fed."

"That's because you haven't a metaphysical mind," said Mr. Balloon, regarding his friend with pity; "you have got a certain faculty of mind, but I suspect you have not got the _logical grasp_ requisite for the comprehension of such a sermon as that."

"I am afraid I have not," said Mr. Gimblett.

"I tell you what it is," continued Mr. Balloon, "Mr. German has a _head_. He's an intellectual giant, I hardly know whether he is greater as a subjective preacher, or in the luminous objectivity of his _argumentum ad hominem_. As an instructive reasoner, too, he is perfectly great. With what synthetical power he refuted the Homoiousian theory. I tell you Homoiousianism will be nowhere after that."

"To tell the truth," said Mr. Gimblett, "I went to sleep at that long word, and did not awake until he was on Theodicy."

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Balloon, "that was a splendid manifestation of ratiocinative word-painting. I was completely carried away when, in his magnificent, sublime, and marrowy style he took an analogical view of the anthropological." But at this point Mr. Balloon soared away into the air, and left Mr. Gimblett standing with wondering vision as to whither he had gone.

At the time the Atlantic telegraph was first laid a certain preacher thought proper to use it as an illustration of the connection between heaven and earth, thus: "When the sulphuric acid of genuine attrition corrodes the contaminating zinc of innate degeneracy and actual sinfulness, and the fervent electrical force of prayerful eternity ascends up to the residence of the Eternal Supreme One, you may calculate on unfailing and immediate despatch with all magnetical rapidity."

A certain American altiloquent was once talking of liberty, when he said, "White-robed liberty sits upon her rosy clouds above us; the Genius of our country, standing on her throne of mountains, bids her eagle standard-bearer wind his spiral course full in the sun's proud eye; while the Genius of Christianity, surrounded by ten thousand cherubim and seraphim, moves the panorama of the milky clouds above us, and floats in immortal fragrance--the very aroma of Eden through all the atmosphere."

An altiloquent was one day about taking a journey into the country. He was rather of a nervous tendency, having met with two or three accidents in travelling. Before getting into the hired conveyance he asked the driver, "Can you, my friend, conduct this quadruped along the highway without destroying the equilibrium of the vehicle?" The journey having been made without the "equilibrium of the vehicle" being destroyed, when he reached the inn where the horse was to lodge for the night, he said to the ostler, "Boy, extricate this quadruped from the vehicle, stabulate him, devote him an adequate supply of nutritious aliment, and when the aurora of morn shall again illumine the oriental horizon I will reward you with pecuniary compensation for your amiable hospitality."

On a certain occasion one of this class of talkers was dining in a country farm-house, when, among other vegetables on the table, cabbage was one. After despatching the first supply, he was asked by the hostess if he would take a little more, when he said, "By no means, madam. Gastronomical satiety admonishes me that I have arrived at the ultimate of culinary deglutition consistent with the code of Esculapius."

A photographer once, describing his mode of taking pictures, said, "Then we replace the slide in the shield, draw this out of the camera, and carry it back into the shadowy realm where Cocytus flows in black nitrate of silver, and Acheron stagnates in the pool of hyposulphite, and invisible ghosts, trooping down from the world of day, cross a Styx of dissolved sulphate of iron, and appear before Rhadamanthus of that lurid Hades."

A certain doctor once, conversing about the romantic scenery of Westmoreland, said, "In that magnificent county you see an apotheosis of nature, and an apodeikneusis of the theopratic Omnipotence."

Mr. Paxton Hood tells of a minister who described a tear "as that small particle of aqueous fluid, trickling from the visual organ over the lineaments of the countenance, betokening grief." Of another, who spoke of "the deep intuitive glance of the soul, penetrating beyond the surface of the superficial phenomenal to the remote recesses of absolute entity or being; thus adumbrating its immortality on its precognitive perceptions." Of another, an eminent man, head of a college for ministers, when repeating a well-known passage of Scripture, "'He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his'"--here he paused, and at last said, "Well, out of his ventriculum shall flow 'living water!'"

One altiloquent rendered "Give us this day our daily bread" as follows: "Confer upon us during this mundane sphere's axillary revolution our diurnal subsistence." And another, instead of saying, "Jesus wept," said, "And Jesus the Saviour of the world burst into a flood of tears;" upon hearing which Dr. Johnson is said to have exclaimed in disgust, "Puppy, puppy!"

A minister once, speaking in the presence of a few friends met for the purpose of promoting the interests of a certain Young Men's Christian Association, relieved himself in the following: "When I think of this organization, with its complex powers, it reminds me of some stupendous mechanism which shall spin electric bands of stupendous thought and feeling, illuminating the vista of eternity with corruscations of brilliancy, and blending the mystic brow of eternal ages with a tiara of never-dying beauty, whilst for those who have trampled on the truth of Christ, it shall spin from its terrible form toils of eternal funeral bands, darker and darker, till sunk to the lowest abyss of destiny."

A physician, while in his patient's room, in speaking to the surgeon about him, said, "You must phlebotomize the old gentleman to-morrow."

The old gentleman, who overheard, immediately exclaimed in a fright, "I will never suffer that."

"Sir, don't be alarmed," replied the surgeon; "he is only giving orders for me to bleed you."

"O, as for the bleeding," answered the patient, "it matters little; but as for the other, I will sooner die than endure it."

I have read of an Irishman who, speaking of a house which he had to let, said, "It is free from opacity, tenebrosity, fumidity, and injucundity, or translucency. In short, its diaphaneity, even in the crepuscle, makes it a pharos, and without laud, for its agglutination and amenity, it is a most delectable commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the neighbours have none of the truculence and immanity, the torvity, the spinosity, the putidness, the pugnacity, nor the fugacity observable in other parts of the town. Their propinquity and consanguinity occasions jucundity and pudicity, from which and the redolence of the place they are remarkable for longevity."

Altiloquents are not unfrequently found among a class of young persons who think they must talk in a manner corresponding with their dress and appearance--fine and prim. A barber is a "tonsorial artist," and the place in which he works a "hair-dressing studio;" a teacher of swimming is a "professor of natation," and he who swims "natates in a natatorium;" a common clam-seller is a "vender of magnificent bivalves;" a schoolmaster is a "preceptor," or "principal of an educational institute;" a cobbler is a "son of Crispin;" printers are "practitioners of the typographical art;" a chapel is a "sanctuary," a church a "temple," a house a "palace" or an "establishment," stables and pig-styes are "quadrupedal edifices and swinish tenements."

One of this class, a young lady at school, considering that the word "eat" was too vulgar for refined ears, is said to have substituted the following: "To insert nutritious pabulum into the denticulated orifice below the nasal protuberance, which, being masticated, peregrinates through the cartilaginous cavities of the larynx, and is finally domiciliated in the receptacle for digestible particles."

* * * * *

"It is impossible," says a recent writer, "not to deplore so pernicious a tendency to high-flown language, because all classes of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, from insincerity and dissimulation, and from an effeminate proneness to use up in speaking the energy we should turn to doing and apply to life and conduct. Without a substratum of sincerity, no man can speak right on, but runs astray into a kind of phraseology which bears the same relation to elegant language that the hollyhock does to the rose."

The altiloquent talker may be called a _word-fancier_, searching for all the fine words discoverable, and then putting them together in a sort of mosaic-pavement style or artificial-flower order, making something to be considered _pretty_, or _fascinating_, or _profound_.

"Was it not beautiful?" asked Miss Bunting of Mr. Crump, after hearing one of these talkers. "Did you ever hear anything like it?"

"No, I did not," answered Mr. Crump, "and I do not wish to hear anything like it again. Too much like a flourishing penman, Miss Bunting, who makes more of his flourishes than of his sense, and which attract the reader more than his communication."

"But was he not very deep, Mr. Crump?"

"No, Miss Bunting, he was not deep. You remind me of an occasion some time past when reading a book of an altiloquent style. A friend of mine asked, 'Is it not deep?' I answered, 'Not deep, but drumlie.' The drumlie often looks deep, and is liable to deceive; but it is shallow, as shallow as a babbling brook, as shallow as the beauty of the rose or the human countenance. Sometimes you may think you have a pearl; but it is only a dewdrop into which a ray of light has happened to fall. Such kind of talk, wherever it may be, is only like the aurora-borealis, or like dissolving views which for the moment please. But you know, Miss Bunting, it is the light of the sun that makes the day, and it is substantial food that feeds and strengthens.

"Balloons are very good things for rising in the air and floating over people's heads; but they are worthless for practical use in the stirring and necessary activities of life. Gew-gaws are pretty things to call forth the wonder of children and ignorant gazers; but the judicious pass them with an askant look and careless demeanour. A table well spread with fine-looking artificial flowers and viands may be nice for the eye, but who can satisfy his hunger and thirst with them? Thus it is with your altiloquent talkers, Miss Bunting. They give you, as a rule, only the tinsel, the varnish, the superficial, which vanishes into thin nothing under your analysis of thought or your reflection of intelligent light."

XXVI.

_THE DOUBLE-TONGUED._

"Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the glassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's sun, And sting the soul." JOANNA BAILLIE.

He is so called because he carries two tongues in one--one for your presence and one for your absence; one sweet as honey, the other bitter as gall; one with which he oils you, the other with which he stings you. In talking _with_ you he is bland and affable; but in talking _about_ you he detracts or slanders. The other night, when at your hospitable board, he was complimentary and friendly; the night after, at the hospitable board of your neighbour, in your absence, he had no good word to say of you.

Such is the versatility of his nature, that he is called by a variety of names. Sometimes he is named "_Double-faced_," because he has two faces answering to his two tongues. Sometimes he is named "_Backbiter_," because if he ever bite any one it is behind his back, where he thinks he is not seen; and so soon is he out of sight, that you can only learn who has bitten you from some honest friend that saw him do it and instantly hide himself under a covering which he always carries about with him for such occasions. He is sometimes named a "_Sneak_," because he has not courage to say candidly to your face what he means, but creeps about slyly among other people to say it, that he may evade your notice, and at the same time retain your confidence in him as a personal friend. He is sometimes named a "_Snake-in-the-grass_," because he secretes himself in shady places, waiting his opportunity to sting without your knowing how or by whom it was done. In fine, he has been named a "_Hypocrite_," who comes to you in "sheep's clothing," but is in truth a "ravening wolf."

"His love is lust, his friendship all a cheat, His smiles hypocrisy, his words deceit."

He welcomes you with a shake of the hand at his door, and says in soft flattering words, "How glad I am to see you, Mr. Johnson! Pray do walk in;" and while you are laying your hat, gloves, and umbrella on the hall table, he whispers to some one in the parlour, "_That Johnson has just come in, and I am sure I don't care to see him_."

Mrs. Stubbs informs her husband on arriving home in the evening that she met Mrs. Nobbs in the street, and invited her to take a friendly cup of tea with them to-morrow, and then adds with emphasis, "_but I do hope she will not come!_"

A young gentleman complimented Miss Stokoe the other night in company upon her "exquisite touch on the piano" and the "nightingale tones of her voice in singing;" but as he was walking home from the party with Miss Nance, he said to her (of course in the absence of Miss Stokoe) that "_Miss Stokoe, after all that is said in her praise, is no more than an ordinary pianist and singer_."

"That was a most excellent sermon you gave us this morning," said Mr. Clarke to the Rev. T. Ross, as he was dining with him at his house. "I hope it will not be long before you visit us again."

"I am obliged for your compliment," replied Mr. Ross.

A day or two after Mr. Clarke was heard to say that he had never listened to such "_a dull sermon, and he hoped it would be a long time ere the reverend gentleman appeared in their pulpit again_."

"What darling little cherubs your twins are," said Mrs. Horton to Mrs. Shenstone in an afternoon gathering of ladies at her house. "I really should be proud of them if they were mine: such lovely eyes, such rosy cheeks, such beautiful hair, and withal such sweet expressions of the countenance! And then, how tastily they are dressed! Dear darlings! come and kiss me."

Mrs. Shenstone smiled complacently in return; and shortly after retired from the room, when the two "little cherubs" approached their prodigious admirer, with a view to make friends and impress upon her the solicited kiss. She instantly put them at arm's length from her, saying to Mrs. Teague, who sat next her, "_What pests these little things are, treading on my dress, and obtruding their presence on me like this. I do wish Mrs. Shenstone had taken them out of the room with her_."

