to ask me questions, and receive my answers. I had
also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his visits to others.
I never presumed to speak, except in answer to a question; and then I did
it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for
improving myself; but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an
humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was
useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where, as I
have already said, the greatest decency was observed, without the least
degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself,
and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption,
tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments. They have a notion, that
when people are met together, a short silence does much improve
conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little
intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very
much enlivened the discourse. Their subjects are, generally on
friendship and benevolence, on order and economy; sometimes upon the
visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and
limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some
determinations to be taken at the next great assembly: and often upon the
various excellences of poetry. I may add, without vanity, that my
presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it
afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of
me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant, in a
manner not very advantageous to humankind: and for that reason I shall
not repeat what they said; only I may be allowed to observe, that his
honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of
_Yahoos_ much better than myself. He went through all our vices and
follies, and discovered many, which I had never mentioned to him, by only
supposing what qualities a _Yahoo_ of their country, with a small
proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with
too much probability, "how vile, as well as miserable, such a creature
must be."

I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any value, was
acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from hearing the
discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be prouder to
listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in Europe. I
admired the stre