my wont when I say something that I think of superior
quality. So I lost my innings; for the Master is apt to strike in at the
end of a bar, instead of waiting for a rest, if I may borrow a musical
phrase. No matter, just at this moment, what he said; but he talked the
Member of the Haouse asleep again.

They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to you, the Reader)
for people that do a good deal of talking; they call them
"conversationists," or "conversationalists "; talkists, I suppose, would
do just as well. It is rather dangerous to get the name of being one
of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is expected to say something
remarkable every time one opens one's mouth in company. It seems hard
not to be able to ask for a piece of bread or a tumbler of water,
without a sensation running round the table, as if one were an electric
eel or a torpedo, and couldn't be touched without giving a shock. A
fellow is n't all battery, is he? The idea that a Gymnotus can't swallow
his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that
brilliant but sensational being. Good talk is not a matter of will at
all; it depends--you know we are all half-materialists nowadays--on a
certain amount of active congestion of the brain, and that comes when it
is ready, and not before. I saw a man get up the other day in a pleasant
company, and talk away for about five minutes, evidently by a pure
effort of will. His person was good, his voice was pleasant, but anybody
could see that it was all mechanical labor; he was sparring for wind, as
the Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., would express himself. Presently,--

Do you,--Beloved, I am afraid you are not old enough,--but do you
remember the days of the tin tinder-box, the flint, and steel? Click!
click! click!--Al-h-h! knuckles that time! click! click! CLICK! a spark
has taken, and is eating into the black tinder, as a six-year-old eats
into a sheet of gingerbread.

Presently, after hammering away for his five minutes with mere words,
the spark of a happy expression took somewhere among the mental
combustibles, and then for ten minutes we had a pretty, wandering,
scintillating play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, if it did not
kindle, all around it. If you want the real philosophy of it, I will
give it to you. The chance thought or expression struck the nervous
centre of consciousness, as the rowel of a spur stings the flank of a
racer. Away through all the telegraphic radiat