"I am deeply grieved to learn," said Farmer Shirley one day to his neighbour, Farmer Stout, "that your circumstances are such as they are. Now, if you think I can help you in any way, do not be backward in sending to me. You shall always find a friend in me."

That very afternoon this same farmer Shirley was heard to say in a company of farmers at the "Queen's Head" that Stout had brought all his difficulties upon himself, and _he was not sorry for him a bit_. The next day Stout availed himself of the "great kindness" offered him by Shirley, and sent to ask the loan of a pound to pay the baker's bill, in order to keep the "staff of life" in the house for his family; when Shirley sent word back to him that he had "no pounds to lend anybody, much less one _who had by his own extravagance brought himself into such difficult circumstances_."

This double-tongued talker is not unfrequently met with in public meetings. Especially is he heard in "moving votes of thanks," and "drinking toasts." Fulsome praises and glowing eulogiums are poured out by him in rich abundance, which, as soon as the meetings are over, are eaten up again by the same person, but of course in the absence of his much-admired gods.

It would not be difficult to go on with instances illustrative of these double-tongued exercises. They are almost as universal as the multifarious phases of society. They are met with in the street, in the shop, in the family, in the church, in the court, in the palace and cottage, among the rich and poor.

Addison, in writing of this fault in talking in his times, gives a letter which he says was written in King Charles the Second's reign by the "ambassador of Bantam to his royal master a little after his arrival in England." The following is a copy, which will show how in those days the double-tongued talked, and how the writer, a stranger in this country, was impressed by it.

"MASTER,--The people where I now am have tongues further from their hearts than from London to Bantam, and thou knowest the inhabitants of one of these places do not know what is done in the other. They call thee and thy subjects barbarians, because we speak what we mean, and account themselves a civilized people because they speak one thing and mean another; truth they call barbarity, and falsehood politeness. Upon my first landing, one, who was sent by the king of this place to meet me, told me that he was extremely sorry for the storm I had met with just before my arrival. I was troubled to hear him grieve and afflict himself on my account; but in less than a quarter of an hour he smiled, and was as merry as if nothing had happened. Another who came with him told me, by my interpreter, he should be glad to do me any service that lay in his power; upon which I desired him to carry one of my portmanteaux for me; but, instead of serving me according to his promise, he laughed, and bid another do it. I lodged the first week at the house of one who desired me to think myself at home, and to consider his house as my own. Accordingly I the next morning began to knock down one of the walls of it, in order to let in the fresh air, and had packed up some of the household goods, of which I intended to have made thee a present; but the false varlet no sooner saw me falling to work but he sent me word to desire me to give over, for that he would have no such doings in his house. I had not been long in this nation before I was told by one for whom I had asked a certain favour from the chief of the king's servants, whom they here call the lord-treasurer, that I had eternally obliged him. I was so surprised at his gratitude that I could not forbear saying, 'What service is there which one man can do for another that can oblige him to all eternity?' However, I only asked him, for my reward, that he would lend me his eldest daughter during my stay in this country; but I quickly found that he was as treacherous as the rest of his countrymen.

"At my first going to court, one of the great men almost put me out of countenance by asking ten thousand pardons of me for only treading by accident upon my toe. They call this kind of lie a compliment; for when they are civil to a great man, they tell him untruths, for which thou wouldst order any of thy officers of state to receive a hundred blows on his foot. I do not know how I shall negotiate anything with this people, since there is so little credit to be given to them. When I go to see the king's scribe, I am generally told that he is not at home, though perhaps I saw him go into his house almost the very moment before. Thou wouldst fancy that the whole nation are physicians, for the first question they always ask me is, how I do; I have this question put to me above a hundred times a day; nay, they are not only thus inquisitive after my health, but wish it in a more solemn manner, with a full glass in their hands, every time I sit with them at the table, though at the same time they would persuade me to drink their liquors in such quantities as I have found by experience will make me sick.

"They often pretend to pray for thy health also in the same manner; but I have more reason to expect it from the goodness of thy constitution than the sincerity of their wishes. May thy slave escape in safety from this double-tongued race of men, and live to lay himself once more at thy feet in the royal city of Bantam."

This double-tonguedness of which we have spoken is anything but creditable to an age that makes claim to such a high state of civilisation, to say nothing of Christianity. It shows a gilded or superficial state of things, which cannot but end in consequences disastrous and irremediable.

The finical and fashionable may call the candid speaker a boar, and shun him. He may be an outcast from their society: but, after all, his honesty and candour will wear better and longer than their sham and shoddy. His "Nay, nay," and "Yea, yea," will outlast and outshine their double-tongued prevarication and flattery. Better a boar--if you know him to be such--than a wolf in sheep's clothing. A rough friend is more valuable than a hypocritical sycophant.

"As thistles wear the softest down To hide their prickles till they're grown, And then declare themselves, and tear Whatever ventures to come near; So a smooth knave does greater feats Than one that idly rails and threats; And all the mischief that he meant, Does, like the rattlesnake, prevent."

Archbishop Tillotson, in speaking of this subject in his day, says, "The old English plainness and sincerity, that generous integrity of nature and honesty of disposition, which always argues true greatness of mind, and is usually accompanied with undaunted courage and resolution, is in a great measure lost amongst us.

"It is hard to say whether it should more provoke our contempt or our pity to hear what solemn expressions of respect and kindness will pass between men almost upon no occasion; how great honour and esteem they will declare for one whom, perhaps, they never saw before; and how entirely they are all on a sudden devoted to his service and interest, for no reason; how infinitely and eternally obliged to him, for no benefit; and how extremely they will be concerned for him, yea, and afflicted too, for no cause. I know it is said in justification of this hollow kind of conversation that there is no harm, no real deceit in compliment, but the matter is well enough so long as we understand one another; words are like money, and when the current value of them is generally understood, no man is cheated by them. This is something, if such words were anything; but being brought into the account they are mere cyphers. However, it is a just matter of complaint that sincerity and plainness are out of fashion, and that our language is running into a lie; that men have almost quite perverted the use of speech, and made words to signify nothing; that the greatest part of the conversation of mankind is little else but driving a trade of dissimulation.

"If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better: for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? Now the best way in the world to seem to be anything is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that, it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it; and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it are lost."

XXVII.

_THE DUBIOUS._

"Man, on the dubious waves of error tossed, His ship half-foundered, and his compass lost, Sees, far as human optics may command, A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land: Spreads all his canvas, every sinew plies; Pants for 't, aims at it, enters it, and dies!" COWPER.

This is a talker of an opposite stamp to the dogmatist. The one knows and asserts with imperial positiveness, the other with childish trepidation and hesitancy. "It is so, it can't be otherwise, and you must believe it," is the dictatorial spirit of the dogmatist. "It may be so, I am not certain, I cannot vouch for its truthfulness: in fact, I am rather inclined to doubt it, but I would not deny nor affirm, or say one word to dispose you either way," is the utterance of the spirit of Dubious. He is an oscillator, a pendulum, a wave of the sea, a weathercock. He has no certain dwelling-place within the whole domain of knowledge, in which to rest the sole of his feet with permanency. He sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels nothing with certainty, and hence he knows nothing by his senses but what is enveloped in the clouds of doubtfulness. He tenaciously guards himself in the utterance of any sentiment, story, or rumour, lest he expose himself to apprehension. His own existence is a fact of which he speaks with caution. His consciousness _may be_ a reality of which he can say a word. As to his soul, he does not like to speak of that with any assurance. The being of a God is a doctrine in the clouds, and he cannot affirm it with confidence. There _may be_ such places as China, India, Africa, etc.; but as he has never seen them, he dare not venture his full belief in their existence. Whatever he has seen, and whatever he has _not_ seen, seem to stand on the same ground as to the exercise of his faith. Things worldly and religious, simple and profound, plain and mysterious, practical and theoretical, human and divine, personal and relative, present and future, near and afar off,--all seem to crowd around him with a hazy appearance, and he has no definite or certain knowledge respecting them of which to speak. All the things he has ever read or heard he seems to have forgotten, or to hold them with a vague and uncertain tenure. There is nothing within him to rely upon but doubts, fears, and _may bes_. He lives, moves, and has his being in uncertainties. He will not positively affirm whether his face is black or white, his nose long or short, his own or some other person's. He "guesses" that two and two make four, and that four and three do not make eight. He "guesses" that blue is not red, and that green is neither blue nor red. He "guesses" that the earth is globular, but would not like to assert that it is not a plain. He "guesses" that the sun gives light by day and the moon by night; but as for affirming either the one or the other, he would not like to commit himself to such positiveness. His talk is full of "hopes," "presumes," "may bes," "trusts," "guesses," and such-like expressions. He is certainly a _doubtful_ man to have anything to do with in conversation. I do not say he is _dangerous_. Far from this, for he has not confidence enough in your actual materiality to make an assault upon your person; and he has not _certain_ knowledge sufficient to contend with your opinions, so that there is no need of apprehension upon either the mental or physical question. It is difficult to acquire any information from him, for who likes to add that to his stock of knowledge which is shrouded in doubts, and to which the communicator will not give the seal of his affirmation? Of course some knowledge must be held and communicated problematically. Such we are willing to take in its legitimate character. But our Dubious talker appears to destroy all distinction and difference, and to arrange all knowledge in the probable or doubtful category, and hence he has nothing but doubtful information to impart, which in reality is no information. To enter into conversation with _Dubious_, therefore, is no actual benefit to the intellect or the faith. It is harassing, perplexing, provoking to the man who possesses belief in the certainty of things. It is to him time lost, and words uttered in vanity. He retires from the scene with dissatisfaction and disgust. He pities the man who _knows_ nothing, whose intellect revolves in universal haziness, and whose soul is steeped in the quagmires of unrestrained scepticism.

Cowper does admirable justice to this talker in the following lines:--

"_Dubious_ is such a scrupulous good man-- Yes--you may catch him tripping if you can: He would not with a peremptory tone Assert the nose upon his face his own; With hesitation admirably slow, He humbly hopes--presumes--it may be so. His evidence, if he were called by law To swear to some enormity he saw, For want of prominence and just relief, Would hang an honest man and save a thief. Through constant dread of giving truth offence, He ties up all his hearers in suspense; Knows what he knows as if he knew it not; What he remembers, seems to have forgot; His sole opinion, whatsoe'er befall, Centring at last in having none at all. Yet, though he tease and baulk your listening ear, He makes one useful point exceeding clear; Howe'er ingenious on his darling theme A sceptic in philosophy may seem, Reduced to practice, his beloved rule Would only prove him a consummate fool; Useless in him alike both brain and speech, Fate having placed all truth above his reach, His ambiguities his total sum, He might as well be blind, and deaf, and dumb."

XXVIII.

_THE SUSPICIOUS._

"Foul suspicion! thou turnest love divine To joyless dread, and mak'st the loving heart With hateful thoughts to languish and repine, And feed itself with self-consuming smart; Of all the passions of the mind thou vilest art." SPENCER.

The words of his mouth live with a spirit of doubt, incredulity, and jealousy. Actions, thoughts, motives, are questioned as to their reality and disinterestedness. Good counsel given in time of perplexity is attributed to some ulterior purpose which is kept out of view. Gifts of beneficence are said to be deeds of selfishness--patronage is expected in an affair you have on hand, or you anticipate as much or more in return in some other ways. A family visited with a severe affliction is suspected to have the cause in some secret moral delinquency in the father, or mother, or elder son or daughter. A merchant meets with reverses in his business, and he is suspected of something wrong, for which these reverses are sent as punishment. A traveller meets with an accident, by which a member of his body is fractured or life taken away: he is suspected of having been a great sinner before God, for which His vengeance now visits him.

The suspicious talker may be found in one or other phase of his character in almost every class and grade of society. How often the husband suspects the wife, and the wife the husband; the master the servant, and the servant the master; brothers suspect brothers; sisters sisters; neighbours neighbours; the rich the poor; the poor the rich.

