 | GOSSIP ABOUT GOSSIPING.
WITH HINTS ON CONVERSATION. Peter Ploddy, and other oddities |  |
6. GOSSIP ABOUT GOSSIPING.
WITH HINTS ON CONVERSATION.
It is a matter both theoretical and practical in our philosophy,
(and we are reckless enough not to care who
knows it, either,) that, next to lounging at a front window
when the weather's sunny, to see the world from a safe
and luxurious ambushment, there are few among human
pleasures at once so cheap, so agreeable, and so enduring
as that slipshod and unpretending delight of the leisure
hour, stigmatized by ignorant incapacity under the reproachful
name of “gossip.” We are not, however,
about to trouble ourselves to prove the correctness of the
assertion. There are cases wherein the logical demonstration
is an impertinence. If a truth, in matters of feeling,
come not home to us at the instant of its enunciation,
why, our perceptions are defective—our experiences incomplete.
We have not been educated and finished up
to that point. It may be, indeed, that we are not calculated
to attain it, even with opportunities the most favourable
to this species of advancement; and it is not in the
nature of words to change the quality of the material of
which we are composed, or to anticipate the results of
that practical schooling which chisels away the block to
bring out the man. In the profundities of wisdom, you
and I learn nothing from each other. Argument and
demonstration are wasted, unless there be that within,
which, to some extent at least, has experimentally proved
the soundness of the doctrine. To be convinced, is but
to recognise a conclusion towards which our imperfect
intelligence had previously been tending; and hence it is
that the treatise on morals is so often an encumbrance to
ripened by trial and observation, to be gathered up
in the harvest of the ethical essayist. Available knowledge,
in the main conduct of life, is a precious ore, to
be, with toils and strugglings, mined out by personal
effort. It is not enough that myriads have passed through
the same process, and have devised to us their experiences
as a legacy. We are only satisfied when, like the child,
our own little hand has established the fact that fire will
burn. We are sure of it then, and govern ourselves accordingly;
but the mere dictum of mamma and all the
warning voices of the nursery, could not otherwise have
impressed it upon us that the lighted taper is an uncomfortable
plaything, as dangerous as it is brilliant. Can
vanity be soothed into an unassuming temper before its
inordinate appetites have caused it to falter, enfeebled by
the very food on which it grew? Is vaulting ambition
to be checked, think you, by the uplifted finger of precept?
Are we to be deterred by “wise saws and modern
instances,” until we have felt it stinging in our inmost
soul, be it by success, or be it by disappointment,
that unregulated impulses and morbid cravings lead to
satiety and to the sickness of the heart? So, the time
may be long or short, before we turn with weariness from
the champagne exhilarations of existence, to find health
and comfort in its cooling springs; but, if we are capable
of wisdom, that time must come; and happy they, who,
through many stumblings, by much groping in thick
darkness, with painful bruises and in sad tribulation, have
reached the broad refreshing daylight of this conviction.
Let them not regret the years that have been consumed.
The remnant is the leaf of the sybil, its value enhanced
by the antecedent destruction. Weep not over the afflictions
that have been encountered in threading the labyrinths
of passionate delusion. A prize has been gained
in the great university of human training.
All our refinements, in the end, resolve themselves into
nothing more than an unpretending simplicity; for simplicity
is itself the highest of refinements. Your “frogged”
coat and your embroidered vest are indications from the
circus and the theatre. Rings and jewels and bijouterie,
though they may clink and sparkle innocently enough, do
still suggest ideas of the faro-table and a predatory life;
while gaudiness and assumption give rise to an inference
that we are making the first attempt in a position above
our habitude. The true voluptuary, he who regards pleasure
as a science and would derive from existence all the
delight it is capable of yielding, is economical in his enjoyments,
and shuns the debauch as a serpent in the path.
Ignorance may feed fat at its evening meal; but he who
takes things in their connection, as if they were links in
a continuous chain, looks beyond the hour, and is content
with tea and toast; sweet sleep and a clear head on
the morrow being essential items in his calculation.
