till by force of
body, or power of character or intellect; that we attain to worthy
pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love,
like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges
in the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or
conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same
degree, solitary and selfish; and every durable bond between human
beings is founded in or heightened by some element of competition.
Now, the relation that has the least root in matter is undoubtedly
that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good
talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the
scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that the
friends can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable
counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of relations and
the sport of life.

A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be
accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and
circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the
quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a deer out of the wood. Not
that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and
more than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream of
conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook, not
dallying where he fails to "kill." He trusts implicitly to hazard; and
he is rewarded by continual variety, continual pleasure, and those
changing prospects of the truth that are the best of education. There
is nothing in a subject, so called, that we should regard it as an
idol, or follow it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are
few subjects; and so far as they are truly talkable, more than the
half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I, that you are you,
and that there are other people dimly understood to be not quite the
same as either. Wherever talk may range, it still runs half the time
on these eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as
on an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain
for instances and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his
own surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is
a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts
and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we
venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly
el