listeners very commonly
did a century ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. Any
man who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his company a little while
when there is nothing better stirring. Every now and then a man who may
be dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come over him which
makes him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for
these divine paroxysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when they
seize one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the social
sphere. But the man who can--give us a fresh experience on anything that
interests us overrides everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a
great story-teller of a common person enough. I remember when a certain
vessel was wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the story as
well as Defoe could have told it. Never a word from him before; never
a word from him since. But when it comes to talking one's common
thoughts,--those that come and go as the breath does; those that
tread the mental areas and corridors with steady, even foot-fall, an
interminable procession of every hue and garb,--there are few, indeed,
that can dare to lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the
breast and throw open the window, and let us look and listen. We are all
loyal enough to our sovereign when he shows himself, but sovereigns are
scarce. I never saw the absolute homage of listeners but once, that I
remember, to a man's common talk, and that was to the conversation of an
old man, illustrious by his lineage and the exalted honors he had won,
whose experience had lessons for the wisest, and whose eloquence had
made the boldest tremble.

All this because I told you to look out for yourselves and not take for
absolute truth everything the old Master of our table, or anybody else
at it sees fit to utter. At the same time I do not think that he, or any
of us whose conversation I think worth reporting, says anything for the
mere sake of saying it and without thinking that it holds some truth,
even if it is not unqualifiedly true.

I suppose a certain number of my readers wish very heartily that the
Young Astronomer whose poetical speculations I am recording would stop
trying by searching to find out the Almighty, and sign the thirty-nine
articles, or the Westminster Confession of Faith, at any rate slip his
neck into some collar or other, and pull quietly in the harness, whether
it galled him or not. I say, rather, let