Whatever be the line of our travel and the nature of our
experiences, we arrive at simplicity at last, if we are so
fortunate as to survive the exploration; and those who
have outlived this arduous task, which cannot be performed
by proxy, and which is a conscription admitting
of no substitute, will agree with us that gossip, goodly
gossip, though sneered at by the immature, is, after all,
the best of our entertainments. With no disparagement
to the relish of professional pursuits—without invidiousness
towards the ball-room, the dramatic temple, the concert,
the opera or the lecture, we must fall back upon the
light web of conversation, upon chit-chat, upon gossip,
an thou wilt have it so, as our mainstay and our chief reliance—as
that corps de reserve on which our scattered
and wearied forces are to rally.
What is there which will bear comparison as a recreating
means, with the free and unstudied interchange of
thought, of knowledge, of impression about men and
things, and all that varied medley of fact, criticism and
conclusion so continually fermenting in the active brain?
Be fearful of those who love it not, and banish such as
would imbibe its delights, yet bring no contribution to the
common stock. There are men who seek the reputation
of wisdom by dint of never affording a glimpse of their
capabilities, and impose upon the world by silent gravity
—negative philosophers, who never commit themselves
beyond the utterance of a self-evident proposition, or
hazard their position by a feat of greater boldness than is
to be found in the avowal of the safe truth which has been
granted for a thousand years. There is a deception here,
which should never be submitted to. Sagacity may be
manifest in the nod of Burleigh's head; but it does not
follow that all who nod are Burleighs. He who habitually
says nothing, must be content if he be regarded as
having nothing to say, and it is only a lack of grace on
his part which precludes the confession. In this broad
“Vienna” of human effort, the mere “looker-on” cannot
be tolerated. It is not to be endured that any one should
stand higher than his deserts, because he can contrive to
hold his tongue and has just wit enough to dodge the
question. And there is no force whatever in an unwillingness
to give forth nonsense, or in the dread of making
one's self ridiculous. It is part of our duty to be nonsensical
and ridiculous at times, for the entertainment of
the rest of the world; and, if not qualified for a more
elevated share in the performance, why should we shrink
from the róle allotted to us by nature? Besides, if we
are never to open our mouths until the unsealing of the
aperture is to give evidence of a present Solomon, and to
add something to the Book of Proverbs, we must, for the
your finger on your lips, I pray.” If we do speak, under
such restrictions, it cannot well be, as the world is constituted,
more than once or twice in the course of an existence,
the rest of the sojourn upon earth being devoted
to a sublimation of our thought. But always wise, sensible,
sagacious, rational—always in wig and spectacles—
always algebraic and mathematical—doctrinal and didactic
—ever to sit like Franklin's portrait, with the index fixed
upon “causality”—one might as well be a petrified
“professor,” or a William Penn bronzed upon a pedestal.
There is nothing so good, either in itself or in its effects,
as good nonsense. It is, in truth, the work of genius to
produce the best article of the kind, and, if men and
women cannot reach the climax in this particular, they
owe it to the common welfare to soar as near it as their
limited capacity will allow.
But, while it is regarded as a bounden duty upon all
who enjoy the protection of society, to talk on proper
occasions, both for the benefit of others, and that, for
ulterior purposes, the strength of each individual may be
properly appreciated, still there is no intention to undervalue
the advantage afforded by good listeners. They
are a source of blessing for which the talking world cannot
be too grateful. Did they not exist, the vast steam-engine
of human ability would lack its safety-valve.
Explosion would ensue, or we should murderously talk
each other to death. The man fraught with intellectual
product, would find no market for its disposition. The
quick fancies of his wit would beat against the bars in
vain, and perish miserably by their own efforts to escape.
Our thinkings are for exportation—not to be consumed
within. There must be no embargo on the brain, or the
factory is stopped by accumulating goods. Hence, the
speaker and the listener combine to make a perfect whole.
that refreshing shower, which enables the leaf to put
forth and the bud to bloom. No man, whatever may be
the intrinsic force of his genius, can form an idea of
what he is capable, until he is well listened to. Much of
his power lies in the auditory. There is a subtle correspondence
between them, which raises or depresses as
the sympathetic intercommunication happens to be the
more or less perfect in its vibrations. But there should
be alternation in this, to develope human powers, to increase
human affections, to complete the republic. There
must be no division into exclusive classes, the one all
vivacity, all pertness, all tongue—an unremitting volume
of sound and a vocal perpetuity of motion; while the
other, subdued and overwhelmed, curves into a huge
concavity of ear, into a mere tympanum for the everlasting
drummer to play upon. Where this happens to be
the case, from colloquial encroachments on the one hand,
and from submissive dispositions on the other, there is a
double degeneration—to words without meaning, and to
hearing without heeding. They who are talked to beyond
the bounds of salutary affliction, only escape the
fatal result of being subjected to such cruelty, by emulating
the rhinoceros in his impervious cuticle; so that the
pattering storm of speech rebounds innocuously from the
surface. They close the porches of the sense while elocution
rages around them, and, snug within, cogitate securely
upon their own ruminations. Turn from your florid
rhetoric to the sharp interrogation, and you shall find the
patient fast asleep as to external uproar, though his eyes
be open. Nature has provided him with a safeguard—
he has been bucklered by inattention, and has left you to
your own applause.
