gly has a passion of talk come over him which makes
him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for these
divine paroxysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when they seize
one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the social sphere.
But the man who can--give us a fresh experience on anything that
interests us overrides everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a
great story-teller of a common person enough. I remember when a certain
vessel was wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the story as
well as Defoe could have told it. Never a word from him before; never a
word from him since. But when it comes to talking one's common
thoughts,--those that come and go as the breath does; those that tread
the mental areas and corridors with steady, even foot-fall, an
interminable procession of every hue and garb,--there are few, indeed,
that can dare to lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the
breast and throw open the window, and let us look and listen. We are all
loyal enough to our sovereign when he shows himself, but sovereigns are
scarce. I never saw the absolute homage of listeners but once, that I
remember, to a man's common talk, and that was to the conversation of an
old man, illustrious by his lineage and the exalted honors he had won,
whose experience had lessons for the wisest, and whose eloquence had made
the boldest tremble.

All this because I told you to look out for yourselves and not take for
absolute truth everything the old Master of our table, or anybody else at
it sees fit to utter. At the same time I do not think that he, or any of
us whose conversation I think worth reporting, says anything for the mere
sake of saying it and without thinking that it holds some truth, even if
it is not unqualifiedly true.

I suppose a certain number of my readers wish very heartily that the
Young Astronomer whose poetical speculations I am recording would stop
trying by searching to find out the Almighty, and sign the thirty-nine
articles, or the Westminster Confession of Faith, at any rate slip his
neck into some collar or other, and pull quietly in the harness, whether
it galled him or not. I say, rather, let him have his talk out; if
nobody else asks the questions he asks, some will be glad to hear them,
but if you, the reader, find the same questions in your own mind, you
need not be afraid to see how they shape themselves in another's
intelligence. Do