The talk of the suspicious is bitter, stinging, exasperating. How often it ends in jealousy, strife, quarrels, separations, and other evils of a similar kind!

This talk seldom or ever effects any good. It more frequently excites to the very thing on which the suspicion has fixed its demon eye, but of which the subject of the suspicion was never guilty.

Suspicious talk, like many other kinds, has frequently no foundation to rest upon, excepting the fancy of an enfeebled mind or the ill-nature of an unregenerate heart.

* * * * *

"That was a very nice present which Mr. Muckleton sent you on Christmas-Day," said Mr. Birch to his neighbour.

"O, yes," he replied in a sort of careless way; "I _know_ what he sent it for--that he may get my vote at the next election of town councillors. I can see through it."

"Did not Mr. Shakleton call at your house the other day? and were you not pleased to see him?"

"So far as that goes, I was pleased; but I _know_ what he called for; not to see me or mine. It is not worth saying, but I _know_."

"Has not Mrs. Mount recently joined your church? She is an excellent lady, of very good means and intelligence. I should think you will value her acquisition to your number."

"Well, as for that, I cannot say. I like persons to act from pure motives in all things, especially in religious. Don't you know Mrs. Mount is a widow, and there is in our church that Squire Nance, a bachelor? I needn't say any more."

"The Rev. Mr. Wem has left our church and gone to a church in London."

"Indeed! I was not aware of that, but I guess it is to obtain more salary."

"How do you know that?"

"How do I know it? You may depend he wouldn't have gone unless he could better himself."

"My dear," said Mrs. Park to her husband one evening as they were sitting alone, "Tom has gone with young Munster to the city, and will be back about ten o'clock."

"What has he gone there for?" asked Mr. Park, rather sternly. "No good, I venture to say. You know the temptations that are in the city, and he is not so steady as we would like him to be."

When Tom came home at ten o'clock, he had to endure a good deal of suspicious tongue-flagellation, which rather excited him to speak rashly in return.

"I do really think," said Mrs. Lance, snappishly, to her servant one day, "you are guilty of picking and biting the things of the larder, besides other little tricks. Now, I do not allow such conduct. It is paltry and mean."

Mrs. Lance had no ground for this utterance but her own suspicions. The servant, conscious of her integrity, became righteously angry, and gave notice to leave at once. So Mary left her suspicious mistress. She was not the first nor the sixth servant she had driven away by her suspicious talk in regard to the "larder," the "cupboards," the "drawers," and the "wardrobe."

Squire Nutt one day went a drive of twelve miles in the country to attend "a hunt dinner," promising his wife that he would be home by eleven o'clock at night. This hour came, but no Squire. Twelve struck, and he had not returned. One struck, yea, even two, and no husband. Mrs. Nutt all this time was alone, watching for the Squire, and suspecting with a vivid imagination where he had gone, and what he was doing. At half-past two a sound of wheels was heard coming to the door, and in a few minutes the suspected husband entered the hall, and greeted his little wife with signs of affection. Instead of receiving him kindly in return, and waiting till the effects of the dinner had escaped before she called him to account, she began in a most furiously suspicious way to question him. "Where have you been all this time? Have you been round by Netley Hall? _I know all about what you have been up to._ This is a fine thing, this is, keeping me watching and waiting these hours, while you have been galavanting--ah! _I know where._"

Thus, not within curtains, but within the hall, Mrs. Nutt gave her husband a "caudle" lecture, but with little effect upon him. She had nothing but groundless suspicion; he had the inward satisfaction of a good conscience on the points respecting which she suspected him.

As an illustration of another aspect of this talker we may take the friends who came to talk with Job in his troubles. His wife was bad enough in her utterances, but his "friends" were worse. Coleridge, in speaking of Satan taking away everything he had, but left his wife, says,--

"He took his honours, took his wealth, He took his children, took his health, His camels, horses, asses, cows, And the sly devil did not take his spouse."

But his wife was kind and considerate to what his _friends_ were. She spake as one of the "foolish women;" but his friends came as philosophers, the wise ones, to converse with him; and yet, when they spoke to him, they had nothing but suspicions and doubts to utter as to his sincerity, motives, and purity; told him not to plead innocence in his circumstances, but confess all with candour, and show that he had been a profound hypocrite, and that God had visited him with His sore judgments as a punishment for his sins; for _they_ knew that all these things could not have come upon him if there had not been some "secret thing" with him.

Although Job sometimes spoke "unadvisedly with his lips" in reply to the unjustifiable suspicions of his "friends," God stands on his side, and defends him in his rectitude and integrity. He rebukes with severity Bildad the Shuhite and his two companions, because of their uncharitable suspicions uttered against His servant. He was "angry" that they had not spoken truthfully "as His servant Job;" "and they were to go," as one says, "to this servant Job to be prayed for, and eat humble pie, and a good large slice of it too (I should like to have seen their faces while they were munching it), else their leisurely and inhuman philosophy would have got them into a scrape."

* * * * *

Suspicion in talking is a disposition which renders its subject unacceptable to others and unhappy in himself. Persons will have as little as possible to say to him or do with him, lest they fall under his ruling power; and this is what no one with self-respect cares to do. Who likes to have himself, in his motives and deeds, put through the crucible of his narrow, prickly, stingy soul? He cannot see an inch from himself to judge you by. He "measures your cloth by his yard," and weighs your goods in his scales, and judges your colours through his spectacles; and of the justice and trueness of these nothing need be said.

"Suspicion overturns what confidence builds; And he that dares but doubt when there's no ground, Is neither to himself nor others sound."

The true remedy for suspicion in talking is more knowledge in the head and more love in the heart. As bats fly before the light, so suspicions before knowledge and love. Throw open the windows of the soul, and admit the truth. Be generous and noble in thoughts of others. Give credit for purity of intention and disinterestedness of motives. Build no fabric of fancies and surmises in the imagination without a solid basis. Be pure in yourself in all things. "The more virtuous any man is in himself," says Cicero, "the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious."

XXIX.

_THE POETIC._

"I begin shrewdly to suspect the young man of a terrible taint--poetry; with which idle disease, if he be infected, there is no hope of him in a state course."--BEN JONSON.

Scraps of poetry picked up from Burns, or Thomson, or Shakespeare, or Tennyson, are ready to hand for every occasion, so that you may calculate upon a piece, in or out of place, in course of conversation. If you will do the prose, rely upon it he will do the poetic, much to his own satisfaction, if not to your entertainment. In walking he will gently lay his finger on your shoulder, saying, as he gathers up his recollection, and raising his head, "Hear what my favourite poet says upon the subject."

Sometimes the poetic afflatus falls upon him as he converses, and he will impromptu favour you with an original effusion of rhyme or blank verse, much to the strengthening of his self-complacency, and to the gratification of your sense of the ludicrous.

Talking with Mr. Smythe, a young student, some time ago, I found he was so full of poetic quotations that I began to think whether all his lessons at college had not consisted in the learning of odds and ends from "Gems" and "Caskets" and "Gleanings."

Speaking about the man who is not enslaved to sects and parties, but free in his religious habits, he paused and said, "You remind me, Mr. Bond, of what Pope says,--

'Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through nature up to nature's God.'"

The subject of _music_ was introduced, when, after a few words of prose he broke out in evident emotion,--

"Music! oh, how faint, how weak, Language fades before thy spell! Why should feeling ever speak When thou canst breathe her soul so well? Friendship's balmy words may pain, Love's are e'en more false than they-- Oh! 'tis only music's strain Can sweetly soothe and not betray."

"Those are very beautiful lines, Mr. Smythe," I observed; "can you tell me whose they are?"

Placing his hand to his head, he answered, "Really, Mr. Bond, I do not now remember."

"They are Moore's," I replied.

"Oh yes, yes, so they are. I could give you numberless other pieces, Mr. Bond, equally fine and touching."

"Thank you, that will do for the present, Mr. Smythe."

We began to talk about travelling in Scotland, Switzerland, and other parts, when I gave a little of my experience in plain words, as to the effect of the scenery upon my mind and health, when he suddenly interrupted me and said, "Let me see, what is it the poet says upon that? If I can call it up, I will give it you, Mr. Bond,--

'Go abroad, Upon the paths of Nature, and, when all Its voices whisper, and its silent things Are breathing the deep beauty of the world, Kneel at its simple altar.'"

I spoke of neglected genius both in Church and State, when he exclaimed with much emphasis, as though the lines had fallen on my ears for the first time,--

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

A voyage to America, with a few incidents about the sea, were spoken of.

"Ah, ah, Mr. Bond," he said, "I have seen some fine lines by J. G. Percival on that subject,--

'I, too, have been upon thy rolling breast, Wildest of waters! I have seen thee lie Calm as an infant pillowed in its rest On a fond mother's bosom, when the sky, Not smoother, gave the deep its azure dye, Till a new heaven was arched and glassed below.'

"And then, Mr. Bond, you are familiar with--

'The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide region round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies.'"

I spoke of progress in the age in which we live, when he instantly said, "Ah, that reminds me now of what Tennyson says,--

'Not in vain the distant beacons. Forward, forward, let us range, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day; Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"

The worth of a good name was spoken of, and the words of Solomon quoted in support of what was said. But Solomon was not enough. The poetic spirit of our student was astir instantly within him, and broke forth in the well-known lines of Shakespeare, already quoted in this volume,--

"Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing, 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he who filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

Marriage and love were incidentally brought up, when, lo and behold, I found he was so brimful on these, that I was obliged to ask him to forbear, after a few specimens. Having had so long an experience in those happy climes, I found he could not say anything that half came up to the reality. Nevertheless, I am free to say, he did quote some sentiments which on him and the young ladies present seemed to have a most charming effect, especially one from Tupper, who used in those times to be a pet poet with the fair sex and such as our student,--

"Love! what a volume in a word! an ocean in a tear! A seventh heaven in a glance! a whirlwind in a sigh! The lightning in a touch--a millennium in a moment! What concentrated joy, or woe, is blessed or blighted love!"

"Blighted love! Ah," said Mr. Smythe, "that reminds me of Tennyson's words," which he appeared to render with deep feeling,--

"I hold it true, whate'er befall-- I feel it when I sorrow most-- 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."

"These lines remind me," he observed, "and it is astonishing the poetic associations of my mind, Mr. Bond. These kind of pieces seem so linked together in my mind, that when I begin I can scarcely stop myself. Well, I was going to give Shakespeare's words,--

'Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear of tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.'"

"But have you not a few lines, Mr. Smythe, on marriage, although you have not as yet entered into that happy state?" said Mr. Bond.

"O dear yes! I have pieces without number. For instance, here is one from Middleton,--

'What a delicious breath marriage sends forth-- The violet's bed not sweeter! Honest wedlock Is like a banqueting-house built in a garden, On which the spring flowers take delight To cast their modest odours.'

"Here are some more," he remarked, "from Cotton,--

'Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, We who improve his golden hours, By sweet experience know That marriage rightly understood Gives to the tender and the good A Paradise below.'"

Still going on, he said, "Here are some charming lines, Mr. Bond, from Moore,--

'There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die. One hour of a passion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, It is this--it is this.'"

At the close of these lines something occurred to stop Mr. Smythe going any further.

Poetic quotations in conversation are all very well, when given aptly and wisely; but coming, as they often do, as the fruits of affectation and pedantry, they are repulsive. One wishes in these circumstances that the talker had a few thoughts of his own in prose besides those of the poets which he so lavishly pours into one's jaded ears.

XXX.

_"YES" AND "NO."_

"Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."--JESUS CHRIST.

Although in length "yes" and "no" are among the smallest and shortest words of the English language, yet they often involve an importance far beyond "the most centipedal polysyllables that crawl over the pages of Johnson's dictionary." Did persons stop to reflect upon the full import of these monosyllables, so easily uttered, they would undoubtedly use them with less frequency and more caution.

I shall make no apology for quoting on this subject from a letter out of the "Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq.," written by him to Miss Mary Greyson.

"You remember the last pleasant evening in my last visit to Shirley, when I accompanied you to the party at Mrs. Austin's. Something occurred there which I had no opportunity of _improving_ for your benefit. So as you invite reproof--an invitation which who that is mortal and senior can refuse?--I will enlarge a little.