To listen well, it is not enough that we yield, rescue or
no rescue, and ask not for quarter, when detained by the
hopeless resignation, as, with a sigh, we surrender to an
inevitable fate. The abject look, so generally worn by
the man who knows that he is going to be talked to, and
evinces by his aspect that he has no hope of mercy, is
unworthy of the heroic soul. It is emphatically an art,
and it is scarcely necessary to state that there are moments
when it is no easy art, to “lend me your ears” to our
mutual profit and pleasure. This is not an anatomical
demonstration we are upon, that the mere handing over
of the physical body is sufficient. Your imaginations are
not to ramble all about the fields, nozzling in every bush
and giving chase to every butterfly. The appropriate interjection
is wanted, living, breathing, burning; nicely
timed, too, and imperceptibly strengthening the oratorical
wing—not like the Roman citizen of the mimic stage,
whose accordance with Brutus and whose sympathies
with Antony, are stamped with that indifference which
arises from supernumerary station, and whose limited
share of the receipts causes him to care no more than the
worth of fifty cents about “Cæsar's testament”—but as
if the business were your own. It is imperative on you
to adjust the countenance to the nicest expression of appreciating
intelligence—to be in tune, not only in the
tones of the voice, but in the cadence of the body—to
display attention in the very play of the fingers—to laugh
readily, just enough and no more, and to show by slight
subsequent observation, that all which has been uttered
is duly estimated, instead of bringing the speaker to the
ground with a jarring shock, by betraying, in an unconscious
word, that his flight has been alone. The mere
powers of endurance—fortitude, patience, and long-suffering—are
indeed much; but still, they are but a part of
what is demanded. If it were not so, the passive pump,
which stands in sad aridity before the door, would answer
unresisting recipient—a conversational “Deaf Burke,”
who can endure any amount of “punishment” without
being much the worse for it. Like the red warrior at
the sake, the perfect listener should so comport himself
as to induce the belief that he has pleasure in his pain,
and invites its increased continuance. He should be
made up of tact and benevolence—of courage and humanity.
His nerve should be strong—his perception
nice. At one moment he needs forbearance, to suppress
the almost irresistible interruption, and anon, his rapid
powers of anticipation must be ridden with a curb. His
philological expertness cannot be permitted to patch the
gaps of hesitancy, by the impertinent suggestion of a
word; but, when intuitive promptness is expected, a
broken syllable should point the way to a desired conclusion.
Worse, much worse than nothing, is the uneasy
listener, who, like “Sister Ann” upon the tower, gazes
every way for relief, and “sees it galloping” at each
passing cloud of dust, as if, in short, our beard were blue,
and our tongue were as remorseless and as sharp as a
Turkish scimitar; and worse than Sister Ann is the abstracted
companion, who knows nothing of the subjunctive
mood, but endeavours to break the finely woven
thread of your discourse by crossing you with irrelevant
ideas—he who interrupts your pathetic revelations—perhaps
of love—you were in love once—almost everybody
is—by coolly inquiring “when you saw Smith?”—As if
you cared any thing about Smith—or were even thinking
of Smith. Hang Smith!—Never suffer yourself thus to be
overcome by Smith, and never talk to that man again, if
another is to be had. Nor are kindly feelings to be entertained
towards the accommodating friend, that provoking
extract from the “Book of Martyrology,” who
sits him down as nearly as possible in the attitude which
as if you were surgery itself, fresh from the schools,
all glitter with instruments and draped in bandage—compassionating
his hard lot, but setting his teeth to suffer.
Mark it well. Should you propose to tell this fellow any
thing—volunteering to explain to him how it happened,
clearly and circumstantially, and with no other view than
to his enlightenment, be prepared for ingratitude, in advance—ingratitude,
“more strong than traitors' arms.”
