s me no pleasure, at least he
shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed, but very
plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters,
customs, and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies
of his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would
not), and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an
absent man; one may as well talk with a deaf one. It is, in truth, a
practical blunder, to address ourselves to a man, who we see plainly
neither hears, minds, nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man
is, in any degree, fit for either business or conversation, who cannot,
and does not, direct and command his attention to the present object, be
that what it will.

You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense in your education, but
I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift,
the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your
friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with
intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the
discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon
the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those people who are
able to afford it, always keep a flapper in their family, as one of
their domestics, nor ever walk about, or make visits, without him. This
flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his
walks, and, upon occasion, to give a soft flap upon his eyes; because he
is always so wrapt up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of
falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post,
and, in the streets, of jostling others, or being jostled into the
kennel himself. If _Christian_ will undertake this province into the
bargain, with all my heart; but I will not allow him any increase of
wages upon that score.

In short, I give you fair warning, that when we meet, if you are absent
in mind, I will soon be absent in body; for it will be impossible for me
to stay in the room; and if at table you throw down your knife, plate,
bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for half an hour, without
being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish,
I must rise from table to escape the fever you would certainly give me.
Good God! How I should be shocked if you came into my room,