"The good lady, our hostess, expressed, if you recollect, a fear that the light of the unshaded camphine was too bright, in the position in which you sat, for your eyes. Though I saw you blinking with positive pain, yet, out of a foolish timidity, you protested, 'No; oh no; not at all!' Now that was a very unneighbourly act of the tongue, thus to set at nought the eye; the selfish thing must have forgotten that 'if one member suffer, all the others must suffer with it.' My dear, never sacrifice your eyes to any organ whatever; at all events, not to the tongue,--least of all when it does not tell the truth. Of the two, you had better be dumb than blind.

"Now, if I had not interposed, and said that you _were_ suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a--a--what shall I call it?--it must out--a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence of mind that the thought of absolute truth shall so preoccupy you as to defy surprise and anticipate even the most hurried utterances.

"The incident is very trifling in itself; I have noticed it because I think I have observed on other occasions that, from a certain timidity of character, and an amiable desire not to give trouble, or make a fuss, as you call it (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed--that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.'

"Let truth--absolute truth--take precedence of everything; let it be more precious to you than anything else. Sacrifice not a particle of it at the bidding of indolence, vanity, interest, cowardice, or shame; least of all, to those tawdry idols of stuffed straw and feathers--the idols of fashion and false honour.

"It is often said that the great lesson for a young man or a young woman to learn is how to say 'no.' It would be better to say that they should learn aright how to use both 'yes' and 'no,'--for both are equally liable to abuse.

"The modes in which they are employed often give an infallible criterion of character.

"Some say both doubtfully and hesitatingly, drawling out each letter--'y-e-s,' 'n-o,'--that one might swear to their indecision of character at once. Others repeat them with such facility of assent or dissent, taking their tone from the previous question, that one is equally assured of the same conclusion, or, what is as bad, that they never reflect at all. They are a sort of parrots.

"One very important observation is this--be pleased to remember, my dear, that 'yes,' in itself, always means 'yes,' and 'no' always means 'no.'

"I fancy you will smile at such a profound remark; nevertheless, many act as if they never knew it, both in uttering these monosyllables themselves and in interpreting them as uttered by others. Young ladies, for example, when _the_ question, as it is called, _par excellence_ (as if it were more important than the whole catechism together) is put to them, often say 'no' when they really mean 'yes.' It is a singular happiness for them that the young gentlemen to whom they reply in this contradictory sort of way have a similar incapacity of understanding 'yes' and 'no;' nay, a greater; for these last often persist in thinking 'no' means 'yes,' even when it really means what it says.

"'Pray, my dear,' said a mamma to her daughter of eighteen, 'what was your cousin saying to you when I met you blushing so in the garden?'

"'He told me that he loved me, mamma, and asked if I could love him.'

"'Upon my word! And what did you say to _him_, my dear?'

"'I said yes, mamma.'

"'My dear, how could you be so----'

"'Why, mamma, what else _could_ I say? it was the--_truth_.'

"Now I consider this a model for all love-passages: and when it comes to your turn, my dear, pray follow this truth-loving young lady's example, and do not trust to your lover's powers of interpretation to translate a seeming 'no' into a genuine 'yes.' He might be one of those simple, worthy folk who are so foolish as to think that a negative is really a negative!

"I grant that there are a thousand conventional cases in which 'yes' means 'no,' and 'no' means 'yes;' and they are so ridiculously common that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or, rather, is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact, quite apart from positive lying--that is, any intention to deceive--the honest words are so often interchanged, that if 'no' were to prosecute 'yes,' and 'yes' 'no,' for trespass, I know not which would have most causes in court. Have nothing to do with these absurd conventionalisms, my dear. 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' If you are asked whether you are cold, hungry, tired, never, for fear of giving trouble, say the contrary of what you feel. Decline giving the trouble if you like, by all means; but do not assign any false reason for so doing. These are trifles, you will say; and so they are. But it is only by austere regard to truth, even in trifles, that we shall keep the love of it spotless and pure. 'Take care of the pence' of truth, 'and the pounds will take care of themselves.'

"Not only let your utterance be simple truth, as you apprehend it, but let it be decisive and unambiguous, according to those apprehensions. Some persons speak as falteringly as if they thought the text I have cited ran, 'Let your yea be nay, and your nay, yea.' And so they are apt to assent or dissent, according to the tenor of the last argument: 'Yes--no--yes--no.' It is just like listening to the pendulum of a clock.

"It is a great aggravation of the misuse of 'yes' and 'no,' that the young are apt to lose all true apprehension of their meaning, and think, in certain cases, that 'yes' cannot mean 'yes,' nor 'no' 'no.'

"I have known a lad, whose mother's 'no' had generally ended in 'yes,' completely ruined, because when his father said 'no' in reply to a request for unreasonable aid, and threatened to leave him to his own devices if he persisted in extravagance, could not believe that his father meant what he said, or could prevail on justice to turn nature out of doors. But his father meant 'no,' and stuck to it, and the lad was ruined, simply because, you see, he had not noticed that father and mother differed in their dialects--that his father's 'no' always meant 'no,' and nothing else. You have read 'Rob Roy,' and may recollect that that amiable young gentleman, Mr. F. Osbaldistone, with less reason, very nearly made an equally fatal mistake; for every word his father had ever uttered, and every muscle in his face, every gesture, every step, ought to have convinced him that his father always meant what he said.

"In fine, learn to apply these little words aright and honestly, and, little though they be, you will keep the love of truth pure and unsullied.

"Ah me! what worlds of joy and sorrow, what maddening griefs and ecstacies have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in scenes of agony.

"There are occasions--and those the most terrible in life--when the lips are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express what the muffled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering compassionate circumlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but to such a question silence and dejection can alone say 'no.'"

XXXI.

_A GROUP OF TALKERS._

I. THE MISANTHROPE.

He is sour and morose in disposition. He is a hater of his species. Whether he was born thus, or whether he has gradually acquired it through contact with mankind, will best be ascertained from himself. I think, however, that he too frequently and too readily inclines in his nature to run against the angles and rough edges of men's ways and tempers, by which he is made sore and irritable, until he loses patience with everybody, and thinks everybody is gone to the bad. He is happy with no one, and no one is happy with him.

His talk agrees with his temper. He says nothing good of anybody or anything. Society is rotten in every part. He cares for no one's thanks. He bows to no one's person. He courts no one's smiles. There is neither happiness nor worth anywhere or in any one. He says,--

"Only this is sure: In this world nought save misery can endure."

If you try to throw a more cheerful aspect upon things and breathe a more genial soul into his nature, he says to you,--

"Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey."

He is hard to cure, but worse to endure. Sunshine has no brightness for him. Love has no charms. Beauty has no smiles. Flowers have no fragrance. All is desert to him; and alas! he is desert to all.

II. THE STORY-TELLER.--He is ever and anon telling his anecdotes and stories, until they become as dull as an old newspaper handled for days together. He seldom enters your house or forms one of a company but you hear from him the same oft-repeated tales. He may sometimes begin on a new track, but he soon merges into the old. You are inclined to say, "You have told me that before;" but respect to the person who speaks, or a sense of good manners, restrains, so you are under the necessity of enduring the unwelcome repetition.

I have known this talker, again and again, rise from his seat with an intention of going because of a "pressing engagement," and yet he has stood, with hat in hand, for a further half-hour, telling the same stories which on similar occasions he had told before. I knew what was coming, and wished that he had left when he rose at first to do so, rather than afflict me with the same worn-out threadbare tales of three-times-three repetition in my ears.

I have thought, Whence this failing? Whether from loss of memory or from the fact that these things have been so often repeated that, when once begun, they instinctively and in the very order in which they are laid in the mind find an irresistible outlet from the mouth: like a musical-box, when wound up and set a-going, goes on and on, playing the same old tunes which one has heard a hundred times, and which it has played ever since a musical-box it has been.

I am inclined to think, however uncharitable my thinking may seem, that this is the chief cause of his fault. I think so because I have frequently noticed him saying as soon as he has begun, "Have not I told you this before?" and I have answered, "Yes, you have;" still he has gone on with the old yarn, telling it precisely in the same way as before; as the aforesaid instrument plays its old tunes without variation right through to the end.

The affliction would not be so bad to bear if he cut his stories short; but, unfortunately, he does not, and I verily believe cannot, any more than the parson who has repeated his sermons a hundred times can curtail, or leave out some of the old to substitute new. Not only so; another addition to the burden one has to endure is, that he always repeats his stories with such apparent self-satisfaction--a smile here, a laugh there, a "ha-ha-ha" in another place; at the same time you feel he is a bore, and wish his old saws were a hundred miles away.

One has been reminded, in hearing him talk, of what Menander says about the Dodonian brass, that if a man touched it only once it would continue ringing the whole day in the same monotonous tone. Thus this talker, touch him on the story-key, and he plays away until you are jaded in listening.

"His copious stories, oftentimes begun, End without audience, and are never done."

Is there a remedy for this talker? I fear not. He has practised so long--for he generally is sixty or seventy years old--that little hope can be entertained of his cure. He will have to _wear_ out. This, however, you can do for yourself; only go into his company _once_, and you will not be afflicted with his repetition; and if he would go into the same company only once, it would secure to him a more enduring reputation.

Cowper, in his day, it would seem, met with such a talker as I have been describing. He thus refers to him:--

"Sedentary weavers of long tales Give me the fidgets, and my patience fails. 'Tis the most asinine employ on earth, To hear them tell of parentage and birth, And echo conversation dull and dry, Embellished, with, _He said and so said I_. At every interview their route the same, The repetition makes attention lame; We bustle up with unsuccessful speed, And in the saddest part cry, _Droll indeed!_"

After thus expressing his own experience under the rod of this talker, he suggests the way in which he should exercise himself in his vocation:--

"A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well linked; Tell not as new what everybody knows, And new or old still hasten to a close; There centring in a focus round and neat, Let all your rays of information meet. What neither yields us profit nor delight Is like a nurse's lullaby at night; Guy Earl of Warwick and fair Elenore, Or giant-killing Jack would please me more."

III. THE CARELESS.--This talker is heedless of what, and how, and to whom he talks. He consults no propriety of speech; he has no respect of persons. He never asks, "Will it be wise to speak thus at this time? Is this the proper person to whom I should say it? Shall I give offence or deceive by speaking in this way? What will be the consequence to the absent of my making this statement concerning them? Is Tittle-Tattle, or Rumour, or Mischief Maker, or Slanderer, or Blabber in this company, who will make capital out of what I say?"

I do not mean that one should be always so precise in speaking, that what he says should be as nicely measured and formed as a new-made pin. This, however, is one thing, and to speak without thought or consideration is another.

The careless talker would save others as well as himself from frequent difficulties if he would get into the way of pondering, at least somewhat, the things which he has to say, so as to be sure that what he says will not injure another more than he would like to be injured himself.

I will give one illustration of this careless and thoughtless way of talking.

In a gathering of friends belonging to a certain church in N---- the minister's name came up as the subject of conversation. Many eulogiums were passed upon his character, among others one expressive of his high temperance principles, and the service he was rendering to the temperance cause in the town.

There happened to be present in the company a young gentleman of rather convivial habits, who assented to their compliments of the minister. He thought he was a very excellent man and a pleasant companion. "In fact," he said, "it was only the other day when he and I drank brandy and water together."

What a compliment this to give to a minister and a teetotaller! Of course the particulars were not inquired into there and then; but Miss Rumour, who was present, made a note of it in her mind, and as soon as she left the company she spread it abroad until the statement of the thoughtless young gentleman came to the ears of the deacons of the church, who solemnly arraigned the minister before them, and summoned the accuser into their presence.

He declared that what he had said was positively true, but had evidently been misunderstood. "Your excellent minister," he said, "and I _have_ drunk brandy and water together; but then _I_ drank the brandy, and _he_ drank the _water_."