A cold reluctance is within him, and he tries to play Procrustes
with your narrative, by asking “how long it will
take” to give it expression, his tolerance of you being
measured horologically, as it were, by the hour-glass and
dial. A shower-bath is warm encouragement compared
to his notes of acquiescence; and if he does not yawn—
what on earth are we to do with people that yawn?—is
there no remedy in legislative action?—why, he always
swears he understands—“oh, yes—perfectly”—while
calculating the odds and chances of some distant speculation,
to which you are not a party. It will be observed
that individuals of such a sort are troubled with a propensity
to know “what o'clock it is”—not that they have
any particular interest in the hour, on their own personal
account, but from a vague hope that the time of day may
chance to have something in it alarming to you, and that
you are to be scared from your present prey to attend to
a remote engagement. A benevolent hearer never wants
to know what o'clock it is. There is a morose misanthropy
in the desire, of which he is incapable; and if an
acquaintance with the precise moment be inadvertently
forced upon him, he has no such cruelty in his bosom as
to affect a look of surprise and consternation, while he
hypocritically protests that he had “no idea it was so
late.” They who are loudest in saying that they had
“no idea it was so late,” for the most part, fib. They
late, and they hoped it might be a great deal later. They
were waiting for the clock to sue out a habeas corpus in
their case. “Didn't think it was so late,” indeed.
Pshaw! What question was there touching hours and
minutes, when our story was but half developed? Were
we singing to Maelzel's Metronome, pry'thee, that we
are thus to be reminded of beats and bars, and the prescribed
measure of a stave? “Late,” say'st thou?
What is “late?”—There is no such thing as “late” in
modern civilization. Steam has annihilated space, and
the “dead-latch-key” has left the word “late” a place
in the vocabulary, no doubt; but it has been deprived
of its operative meaning. When some one sat up for
you, then lateness was possible; but now—do you see
this little bar of steel, with its pendant and arabesque termination—this
talismanic “open sesame?” “Late”
expired when the powers of invention reached their climax
in fashioning forth this curious instrument. No one
can come in late. Sit thee still, and be not antediluvian.
Now-a-days, and especially now-a-nights, it is always
early enough.
But good listeners, as there has been unhappily too
much occasion to show, are rarities. When they die,
they should have monuments loftier far than that of
Cheops. Pyramids, with “forty centuries looking from
their top,” would not be too much of honour for such
philanthropists; and, to render education what it ought to
be, the human family should be trained to listen, and, at
the same time, taught to talk. To sit still with dignity
and composure, is as difficult as to move with ease and
grace; yet both are matters of importance in the work of
refinement. But it is much more essential to success that
our presence should be hailed with pleasure, because, whether
speaking or being spoken to, the faculty is possessed of
To converse well—to gossip delightfully, is an art that
richly deserves to be studied. It does not follow that
one is a conversationist, or a perfect gossip, by such endowments,
valuable as they are when properly qualified
by a little of the “allaying Tiber” of sound discretion, as
fertility of mind, a magazine of facts, and a flood of
fluency. “Did you ever hear me preach?” said Coleridge
to Charles Lamb. “I never heard you do any
thing else,” was the sarcastic but truthful reply; and
herein abides the common error. There is a fever of
talkativeness, occasional with some, but constitutional in
others, which is the bane of social enjoyment. “First-fiddleism”
is as unpleasant to come in contact with, as to
pass an evening encaged with a lion of literary, scientific,
or metaphysical renown. Your Van Amburgs and your
Driesbachs may be fitted for such an encounter; but mortals
of inferior nerve find an unpleasant species of annihilation
in the contact. Do not, then, attempt the lion's
part, even if it be “nothing but roaring;” nor, unless
assured past doubt that you possess the skill of Nicolo
Paganini, is it ever wise to compel protracted attention
to your single string, when others have quite as strong a
desire to scrape their Cremonas, as that which burns in
your own musical bosom. Play no more than is necessary
to the harmonious effect of the whole orchestra; and,
should occasion offer for a solo, give it and be done.
Monopoly in discourse is “most tolerable, and not to be
endured.” It should be punishable by statute, thus to
invade the inalienable right of utterance.
