e
wise remarks they made to a certain company last night. _I_ said--_I_
remarked. The commodity should be valuable indeed to be thus brought to
market a second time. Others there are, who, under pretext of
confidence--little complimentary when shown alike to all--pester people
with their own affairs. Before you have been two hours in their company,
you are introduced to all their family, and to all their family's
concerns, pecuniary affairs, domestic secrets, and personal feelings--a
sort of bird's-eye view of every thing that belongs to them--past,
present, and to come; and woe to the secrets of those who may chance to
have been in connection with these egotists; in such a view, you must
needs see ten miles around.

There is an egotism, of which we must speak more seriously. Faults, that
in the world we laugh at, when they attain the dignity and purity of
sacred things, become matter of serious regret. I speak nothing further
of the ostentatious display of pious and benevolent exertion. We live at
a time when religion, its deepest and dearest interests, have become a
subject of general conversation. We would have it so; but we mark, with
regret, that self has introduced itself here. The heartless
loquacity--we must say heartless, for, in a matter of such deep
interest, facility of speech bespeaks the feelings light--the
unshrinking jabber with which people tell you their soul's
history--their past impressions and present difficulties--their
doctrines and their doubts--their manifestations and their
experiences--not in the ear of confidence, to have those doubts removed
and those doctrines verified; not in the ear of anxious inquiry, to
communicate knowledge and give encouragement, but any where, in any
company, and to any body who will listen, the _I_ felt--_I_ thought--_I_
experienced. Sorrows that, if real, should blanch the cheek to think
upon; mercies that enwrap all hearers in amazement, they will tell as
unconcernedly as the adventures of the morning. The voice falters not;
the color changes not; the eye moistens not. And to what purpose all
this personality? To get good, or do good? By no means; but that,
whatever subject they look upon, they always see themselves in the
foreground of the picture, with every minute particular swelled into
importance, while all besides is merged in indistinctness.

We may be assured there is nothing so ill-bred, so annoying, so little
entertaining, so absolutely impertinent, as