IV. THE EQUIVOCATOR.--He speaks in such a way as to convey the impression that he means what he says and at the same time leaves himself in his own mind at liberty to go contrary to what he says, without considering himself guilty of breach of truth should he do so. He speaks so as to give you reason for believing him; and then, if he fail to verify your faith, he tells you he did not say so positively. Hence his chief phrases of speech are, "May be so;" "It is more than likely I shall;" "There is little doubt upon the question;" "It is more than probable it will be so." He means these phrases to have the same effect upon you as the positive or imperative mood; and yet if you take them in this sense, and he does not act up to them, he says, "O, I did not say I would."

Much evil has been done by this way of talking in business, in families, in the social circle. How many a tradesman has lost valuable hours in waiting and expecting some one who has promised him by, "It is more than probable," that he would meet him at such an hour. And when reminded of his failure, he said, "I did not promise."

With a similar understanding based on a promise of the same kind, how frequently has the housewife made ready her person, her children, her rooms, and her larder, to receive guests on a day's visit! Disappointment has been the result; perhaps hard thoughts, if not harder feelings, have been felt, and it has been a long time ere any preparation has been made for the same guests again.

A mother in a family says to her little son, "Now, John, you be a very good boy, and give your sister Betsy no trouble while I am gone to see your Aunt Charlotte, and may be I will bring you back a Noah's ark."

The mother goes to see Aunt Charlotte; meanwhile John is trying in all his strength to be a "good boy, and to give his sister Betsy no trouble."

Little Johnny is wishing his mother would return. The hour is getting late. He is becoming heavy with sleep. He says to his sister,--

"I am so tired. I do want mother to come home and bring me the nice present she promised. O how glad I shall be to have a Noah's ark!"

At last mother enters the house, and her little boy rushes to meet her, asking as the first thing,--

"Mother, have you brought the present you promised?"

"What present, my boy?" the mother asks.

"Noah's ark, mother."

"Did I promise to buy you Noah's ark? Are you not mistaken?"

"You said _may be_ you would do it; and I expected you would."

"But _may be_, my dear, is not a promise."

With these words the little boy set on crying at his great disappointment, and could not be comforted.

Now this way of talking to children is calculated to give them wrong views of truthfulness, and to cherish within them a similar way of equivocation. It creates hopes and blights them. It gives ground for expectation, and then destroys it. "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than this cometh of evil." "The promises of God are all YEA."

V. THE ABSENT-MINDED.--It is far from being pleasant to meet in conversation a talker of this class. To ask a question of importance or to give a reply to one whose mind is wandering in an opposite direction is anything but complimentary and assuring. How mortifying to be speaking to a person who you think is sweetly taking in all you say, and when finished you find you have been talking to one whose mind was as absent from what you said as a man living in America or New Zealand! He wakes up, perhaps, to consciousness, some time after you have done speaking, with the provoking interrogatory, "I beg pardon, sir; but pray what were you speaking about just now?"

He has been known at the dinner-table to ask a blessing at least three times.

He has been seen in company to make one of his best bows in reply to what he supposed was a compliment paid him, when it was intended for some other person.

He has been heard try to give a narrative of great interest; but before he had got half-way through he lost his mind in the story, and ran two or three into one.

He has been known almost to rave with self-indignation while calling back some one to whom he had forgotten to state the object of meeting, although they had been together some time in promiscuous talk.

He has been seen at the tea-table in a heated discussion, thinking of his brightest idea just as he was in the act of swallowing his tea, and by the time the tea was gone his idea was gone, and of course he lost the day.

One has heard of an eminent minister so absent-minded in talk at the tea-table that he has taken about twenty cups of tea, and has not only exhausted the supply of tea, but after using the teaspoon in each cup has thrown it behind him on the sofa, until all the spoons have been gone as well as all the tea; and only when he has been told that there was no more of either has he woke up to know how much tea he had drunk, and what had become of the spoons.

One of these talkers, in the midst of conversation in a large circle of friends, tried to quote the lines following:--

"I never had a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die."

But, instead of repeating them correctly, his mind became absent, and thought of a parody on the lines, which ran as follows:--

"I never had a piece of bread, Particularly long and wide, But fell upon the sanded floor, And always on the buttered side."

So in his attempt to render the first correctly he mingled the beauties of both as follows:--

"I never had a dear gazelle, Particularly long and wide, But when it came to know me well, And always on the buttered side."

A story is told of a clergyman who went a walk into the country. Coming to a toll-bar, he stopped, and shouted to the man, "Here! what's to pay?"

"Pay for what?" asked the man.

"For my horse."

"What horse? You have no horse, sir!"

"Bless me!" exclaimed the clergyman, looking between his legs. "I thought I was on horseback."

He had fallen into a thoughtful mood in his walk, and being more accustomed to riding than walking, in his absence of mind he made the blunder.

VI. THE BUSTLING.--This talker you will generally find to be a man rather small in stature, with quick eye, sharp nose, nervous expression of face, and limbs ever ready for prompt action. He has little patience with other people's slowness, and wastes more time and temper in repeating his own love of despatch than would be required to do a great deal of work.

His tongue is as restless as his hands and feet, both of which are in unceasing motion. He asks questions in such rapidity that it is difficult for the ear to catch them. He is always in a hurly-burly. He has more business to attend to than he knows how. His engagements are so numerous that many of them must be broken. If he call to see you, he is always in a hurry; he cannot sit down; he must be off in a minute. He often rushes into your room so suddenly that you wonder what is the matter, throws down his hat and gloves as though he had no time to place them anywhere, and, taking out his watch, he regrets that he can only spare you two minutes; and you would not have been sorry if it had been only one. He leaves you much in the same manner as he came, with a slam of the door which goes through you, and steps back two or three times to say something which he had forgotten.

"If you go to see him," says one, "on business, he places you a chair with ostentatious haste; begs you will excuse him while he despatches two or three messengers on most urgent business; calls each of them back once or twice to give fresh instalments of his defective instructions; and having at last dismissed them, regrets as usual that he has only five minutes to spare, whereof he spends half in telling you the distracting number and importance of his engagements. If he have to consult a ledger, the book is thrown on the desk with a thump as if he wished to break its back, and the leaves rustle to and fro like a wood in a storm. Meanwhile he overlooks, while he gabbles on, the very entries he wants to find, and spends twice the time he would if he had proceeded more leisurely. In a word, everything is done with a bounce, and a thump, and an air, and a flourish, and sharp and eager motions, and perpetual volubility of tongue. His image is that of a blind beetle in the twilight, which, with incessant hum and drone and buzz, flies blundering into the face of every one it chances to meet."

VII. THE CONTRADICTORY.--The contradictory talker is one who steps into the arena of conversation with an attitude which says in effect, "It matters not what you say, good or bad, wise or foolish, of my opinion or against my opinion, I am here to contradict. It is my mind, my habit, my nature to do it, and do it I will."

And so he does. His tongue, like the point of a weathercock, veers round to face the sentiment or fact from whatever quarter it may come. You express your views upon some eminent minister of the Gospel. He says, "I do not think with you." Your friend gives his views upon some theory in science. He says, "I am altogether of another opinion." Some one else gives his views of a political scheme in contemplation. He says, "I think the very opposite." A fourth states his views on some doctrine of theology. He says, "They are far from orthodox." A fifth ventures to give his opinion on a late experiment in natural philosophy. He says, "I think it was entirely a blunder."

Thus he stands in hostile, pugilistic attitude to every one, as though he had made up his mind to it long ago. He acts upon the principle, "Whatever you say now, I will contradict it, and if you agree with me, I will contradict myself. You shall not say anything that I will not contradict." Except you should tell him he was a wise man, which of course would be a questionable truth, there is indeed no opinion or proposition in which he would agree with you.

He reminds one of the Irishman who, despairing of a _shindy_ at a fair, everything being so quiet and peaceful, took off his coat, and, trailing it in the mud, said, "And, by St. Patrick, wouldn't I like to see the boy that would tread on that same!"

You are thus challenged to combat; and you must either be mute or stand the chance of being cudgelled at every position you take. The best way is to be mute rather than be in a constant (for the time being) ferment of strife and conflict.

This quibbling or contradictory talk may sometimes be met with in the family as existing between brothers or sisters. They are continually opposing and contradicting each other in things trifling and indifferent, differing in opinion for no other reason, apparently, than that they have got in the habit of doing so.

"It is not so, Fanny; you know it is not, and why do you say so?" said Fred, warmly.

"I say it is," replied Fanny; "and I am surprised that you should contradict me."

"It is just like you, Fanny, to be always opposed to me, and I wonder you should be so."

This habit of contradiction in a family is anything but pleasant and happy, and should be checked by parents, as well as guarded against by the children themselves.

VIII. THE TECHNICALIST.--He is a talker who indulges much in the slang of his calling. The naval cadet, for instance, poetically describes his home as "the mooring where he casts anchor," or "makes sail down the street," hails his friend to "heave to," and makes things as plain as a "pikestaff," and "as taut as a hawser." The articled law clerk "shifts the venue" of the passing topic to the other end of the room, and "begs to differ from his learned friend." The new bachelor from college snuffs the candle at an "angle of forty-five." The student of surgery descants upon the comparative anatomy of the joint he is carving, and asks whether "a slice of adipose tissue will be acceptable." The trade apprentice "takes stock" of a dinner party, and endorses the observation of "ditto." The young chemist gives a "prescription" for the way you should go to town. The student of logic "syllogizes" his statement, and before he draws a conclusion he always lays down his "premise." The architect gives you a "plan" of his meaning, and "builds" you an argument of thought.

Thus, you may generally infer the profession or occupation of this talker from the technical terms he employs in conversation.

IX. THE LILIPUTIAN.--I give this designation to him, not because of his physical stature, for he may be of more than ordinary proportions in flesh and blood; and in fact he often is. His talk is _small_; what some would call "chit-chat." He deals in pins and needles, buttons and tapes, nutmegs and spices: things of course, in their places, necessary, but out of place when you have plenty of them, and they are being ever and anon pressed on your notice. He has no power of conception or utterance beyond the commonplace currency of the time of day, state of the weather, changes of the moon, who was last married, who is going to be, when dog days begin, what he had for dinner, when he bought his new hat, when he last went to see his mother, when he was last sick, and how he recovered, etc.

Cowper pictures this talker in the following lines:--

"His whispered theme, dilated, and at large, Proves after all a wind-gun's airy charge, An extract of his diary--no more, A tasteless journal of the day before. He walked abroad, o'ertaken in the rain, Called on a friend, drank tea, stepped home again, Resumed his purpose, had a word of talk With one he stumbled on, and lost his walk. I interrupt him with a sudden bow, Adieu, dear sir! lest you should lose it now."

X. THE ENVIOUS.--This talker is one much allied to the detractor, whom we have considered at length in a former part of this volume. He cannot hear anything good of another without having something to say to the contrary. If you speak of a friend of yours possessed of more than ordinary gifts or graces, he interjects a "but" and its connections, by which he means to counterbalance what you say. Like his ancestor Cain, he seeks to kill in the estimation of others every one who stands more acceptable to society than himself.

The disposition of the envious is destructive and murderous. Anything that exceeds himself in appearance, in circumstances, in influence, he endeavours to destroy, so that _he_ may stand first in esteem and praiseworthiness.

But he is a deceiver of himself. Others see his motive and aim, and, like Jehovah in the beginning, discover his malicious spirit, and condemn him as a vagabond and fugitive in society. He becomes a _marked_ man, and whoever sees him avoids him as a destroyer of everything amiable and of good report.

It is bad enough to _feel_ envy in the heart; but to bring it forth in words in conversation makes it doubly monstrous and repulsive. Such a talker is revolting to all amiable and justly disposed persons in the social circle.

XI. THE SECRET TALKER.--"Be sure, now, you do not tell any one what I am going to say to you," is a phrase that one talker often says to another: "Certainly not," is the ready rejoinder. So the secret is given in charge; and no sooner have the two friends parted than the entrusted fact or rumour is divulged, perhaps, to the very first person with whom he comes in conversation, told of course as a "secret never to be repeated." He had power to hear it, but not power to retain it. He is a _leaky_ vessel, a sieve-receiver, not able to keep anything put within him.

There is oftentimes deception, if not absolute lying, in this talker. Why does he receive the secret with the strong promise, "I will tell no one, upon my honour," if he cannot retain it in his own bosom?