It is not even freedom to go abroad, when the garrulous
kite has wing, to swoop upon his quarry. The
liberty—the life itself—of the citizen is at stake, from that
stoutly timbered magazine of words, who, strengthened
by practice, and warmed by self-complacency, sustains
in frosty streets, to those who come within the dreadful
clutch. We see him now, smiling in conscious triumph,
as his prize shivers, shakes, and trembles almost to spectral
nothingness, and feels most sadly that this is not all
his sufferings—that catarrhs, and feverous aches and pains
creep into him at every word. Homicidal—is it not, thus
to thin out our population? An oversight in criminal
jurisprudence, to let destruction forth into the highways,
to run at unprotected men. Cunning doctors do not note
it in their cautions, and the bills of mortality are silent on
the subject; but it is no less a truth, that though the victim
may sometimes be able to travel homeward after the
catastrophe, he often gets him to his bed, if he escape the
undertaker, from such combined assaults of breeze and
bore as are now before us. Wouldst thou despatch thine
enemy? What need of steel or poison—why lurk in
slouched hat, in moustache, or with stiletto? There is a
safer method, and, having no other accomplice than the
thermometer, waylay him as he goes, with smiling face
and oiled tongue. You have him there, and safely too.
Chemistry has no surer poison, if you hold him fast; and
justice has no cognisance of the deed.
The true conversationist requires as nice a balance of
qualities as the adroit swordsman. He should have an
eye, an ear and a tongue, equally on the alert, perfectly
under control, and skilled to act together. It is his duty
to be able to mark the moment when a slumbering idea
is awakened in the mind of another, and to afford opportunity
for its development. When the thought quivers
in an almost inaudible murmur upon the lips of the timid,
it is not to be suppressed in premature death by the rattling
noise of practised confidence; not to be driven over,
up the street. It claims to be deferentially educed,
not so much by a display of patronising encouragement,
which is almost as fatal as harsh disregard, but by that
respectful attention which creates no painful sense of inferiority.
He cannot pretend to civilization, who, in his
wild dance of intellectual excitement, tramples under his
massive foot all the little chickens of our imagination,
and scares each half-fledged fancy back to its native shell.
Be it rather your pleasure to chirp the tremblers forth to
the corn of praise and the sunshine of approbation. Who
has not found himself to be totally absorbed by the volubility
of others; so that he could neither find subject nor
words, even when an interval was left for their exercise?
And who has not often been altogether debarred from the
delight of speaking, merely because he had not space to
set himself fully in motion? Many, perhaps, have resigned
themselves to the taciturnity of La Trappe and
have gone voiceless to their graves, from injudicious
treatment in this respect. The humane citizen, then,
will not of himself take all the labour of talking, lest he
may be inadvertently stifling a Demosthenes, and smothering
a Cicero—a case, it is true, which does not very
often happen, though it might happen.
And, besides, let it be remarked, there is no fact, in
our day of innovation, scheming and discovery—when
we reform, remodel, and lay our hands upon every thing
—which deserves to be more strongly imprinted on the
recollection than this, that man does not go forth into
society, “no, nor woman neither,” armed, cap-à-pie, like
a gladiator, to battle for opinion, or to thrust the sword
of conversion through reluctant ribs. Let such things be
confined to the dedicated halls of controversial debate,
where one may be polemically impaled, secundum artem,
expecting no better treatment. It is good to be wise—
need not always be at our throat with spoon and bowl,
determined to administer nutriment, without regard to the
state of the appetite. Did it never occur to you, my
game friend, as you strapped on your gaffs, and crowed
defiance at a rooster of another feather, that the rest of
the social circle do not derive your pleasure from the “set-to,”
and would gladly be excused from being annoyed by
the argumentative combat? And, as for hobbies, they
prance prettily enough on their proper ground; but do
not let them caracole in the parlour. People would rather
be kicked by any thing than by other people's hobbies;
and, again, these hobbies, being merely composed of wood
and leather, are never wearied, and cannot stop. They
outstrip everybody, and carry none with them. Hark, in
your ear. Leave hobby at home; he will not be restive
or break things, when you are not by. It is disagreeable
to be ridden down by these unaccommodating quadrupeds.
Folks do not like it.
The engrossing idea, too, should be hung up with the
hat in the vestibule. It is near enough there; and, admitting
that you have troubles of your own, ambitions of
your own, prospects of your own, projects and inventions
of your own, let it always be borne distinctly in mind
that this, singular as it may appear, is, to a certain degree,
the case with several other individuals of your acquaintance.
