cal anecdote all over again.

There is another phase of interrupting which proceeds from the jerky
talker whose remarks are not provoked by what his conversational partner
is saying, with observation and answer, affirmation and rejoinder, but
who waits breathlessly for a pause to jump in and tell some thought of
his own. Of this sort of talker Dean Swift wrote: "There are people
whose manners will not suffer them to interrupt you directly, but what
is almost as bad, will discover abundance of impatience, and lie upon
the watch until you have done, because they have started something in
their own thoughts, which they long to be delivered of. Meantime, they
are so far from regarding what passes that their imaginations are wholly
turned upon what they have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of
their memory; and thus they confine their invention, which might
otherwise range over a hundred things full as good, and that might be
much more naturally introduced." An anecdote or a remark will keep. We
are not under the necessity of begrudging every moment that shortens our
own innings; of interrupting our companion by our looks and voting him
an impediment to our own much better remarks.

A less objectionable phase of interrupting, because it as often springs
from kind thought as from arrogance, is that of the conversationalist so
anxious to prove his quickness of perception that he assumes to know
what you are going to say before you have finished your sentence in your
own mind, and to put an interpretation on your arguments before you are
done stating them. His interpretation is as often exactly the opposite
of your own as it is identical; and, right or wrong, the foisted-in
explanation serves only to interrupt the sequence of thought. As early
as 1832 a writer in the _New England Magazine_ waxed wroth to pugilistic
outburst against this form of interruption: "I have heard individuals
praised for this, as indicating a rapidity of mind which arrived at the
end before the other was half through. But I should feel as much
disposed to knock a man down who took my words out of my mouth, as one
who stole my money out of my pocket. Such a habit may be a credit to
one's powers, but not to one's modesty or good feeling. What is it but
saying, 'My dear sir, you are making a very bungling piece of work with
that sentence of yours; allow me to finish it for you in proper style.'"
Tho one is inclined to feel that this author could wel