Such persons are not to be trusted _twice_. As soon as you discover your facts given under covenant of secrecy are blabbed to others, you say, "I shall not trust him again:" and very properly too. Of course he tells as a secret what you tell him as a secret; but if he cannot retain it, how can he expect others? It is in this way that a matter, which in the first instance is spoken of under the most strict confidence, becomes a well-known fact, as though the public bellman had been hired to proclaim it in the streets.

XII. THE SNUBBER.--There is a man sometimes met with in society, whose business, when he talks, seems to be the administration of rebuke, in a spirit and with a tone of voice churlish and sarcastic, by which he would stop the increase of knowledge, check the development of mind, and arrest the growth of heroic souls. He is far from amiable in his disposition, or happy in his temper. He is a knotty piece of humanity, which rubs itself against the even surface of other portions, much to its annoyance, and to his own irritability. He is like a frost, nipping the tender blossoms of intellect, and stopping the growth of a youthful branch of promise. He is shunned by the gentle and sensitive. The independent and bold repel him, and pay him back in his own coin, a specie which he does not like, although he does a large business with it himself.

The word itself is banished from polite society; but alas! the custom is by no means proscribed. The sound is, to some extent, significant of the sense. "To snub" is certainly not euphonious, and would sadly offend the ears of many who are addicted to the habit. Snubbing is of various kinds. For instance, there is the snub direct, sharp, and decisive, that knocks the tender, sensitive spirit at once; there is the covert snub, nearly allied to being talked at; the jocose snub, veiling the objectionable form of reproof under an affected pleasantry; and there is also a most unpleasant form of snubbing, frequently used by well-meaning persons to repress forwardness or personal vanity. It is very true that children and young people often exhibit forwardness, vanity, and many other qualities extremely distasteful to their wiser elders; but it is questionable if snubbing was ever found an effectual cure for such faults. It may smother the evil for the time; but in such cases it is better to encourage children to speak their thoughts freely, patiently, gently, to show them where they are wrong, and trust to a kind voice and tender indulgence to win the hearts that snubbing would most certainly, sooner or later, alienate.

So far, then, from snubbing curing faults of character, it will be found to be a frightful source of evil: it renders a timid child reserved, and it may be deemed fortunate if the conscientious principle is strong enough to preserve him from direct deceit. Indecision of character, too, is a common result of snubbing; for there can be no self-reliance when the mind is wondering within itself whether such or such an action will be snubbed. Some dispositions may in time become tolerably callous to reproof; but it rarely happens that even those most seasoned by incessant rebukes ever entirely lose the uncomfortable feeling which snubbing occasions. It is, in fact, a perpetual mental blister; and it is grievous to see how blindly people exercise it on those they dearly love. It may occur to some, who can think as well as snub, that the benefit to be derived from anything calculated to wound sensitive feelings must be very questionable; but the plain fact is, that nine times out of ten it is done unthinkingly, and from the impulse of the moment. It may be but a small unkindness at the time, the words forgotten as soon as uttered; but in many instances the effects of a snubbed childhood last a lifetime.

These remarks are offered in the hope that they may be useful in pointing out the evil of this very prevalent habit. It is most certainly a violation of the holy commandment of doing to others as we would be done by, and requires to be diligently watched against. There is no one addicted to the practice of snubbing others who likes to be snubbed himself. The law of love should not only dwell in the heart, but should also baptize the lips.

XIII. THE ARGUMENTATIVE.--This talker has so fully studied Whateley and Mill, and his mind is so naturally constructed, that he must have every thought syllogistically placed, and logically wrought out to demonstration, beyond the shadow of a shade of doubt. With countenance grave he approaches close to your person, and with the tip of one forefinger on the tip of the other forefinger, he begins, "Now mark, sir, this is the proposition which I lay down--the _quality_ and _quantity_ of it I will not now stop to state--'No one is free who is enslaved by his appetites: a sensualist is enslaved by his appetites, therefore a sensualist is not free.' Now, sir, there is no escape from this conclusion, if you admit the _premise_, the _major_ and the _minor_ of my argument."

"It is most conclusive and demonstrative," observed Mr. Allgood. "What have you to say, Mr. Goose, about the propriety of enforcing the penal laws against the Papists, who, as you know, are in the heart of their religion so opposed to the Protestant laws and constitution of this country?"

Again placing the tip of his forefinger on his right hand upon the tip of his forefinger on his left hand, he said, "If penal laws against Papists were enforced, they would have cause of grievance; but penal laws against them are not enforced, therefore they have no such cause."

"That is very clear and convincing," observed Mr. Allgood again. "Do you think, Mr. Goose," again asked Mr. Allgood--he could not argue, but only ask questions--"that the practice of oath-taking is in any way beneficial and to be commended?"

Once more assuming his former logical attitude, with additional signs of thought and gravity, as though the question demanded great consideration, Mr. Goose at length said,--

"Mr. Allgood, if men are not likely to be influenced in the performance of a known duty by taking an oath to perform it, the oaths commonly administered are superfluous; if they are likely to be so influenced, every one should be made to take an oath to behave rightly throughout his life; but one or the other of these must be the case; therefore, either the oaths commonly administered are superfluous, or every man should be made to take an oath to behave rightly throughout his life."

"Thank you, Mr. Goose, thank you, for placing the thing in such a lucid and irrefutable light," answered Mr. Allgood, who seemed to be in mist all the time Mr. Goose was laying down his argument.

Had Mr. Allgood gone on with his questions up to the thousandth, each one being distinct from the other, Mr. Goose would have answered him, as far as he could, in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so propositional, syllogistic, and demonstrative.

And, as a rule, who does not sympathise with Mr. Allgood, as against Mr. Goose, in his method of talk? Syllogisms, propositions, predicates, majors, minors, sorites, enthymeme, copula, concrete, and such-like logical terms are all very well from a professor to his students in a lecture room, but introduced into ordinary conversation in company they are altogether out of place. No one with good taste, unless he has fearfully forgotten it, will disfigure his talk with them, however pure and efficient a logician he may be in reality.

Some of this class of talkers are nothing but mere shams in their art. They affect a knowledge of argumentative processes, and obtrude upon your attention by false reasoning conclusions which perhaps _appear_ as legitimate as possible. You cannot deny, yet you cannot believe. You cannot refute by your logic, neither can you admit by your faith. Such are most of the sceptical talkers on the Bible, Christianity, etc. Milton speaks of this argumentative talker when he says,--

"But this juggler Would think to chain my judgment, as mine eyes, Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb."

Another species of this talker is thus described by Butler, in "Hudibras":--

"He'd undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man's a horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl; A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks committee men and trustees."

Another kind may be noticed: the one whose arguments are generally of a class which, when seen through and used by sound wit, rebound upon himself. Trumball, in his "M'Fingal," thus describes him:--

"But as some muskets do contrive it, As oft to miss the mark they drive at, And though well aimed at duck or plover, Bear wide, and kick their owners over,-- So fared our squire, whose reas'ning toil Would often on himself recoil, And so much injured more his side, The stronger arguments he apply'd."

One more of this class of talkers may be mentioned, viz., the man who forces his logic upon you in such a dogmatic manner as leaves you without any hope of reply. You give him all the glory of victory. For the sake of peace and safety you remain passive, and think this the best valour for the occasion. Cowper refers to him in the following lines:--

"Vociferated logic kills me quite, A noisy man is always in the right; I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair, Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare; And when I hope his blunders are all out, Reply discreetly, To be sure--no doubt!"

XIV. THE RELIGIOUS.--He is one that obtrudes his views and experience upon others in ways, times, and places which are far from prudent and commendable. Between his talk and his conduct there is a wide disparity. From his words you would judge him a saint: from his conduct a sinner. Abroad he is a Christian: at home he is an infidel.

Bunyan describes this character in his own simple and forcible way: "I have been in his family, and have observed him both at home and abroad; and I know what I say of him is the truth. His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is neither prayer nor sign of repentance for sin; yea, the brute, in his kind, serves God far better than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion to all that know him: it can hardly have a good word in that end of the town where he dwells, through him--a saint abroad, and a devil at home! His poor family find it so. He is such a churl; such a railer at and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for him nor speak of him. Men that have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him, for fairer dealings they shall have at his hands. This Talkative, if it be possible, will go beyond them, defraud, beguile, and overreach them. Besides, he brings up his sons to follow in his steps; and if he finds in any of them a 'foolish timorousness' (for so he calls the first appearance of a tender conscience), he calls them fools and blockheads, and by no means will employ them in much, or speak to their commendation before others. For my part, I am of opinion that he has, by his wicked life, caused many to stumble and fall, and will be, if God prevent not, the ruin of many more."

The Apostle James in his epistle refers to this talker: "If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." And how is he to bridle his tongue? Why, not only from slander and profanity, but from _saying_, "When he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot tempt to evil; neither tempteth He any man." Also, from making empty and pharisaic pretensions to a high state of piety, while there are glaring contradictions in the life: "What doth it profit, if a man say that he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?" As though the Apostle should say, "You talkers about religion are not always the most practical exemplifiers of it. Not he who _says_ he is religious, but he who _lives_ religious is the justified one before God and man. Enough of talk, talk, talk: let us have the _reality_ in heart experience and in life deeds."

"'Say well' from 'do well' differs in letter; 'Say well' is good, but 'do well' is better. 'Say well' says godly, and helps to please; But 'do well' lives godly, and gives the world ease. 'Say well' in danger of death is cold; 'Do well' is harnessed, and wondrous bold. 'Say well' to silence sometimes is bound; But 'do well' is free for every stound. 'Say well' has friends, some here some there; But 'do well' is welcome everywhere. By 'say well' many a one to God's Word cleaves; But for lack of 'do well' it quickly leaves. If 'say well' and 'do well' were joined in one frame, Then all were done, all were won, and gotten were the game."

XV. THE PREJUDICED.--Rumour and ignorance form the foundation of prejudice.

"That is an injurious book for your children to read," said Mr. Rust one day to Mr. Moon, concerning a volume of the "Primrose Series," which he was looking at in Smith's library.

All Mr. Rust knew about the volume was something which had casually dropped in conversation the day before, in the house of a friend where he was visiting; but that was sufficient to prejudice him against the book.

"I hear you have invited the Rev. Jonas Winkle to be the pastor of your church," said the Rev. T. Little to Deacon Bunsen.

"Yes, we have," the deacon replied.

"I am sorry to hear it; for if all that is said about him is true, you have made a mistake."

And what did this Reverend brother know of the other Reverend brother to justify him in speaking thus? Why, just nothing at all. True, he had heard a rumour, but personal knowledge he had none. However, what he said so influenced the mind of Deacon Bunsen, that he did all he could to have the invitation withdrawn; which being done, the Rev. Mr. Little, by certain "wire pulling" on his part, and a good word spoken for him by a layman of wealth on his part, managed to secure the pastorate of the said church for himself.

"I hear that young Bush is coming into your bank as cashier," observed Mr. Young to Mr. Monk, the manager.

"Yes; he enters upon his duties next week."

"But have you not heard what is afloat about him?"

"No. I have heard nothing."

"Then the less said the soonest mended," answered Young.

Now this Mr. Young knew nothing personally against young Bush, but had heard a rumour which prejudiced him to speak in this way of him; the result of which was that the manager evinced suspicion of the young man until he had been in the bank some time, and by his unquestionable conduct had proved that Mr. Young's insinuation was nothing but prejudice grounded upon rumour and ignorance of him.

Thus it is that the prejudiced talker may do a great deal of mischief against persons of the most innocent character.

Prejudice has nothing to justify it, but everything to condemn it. The person subject to it evinces a mind devoid of the breadth, strength, and independence characteristic of true manhood; and the sooner he disposes of rumour and ignorance as the creator of words on his tongue, the better for his reputation. Before he speaks of persons or things he will act wisely to "come and see" by personal interview and experience.

XVI. THE BOASTER.--This talker is somewhat akin to the _Egotist_; nevertheless there is a distinction and difference. What he is, what he has done, where he has been, his acquaintances, his intentions, his prospects, his capabilities, his possessions, are the subjects of his talk in such a braggadocio spirit and style as disgusts the intelligent, and imposes upon the simple.

