perfect genius for hatred. If you
crossed his path but once, he would never cease to curse you. The grave
might close over you, but he would revile your epitaph and mock at your
memory. It was not even necessary that you should do anything to incur
his enmity. It was enough to be upright and sincere and successful, to
waken the wrath of this Shimei. Integrity was an offence to him, and
excellence of any kind filled him with spleen. There was no good cause
within his horizon that he did not give a bad word to, and no decent
man in the community whom he did not try either to use or to abuse. To
listen to him or to read what he had written was to learn to think a
little worse of every one that he mentioned, and worst of all of him. He
had the air of a gentleman, the vocabulary of a scholar, the style of a
Junius, and the heart of a Thersites.

Talk, in such company, is impossible. The sense of something evil,
lurking beneath the play of wit, is like the knowledge that there are
snakes in the grass. Every step must be taken with fear. But the
real pleasure of a walk through the meadow comes from the feeling of
security, of ease, of safe and happy abandon to the mood of the moment.
This ungirdled and unguarded felicity in mutual discourse depends, after
all, upon the assurance of real goodness in your companion. I do not
mean a stiff impeccability of conduct. Prudes and Pharisees are poor
comrades. I mean simply goodness of heart, the wholesome, generous,
kindly quality which thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, hopeth
all things, endureth all things, and wisheth well to all men. Where you
feel this quality you can let yourself go, in the ease of hearty talk.

FREEDOM is the second note that Montaigne strikes, and it is essential
to the harmony of talking. Very careful, prudent, precise persons are
seldom entertaining in familiar speech. They are like tennis players in
too fine clothes. They think more of their costume than of the game.

A mania for absolutely correct pronunciation is fatal. The people who
are afflicted with this painful ailment are as anxious about their
utterance as dyspeptics about their diet. They move through their
sentences as delicately as Agag walked. Their little airs of nicety,
their starched cadences and frilled phrases seem as if they had just
been taken out of a literary bandbox. If perchance you happen to
misplace an accent, you shall see their eyebrows curl up like an
interrogation m