ordinary occasions; but the
opportunities we have of lessening the inconveniences of our neighbour,
or of adding to his accommodations and the amount of his agreeable
feelings, are innumerable. An acceptable and welcome member of society
therefore will not talk, only when he has something important to
communicate. He will also study how he may amuse his friend with
agreeable narratives, lively remarks, sallies of wit, or any of those
thousand nothings, which' set off with a wish to please and a benevolent
temper, will often entertain more and win the entire good will of the
person to whom they are addressed, than the wisest discourse, or the
vein of conversation which may exhibit the powers and genius of the
speaker to the greatest advantage.

Men of a dull and saturnine complexion will soon get to an end of all
they felt it incumbent on them to say to their comrades. But the same
thing will probably happen, though at a much later period, between
friends of an active mind, of the largest stores of information,
and whose powers have been exercised upon the greatest variety of
sentiments, principles, and original veins of thinking. When two
such men first fall into society, each will feel as if he had found
a treasure. Their communications are without end; their garrulity is
excited, and converts into a perennial spring. The topics upon which
they are prompted to converse are so numerous, that one seems to jostle
out the other.

It may proceed thus from day to day, from month to month, and perhaps
from year to year. But, according to the old proverb, "It is a long
lane that has no turning." The persons here described will have a vast
variety of topics upon which they are incited to compare their opinions,
and will lay down these topics and take them up again times without
number. Upon some, one of the parties will feel himself entirely at home
while the other is comparatively a novice, and, in others, the advantage
will be with the other; so that the gain of both, in this free and
unrestrained opening of the soul, will be incalculable. But the time
will come, like as in perusing an author of the most extraordinary
genius and the most versatile powers, that the reading of each other's
minds will be exhausted. They know so much of each other's tone of
thinking, that all that can be said will be anticipated. The living
voice, the sparkling eye, and the beaming countenance will do much to
put off the evil day, when we shall