Has he done you a charitable deed? has he been heroic in an act of mercy? has he given a contribution to an object of beneficence? has he performed some feat of gymnastics? has he made a good bargain in business? has he said or done something which has elicited the faintest praise from an observer?--with what a flourish he brags of each in its turn! Everybody and everything must stand aside while he and his doings are exhibited in full glory before the company.

It is well when these mountebanks meet with treatment such as they deserve. A honest word or two spoken by a fearless hearer of their loud talking will soon cause their balloon to collapse, or bring their exhibition to a sudden end. And then how pitiable they do look! Where is boasting then? Alas, it is excluded; and their glory is turned into shame.

A young man who in his travels had visited the isle of Rhodes was once boasting in company of how he had out-jumped all the men there, and all the Rhodians could bear witness of it. One of the company replied, "If you speak the truth, think this place to be Rhodes, and jump here;" when it turned out that he could do nothing, and was glad to make his exit. The English proverb, "Great boast and small roast," is applicable to such.

It is said in history that a friend of Cæsar's had preserved a certain man from the tyranny of the triumvirate proscription; but he so frequently talked about it in a boasting manner, that the poor man ultimately exclaimed, "Pray thee, restore me to Cæsar again! I had rather undergo a thousand deaths than to be thus continually upbraided by thee with what thou hast done for me."

And who does not sympathise with this feeling when any one who has in a way been a friend is ever and anon boasting of it in conversation?

"We must not," as one says, "make ourselves the trumpet of our benevolence in liberalities and good deeds, but let them, like John the Baptist, be the speaking son of a dumb parent--speak to the necessity of our brother, but dumb in the relation of it to others. It is for worthless empirics to stage themselves in the market and recount their cures, and for all good Christians to be silent in their charitable transactions."

"The highest looks have not the highest mind, Nor haughty words most full of highest thought; But are like bladders blown up with the wind, That being pricked, evanish into nought."

"Who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this; for it will come to pass That every braggart shall be found an ass."

XVII. THE QUARRELSOME.--What is said of the Irishman may be said of this talker, "He is only in peace when he is in a quarrel." His flowers are thistles, and his sweets bitters. The more you study to be quiet, the more he aims to make a noise. The least imaginable thing in word, look, or act he takes as a cause for bickering and contention. As a neighbour, as a fellow member in a family, as a fellow workman, as a fellow traveller, he is disagreeable and annoying. He quarrels with you alike for things you do to please him or things you do to displease him. When two such persons meet, peace takes to her wings and flies away, leaving war of words, if not of weapons, in her room.

Benvolio in _Romeo and Juliet_ was one of this steel. Mercutio addressing him says, "Thou! why thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a man for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old ribbons? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!"

XVIII. THE PROFOUND.--He leaves you at the edge, but himself plunges like an expert diver into the vasty deeps; and there in twilight visible, if not in darkness felt, he converses with you about the mysterious, the metaphysical, the mystical, the profound. As you gaze with wondering vision, you hear a voice, but see no man. He invites you down into his caves of ocean thought; but, as you see not where he is, and know not the way to follow, nor think it worth while to go at a venture, you prefer remaining on the shore.

Nor is it always the _depth_ into which this talker delights to go. Were it this, with _transparency_, there would not be so much objection. He too frequently plunges into muddled waters, or makes them so by his movements therein. He persuades himself that he has acquired profound knowledge of philosophy from the dark and mystical writings of the Germans translated into English. With this persuasion he courts your attention, while he discourses to you in terms and phrases of marvellous vagueness about the Ego within us--the Infinite and the Immense, the Absolute, the Entity and Nonentity, and such-like subjects, of which you can make neither "top nor tail," and of which he knows nothing save the terms and phrases that he strings together with such adept expertness and palpable absurdity.

"What do you think," asked Mr. Stanley of Professor Rigg, "of Hegel's paradox, that nothing is equal to being, and that if being and nothing be conjoined you have existence?"

The Professor answered with his usual gravity and profundity: "Nothing could be more profound, and as lucid as profound, if Hegel's theory of the 'evolution of the concrete' was remembered. According to that theory the concrete is the idea which, as a unity, is variously determined, having the principle of its activity within itself, while the origin of the activity, the act itself, and the result, are one, and constitute the concrete. The innate contradiction of the concrete is the basis of its development, and though differences arise, they at last vanish into unity. To use the words of Hegel, there is 'both the movement and repose in the movement. The difference hardly appears before it disappears, whereupon there issues from it a full and complete unity.'"

"That is very clear and satisfactory," observed Mr. Stanley, ironically; not seeing anything but confusion confounded in the whole of it. "What is your view," he asked again, "of the Hegelian 'Absolute'?"

"This," said the Professor, "is nothing but a continual process of thinking, without beginning and without end. Now that the evolution of ideas in the human mind is the process of all existence--the essence of the Absolute--of a Deity, so that Deity is nothing more than the Absolute ever striving to realize itself in human consciousness."

Without questioning the truthfulness of such a doctrine, so _plainly expressed_, Mr. Stanley proceeded to ask, in a way rather beyond himself, "Whether there was not a little to be said for Schelling's notion that the rhythmical law of all existence is cognisable at the same time by the internal consciousness of the subjective self, in the objective operation of Nature?"

To this question, somewhat mystical it must be confessed, the Professor replied in his usual style of profundity:--

"I see clearly enough Schelling's great ingenuity; but think his three movements or potencies--that of 'Reflexion,' whereby the Infinite strives to realize itself in the Finite--that of 'Subsumption,' which is the striving of the Absolute to return from the Finite to the Infinite--and that of the 'Indifference-point,' or point of junction of the two first--were not to be admitted; for is it not clear as the day that the poles ever persist in remaining apart, the indifference-point having never been fixed by Schelling?"

In these ways Mr. Stanley and the Professor kept up the conversation until I and the rest of the company were perfectly involved in dense mists and fogs, wishing that the sun of simple truth would shine, to bring us into clear seeing and firm foot-standing. We longed for the day without a cloud. At last they ceased, and after a brief interval we found ourselves where we were before they began, with no more knowledge of the mystical, and no less love to the simplicity of truth spoken in words of plain meaning and thoughts of undisguised transparency.

XIX. THE WONDERER.--This is a talker with whom one very often meets in the walks of life. His peculiarity in conversation is the use of the word _wonder_ in almost every statement he makes and question he asks. It is a strange peculiarity, and I _wonder_ that he should so frequently indulge in its use; I _wonder_ that he does not discover some other mode of expression.

I once met with him at a railway station, and after wishing him the compliments of the day, almost his first word was, "I _wonder_ how long my train will be before it starts?" Scarcely had he time to get his breath, when he said, "I _wonder_ what o'clock it is." I looked at my watch and told him. Instantly he said, "I _wonder_ whether it rains; I hope not." I assured him that it did not when I came on the platform; then he quickly said, "I _wonder_ whether it will rain to-morrow; I hope not, for I have a long journey to take by coach."

I remember once travelling with a gentleman in a railway carriage between London and Bristol. Besides him and me there were three or four more passengers in the compartment, ladies and gentlemen.

Scarcely had we left the Paddington station ere he began _wondering_.

"I _wonder_," said he, "how fast this train goes."

Oh, about forty miles an hour, I replied.

"I _wonder_, does this train stop at Reading?"

I think it does, I answered.

Then whispering in my ear, he said, "I _wonder_ who that old gentleman is in yon corner of the carriage."

I really do not know; he is a stranger to me, I observed.

After a few minutes' pause, in which he seemed to have indulged a profound meditation, he again whispered in my ears, saying, "I _wonder_ who that lady is sitting next to you."

I cannot say, I replied.

The train travelled on at a great speed, passing station after station in rapid succession.

Again he said, "I _wonder_ how fast we are travelling now."

Oh, perhaps sixty miles an hour.

Quickly, he said, "I _wonder_ what station that is we have just passed."

I think it is Swindon.

After a brief pause:--

"I _wonder_ what time this train gets into Bristol."

It is due at ten o'clock.

"I _wonder_ will it be punctual."

Thus he was wondering ever and anon until we reached the Bristol station, where we parted, he going one way and I another; perhaps he _wondering_ who I was, and I _wondering_ who he was.

I remember meeting another Wonderer in the house of a friend of mine with whom I had intended to spend part of the evening.

Scarcely had we been introduced to each other when he said,--

"I _wonder_ whether the Republican or Democrat candidate is elected to the American Presidency."

That is a matter in which I do not profess to be posted up, I replied.

Then he said, "I _wonder_ how Lord Salisbury is getting on in the Conference."

From all the newspaper reports he seems to be getting on very well, I observed.

After a very brief pause, he said, "I _wonder_ whether there will be war. I _wonder_ whether Russia really means war or peace."

It is exceedingly difficult to say, I observed. Diplomacy is so involved, so intricate, so uncertain, that no one can say until all things are really settled.

"I _wonder_," he immediately said, "whether England will go to war."

I cannot say, I answered; I sincerely hope not.

"If there be war, I _wonder_," he said, "which way it would go. I _wonder_ whether Russia would take Constantinople. I _wonder_ whether she would crush Turkey. I _wonder_ what the effect would be upon our way to India. I _wonder_ how Germany and Austria would act in the matter."

After he had done, I said, I _wonder_ what time it is.

He said, "It is eight o'clock."

I must go, I have another engagement at half-past eight. So leaving my friend's friend in his _wonders_, I retired.

Another Wonderer I met with shortly after the one just named, when the conversation turned upon the new Bishopric of Cornwall.

"I _wonder_ what effect it will have upon the Methodists."

It will stir them up to duty and diligence, I hope.

"I _wonder_ who will be the Bishop."

I don't know.

"I _wonder_, will he be High Church or Low."

That I cannot say.

"I _wonder_ what he will do when he finds the county so filled with Methodists and Methodist chapels."

He will find something to do, I said, if he means to put them down.

"I _wonder_ whether he will put them down," he said.

You need not wonder about that, I rejoined.

"I _wonder_ why?"

Wonder why! He may as well try to put down the Cornish hills into plains or valleys.

The fact is, one can scarcely speak with any one, or enter any company, but the first utterance he hears is "I wonder."

Persons wonder what the weather will be; they wonder what time it is; they wonder who is going to preach on Sunday; they wonder what the preacher's text will be; they wonder what will be for dinner; they wonder who will be in the company; they wonder who is going to be married; they wonder who is dead in the next newspaper. In fine, this _wonder_ is a wonderful word in almost everybody's lips.

I _wonder_ whether some other mode of expression could not be adopted, which would either be a substitute for it, or somewhat of variation: so that the _wonderer_ may not be so common a talker in the circles of society.

But it is one thing to be _always_ wondering, and quite another thing to wonder occasionally, when the statement made, or question asked, is of such a nature as to _require_ or to _demand_ a _wonder_. It is possible to get into the way of wondering so that you will not know when you do _wonder_. It is supposed that persons only _wonder_ when things of great surprise and astonishment are heard, such as the fall of stars, the overthrow of cities by earthquakes, etc. At the reading or hearing of such things, it seems natural that persons should _wonder_. But why they should wonder at almost every trivial thing they ask in ordinary conversation is to me an inexplicable mystery.

There is another use of the word which I had nearly forgotten. In American society I remember this word is used in the opposite sense to what it is in this country.

"I have just come from New York by steamboat, and I saw Mr. Bouser on board."

"Well; I _wonder_!" is the reply.

"I saw the moon in the sky as I came here this evening."

"I _wonder_!" is the answer.

"Do you know I met a little girl of the Sunday-school in the street?"

"I _wonder_!" said a grave-looking lady.

"Mr. and Miss Lane are going to be married next week by Mr. Sparks."

"I really _wonder_!" was the general exclamation of the company, although they had heard it before at different times.

This wonderer in America is, if possible, more ludicrous than in England. In both he is ludicrous; and the sooner he changes into some other form of talker, more sensible, the better.