What right they have to an engrossing idea
when yours wishes to awaken their sympathies, is a point
of equity which we cannot take it upon ourselves to decide;
but it is so, nevertheless, as the groaning soldier
found when rebuked for making so much noise over
his hurts, “as if, forsooth, no one is hit but yourself.”—
“Am I then reposing on a bed of roses?” said Guatemozin,
in a similar spirit, to his complaining courtier,
when Spanish cruelty had stretched them upon the
gridiron to himself.—To push this point still further, are
they entitled to rank with conversationists, who stand as
greyhounds on the slip, with straining eyes and quivering
limbs, heedless of all remark, and waiting only till an
opening be made, that they may course their peculiar
game, rabbit or otherwise, as the case may be? Are
they qualified gossips, who only talk to exercise the organ,
and to luxuriate on the sound of their own sweet voices?
—who, at last, dash forward over every impediment, and,
by their bad example, like prairie horses in a stampede,
set the whole circle into a very Babel of tongues—into
what we may call a steeple-chase, straight across the
country, and through any man's field—each for himself,
boot and saddle, whip and spur? Nay, never think it.
He is scant in his schooling who shifts impatiently from
foot to foot when another has the floor—who darts his
restless head into the aperture of every pause, in the hope
that the shoulders may be permitted to follow, and who is
only kept in abeyance by those stentorian lungs which
crush the puny interruption.
No—to gossip well is a delicate thing—a game of address—a
school of self-command—an academy for nice
perceptions. To be skilled in it, involves the main points
of an accomplished gentleman. It furnishes, moreover,
a key to character. The selfish man cannot be versed
in it, for he has no appreciation of the minor rights of
others, and, in this garden, no compulsory code exists to
prevent him from pocketing all the fruit. Harshness is
incompatible with it, for it is the very essence of respectful
consideration. The domineering spirit cannot gain
laurels here; while pride and vanity display themselves
in their true colours. The proselytes of Lavater and the
disciples of Combe may, by their science, be enabled to
read the soul; but, as the one traces the lines of the countenance,
of the skull, the surest observer of disposition is he who
notes the deportment of those bearing part in the animated
gossip. Before him, the secret unrolls like a map, and
the geography of the heart is familiar to his searching eye.
When the glow lights up within, there is a ray behind
the best adjusted mask which reveals the features as
they are.
As the day is utilitarian, the cui bono, the advantage
and the profit, form a material part of every matter, and it
will be found that to cultivate these responsive faculties
—to add the art of hearing and of speaking to the catalogue
of accomplishments—has a moral as well as a pleasure
in it. A skilful talker, who is, at the same time, a
thorough listener, is not a spontaneity—an unlessoned
creature. Oaks do not bear such acorns. The spirit of
such a one, if feeble, has been strengthened. His temper,
if tempestuous, has been subdued. He has sympathies,
cultivated and refined. He feels for those around him,
in great things and in small. He is that wisest of philosophers,
the well regulated man of the world, who shuns
the wrong because he knows its evils, and adopts the
right, from having proved it to be an essential to his own
happiness, and the happiness of others. And what contributes
more largely to this important end, than a perfect
system of hearing and of being heard? Nature does not
furnish it. To be nothing more than natural, is to be an
egotist, a glutton, a monopolizer. That the untrained steed
has power enough, is not to be disputed; but, in the simplicity
of his unsophisticated heart, he is apt to apply his
strength in an uncomfortable manner, to those who wander
within range of his heel, never thinking that the joy he
derives from the rapid extension of his locomotive muscles,
is not likely to be reciprocated on our part. He is
not aware of the difference of sensation between kicking
It is even so with bipeds, who have not properly undergone
the discipline of the manège. It cannot be denied
that the child of nature has something in him of the poetical;
but, in practice, he is likely to border on the uncouth
and uncontrollable.
If, therefore, after the experiment of a year, according
to our suggestion, it be found that the trial does not bring
out the better constituents of character, while restraining
those of less amiability, why, continue to chatter, without
stint or limitation, to the end of your days, and throw no
chance away, unless compelled to it by exhaustion; or, if
it please you, sit in sulky silence, and have never a word
by way of change.
| GOSSIP ABOUT GOSSIPING.
WITH HINTS ON CONVERSATION. Peter Ploddy, and other oddities | |