XX. THE TERMAGANT.--This is a talker chiefly of the female sex; and it is in this gender we shall give our sketch.

Jemima, the wife of Job Sykes, was a woman of turbulent and fiery temper; but he was a man calm and self-possessed. Her tongue was as the pen of a ready-writer, in the rapidity with which it talked, and as the point of a needle and the edge of a razor in the keenness of its words. Sometimes she was loud and boisterous, violent and raging, attacking her prey as a tigress, rather than as a human being. Sometimes she was snappish, snarling, waspish. Her husband, her children, her servants, her neighbours, all came in for their share, in their turn, of her bites, stings, and poisons.

It was, however, poor Job who fell in for the lion's share. Alas for him! He often found the words of Solomon to be true: "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman" (Prov. xxi. 19). As there was no wilderness into which he could fly to escape the tongue of his dear Jemima, he would fly away into a solitary room, or into the adjoining garden, or into a neighbour's house, or take a walk in the lonely road,--anywhere to shelter himself from the fiery droppings of his termagant spouse.

The least imaginable thing that crossed her will or temper would set Jemima's tongue-machine a-going; and when once started, it rattled away like a medley of tin, glass, and stones turned in a churn. It threw out words like razors, darts, fire-brands, scorpions, wasps, mosquitos, flying helter-skelter in all directions about the head of poor Job, and he seldom escaped without wounds which lasted for days together. He has been known to receive cuts and bruises that have prevented his speaking to his "darling" for weeks in succession.

Mrs. Caudle's lectures to her husband were mild, entertaining, and instructive to what Job Sykes received from Mrs. Sykes. Mrs. Caudle, I think, always addressed her beloved in the evening within curtains, when he was in such a condition of mind and body as rendered him impervious to the entrance of her loving words; so that he would even go to sleep under them, as a babe under the soothing lullaby of its mother. But Job's dear wife fired away at him anywhere, at any time: night or day, at home or from home, in company or out of company. Given the least cause, the attack would begin and be carried on until the ammunition was exhausted.

As we have said, Job was of a quiet disposition, although firm and never yielding his place to his "weaker vessel;" and he generally found that silence or "soft answers" were his best weapons.

And so they are in every such case: and if any one of my readers is afflicted with a wife like Job Sykes' wife, he will find that his policy is the wisest to follow.

Sometimes a cure is effected in this talker, and the husband rejoices in the salvation wrought out for him. Sometimes there is no cure excepting in the paralysis of death. This, too, is salvation to many hen-pecked husbands, in which they also rejoice. Such has been the mighty deliverance accomplished for some, that they have even celebrated it by appropriate epitaphs on the tombstones of their buried partners. The following is one said to be at Burlington, Massachusetts:--

"Sacred to the memory of Anthony Drake, Who died for peace and quietness' sake, His wife was constantly scolding and scoffing, So he sought repose in a twelve dollar coffin."

There is another in Ellon churchyard:--

"Here lies my wife in earthly mould, Who, when she lived, did nought but scold. Peace! wake her not, for now she's still; She had, but now I have _my_ will."

XXXII.

_A MODEL TALKER._

"Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man."--PAUL.

Having devoted the previous pages to sketches of faulty talkers, I propose in this concluding chapter to give a description of a talker who may be exhibited as a model for imitation.

As there is but One Model Man in the world, so there is only One Model Talker. The Apostle James tells us who he is: "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body."

But who is the man that offends not in word? Where is he to be found? Is he not rather an ideal being than a _real_ one? Be he ideal or real, it may answer some good end to set him forth as far as his ideality or reality can be apprehended.

It may be well to premise just here that when it is said "he _offends not in word_," it does not imply that no one ever _takes offence_ at his word, but that he offends not through any defect in his intention, that he is not held blamable or responsible for any offence taken at his word. Not until every _hearer_ is perfect as well as every talker will offence cease on both sides. Did offence taken by the hearer necessarily involve offence given by the talker, He of whom it was said, "Never man spake like this man," would fail to be perfect; yea, even God Himself would come short of perfection: for how many took offence at the words of Jesus! and how many are continually offended at the words of the Almighty!

The following may be given as the outline features of a model talker. There is only space for an outline.

He endeavours, as far as possible, to ascertain the temper and disposition of those with whom he talks.

He is cautious how he receives and repeats anything that he hears from one in whose veracity he has not implicit confidence.

If any one with whom he is talking says anything that is detrimental to the character and interests of an absent person, he hopes charitably that it is not true, and avoids circulating it in his conversation or in other ways.

He does not impose his talk upon others against prudence and propriety. "He spareth his words in wisdom and understanding" (Prov. xvii. 27). "Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles" (Prov. xxi. 23). "He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life" (Prov. xiii. 3).

No corrupt communication proceeds out of his mouth; no bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice; no filthiness nor jesting, nor blasphemy, nor reviling, nor slander. (See Eph. iv. 29, v. 4; Col. iii. 8.)

In the presence of fiery temper and enraged passion he says nothing to add fuel to the flame, but keeps calm and self-possessed.

He never retaliates, or gives reviling for reviling, but contrariwise--good for evil, blessing for cursing.

He flatters not any one in any way, but speaks the words of truth and soberness. He is not as the fox in the fable, who commended the singing of the crow when he wanted something that was in his mouth.

He finds out as far as he can what is the particular _forte_ of knowledge held by those with whom he talks, and prudently converses upon it so as to promote mutual edification.

He chooses such words as shall, in the clearest, truest, and most effective way, embody his thoughts and sentiments.

He speaks the truth in everything, everywhere, and to every one, without equivocation, prevarication, or unjust hyperbolism.

He avoids all affectation as a thing of the mountebank or pantomime, and appears himself without a Jezebel's paint or a Jacob's clothing, so that you may know at once who he is, what he says, and what he means.

He reverences God and Truth, avoiding as demoniacal all profane swearing, cursing, blasphemy, scoffing, and jeering.

He modulates his voice to suit the company, the subject, and the place where he talks.

He does not interrupt another in his talk, unless it is immoral, but hears him through, that he may the better understand him.

He accustoms himself to think before he speaks. As Zeno advises, he dips his tongue in his mind before he allows it to talk. It is said that a fool thinks _after_ he has spoken, and a wise man _before_.

He does not pry with a curious and inquisitive spirit into the affairs of others. If they are wise not to reveal, he is wise not to inquire.

He is no blabber, to divulge secrets committed to his bosom for security by confiding friendship.

He speaks not evil of the absent, unless in case of self-defence, or as a witness, or in vindication of righteousness and truth; and when he does, he adheres closely to fact, and evinces the absence of envy, malice, or vindictiveness in his motives.

He guards against the exhibition of his own wisdom, knowledge, goodness, as a boaster or egotist. He is no more a self-flatterer than a flatterer of others.

He does not mark the failings of those who talk with him or around him in company, and take them up in carping criticism or biting ridicule.

He does not dogmatize, wrangle, quibble, as though he was an autocrat or a pugilist. He thinks and lets think. He is as willing for others to talk their views in their way as he wishes them to be willing that he should do the same.

He is no censor or grumbler. He remembers that he shall be judged, and judges not others. In everything he gives thanks. If things and persons are not as he thinks they should be, he tries to make them better, rather than spend his words and time in useless complaining.

He is no willow to bend before every breeze of opinion, nor an oak to stand unmoved in every change of the intellectual atmosphere. He maintains his conscientious convictions with manly dignity and independence, but not with a dogged tenacity which snaps at every resistance, and holds on simply because he will.

He blends the grave and joyous in his conversation. He is neither a jester nor a hermit; neither a misanthrope nor a fool. "Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing," he "weeps with them that weep, and rejoices with them that rejoice." He is like the heavens; he has sunshine and cloud, each in its season, seemly, appropriate, useful.

"Though life's valley be a vale of tears, A brighter scene beyond that vale appears, Whose glory, with a light that never fades, Shoots between scattered rocks and opening shades; And while it shows the land the soul desires, The language of the land she seeks inspires. Thus touched, the tongue receives a sacred cure Of all that was absurd, profane, impure; Held within modest bounds, the tide of speech Pursues the course that Truth and Nature teach; No longer labours merely to produce The pomp of sound or tinkle without use; Where'er it winds, the salutary stream, Sprightly and fresh, enriches every theme, While all the happy man possessed before, The gift of nature, or the classic store, Is made subservient to the grand design For which heaven formed the faculty divine. So, should an idiot, while at large he strays, Find the sweet lyre on which an artist plays, With rash and awkward force the chords he shakes, And grins with wonder at the jar he makes; But let the wise and well-instructed hand Once take the shell beneath his just command: In gentle sounds it seems as it complained Of the rude injuries it late sustained, Till, tuned at length to some immortal song, It sounds Jehovah's name, and pours His praise along."

Such is my model talker. Another hand may have drawn a different one: perhaps much better, _or_ perhaps much worse.

Some, in looking at him, may be disposed to think that he is too antiquated, too precise, too spiritual, too scripturified; not enough broadness, strength, liberty. Before this judgment is formed, let there be a further examination of the entire character.

"But it is all very well to give an ideal picture. We want the reality, and where can he be found?" That is perfectly true. The _reality_ is wanted in every family, society, church, and nation in the wide world. My reader, do you see and approve the ideal? Then aim at the _reality_, and to be the first model human talker that has ever lived in this Babel-talking world. Mark well the failings of others in the use of their tongues, and strive to avoid them in your own. A heart and head united in being right will do almost everything in making the tongue right. When the interior of a watch is in order, it will generally indicate the right time: when a man in the belfry wisely pulls the rope attached to a bell, it will give a proper sound: when a musician is perfect in his art, and his instrument in tune, the music he plays will agree thereto. So, reader, is it with the tongue, when the "man of the head and heart" are perfect in Christ Jesus. Seek, and obtain this, and you will be among those who "OFFEND NOT IN WORD."

"What! never speak one evil word, Or rash, or idle, or unkind? O how shall I, most gracious Lord, This mark of true perfection find?

Thy sinless mind in me reveal, Thy Spirit's plenitude of grace; And all my spoken words shall tell The fulness of a loving heart."

THE END.

Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, London and Aylesbury.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

VALUABLE WORK FOR MINISTERS, LAY PREACHERS, SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS, ETC.

EIGHTH EDITION,

_Revised and Enlarged, 8vo, cloth, 12s. 6d.; half morocco, 18s.; whole morocco, elegant, 25s._

A CYCLOPÆDIA of ILLUSTRATIONS of MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRUTHS; CONSISTING OF

Definitions, Metaphors, Synonymes, Contrasts, Analogies, Statistics, Anecdotes, etc.

_Designed for the Pulpit, the Platform, the School, and the Family: selected from Authors Ancient and Modern._

The following particulars may be mentioned as the peculiar features of this work:--

I. =Arrangement=: The subjects are consecutively and analytically placed, so that the illustrations desired can at once be found by a reference to the letters beginning the proper word of the subject. Each illustration has over it the precise subject, as near as could be ascertained, for which it was intended by the author, forming in itself a thought upon the general subject.

II. =Comprehensiveness=: Scarcely any point within the compass of theology and morals, in all their phases and relations, is omitted. There is from one to ninety or a hundred illustrations on each general subject. The work contains between SIX AND SEVEN THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS, gathered from more than EIGHT HUNDRED AUTHORS.

III. =Newness of Illustration=: The greater proportion of the matter has never appeared before the public, apart from the respective authors. There is also a variety of _original_ illustrations, for the first time appearing in print.

_Clergymen of the Church of England, Ministers of all Denominations, Lay Preachers, Sunday School Teachers, and all purchasers, have testified to the excellence of this work, as well as the press in England and America. The fact that the_ =Eighth Edition= _has been called for in so short a time is a sufficient recommendation of its worth and usefulness._

JARROLD & SONS, 3, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.

The following misprints have been corrected: "Misanthorpe" corrected to "Misanthrope" (page xiv) "scorcerer" corrected to "sorcerer" (page 103) "acquiantances" corrected to "acquaintances" (page 175) "anbody" corrected to "anybody" (page 200) "I I" corrected to "I" (page 209) "or" corrected to "to" (page 238) -- or the deaf or hear? "a a" corrected to "a" (page 269) "suggusts" corrected to "suggests"(page 290) "meer" corrected to "mere" (page 308) "Rupublican" corrected to "Republican" (page 322) "is is" corrected to "is" (page 328)

Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation usage have been retained.