satisfaction of coming suddenly upon some pleasant view, or unexpectedly
entering an apparently previously unexplored nook, more than atoned for
such trifling annoyances. Without digression in some degree, neither
spoken nor written language can be made entertaining to the person
addressed. Who is more discursive than the Autocrat, the Czar of
table-talkers; and whose productions are more charming or wiser? We do
not do our everyday thinking in strictly logical or consistent forms. It
is sufficient to introduce hypotheses, premises, or syllogisms, when
there are ends to be attained by such a course. Impulse is far more
attractive than prim consistency in the character of those we love; and
if this be true as to pet persons, why not in our favorite writings? So
the most charming women I have met would be styled in Spanish _las
inconsecuentes_. Therefore, when amusement is the aim of writing, let
digression have full swing.

--I ENVY A GOOD TALKER. There is no class of persons so
generally underrated and vilified, yet this would be a dull world
without them. And the faculty is not to be acquired. Really good talkers
are born, not made. (And some, I hear a skeptic say, are not to be borne
in certain contingencies.) Talk is like a river; it rushes onward, by
expression of ideas, _making room for thoughts_ to follow, and the dull
elf, whose mouth is a mill-dam, finds his fancies and thoughts
accumulate on his brain, till that organ is dull and sodden as is his
facial aspect. Why is it that some can only be fluent from the point of
a pen, while others can only address their fellows effectively by word
of mouth? Of course there are conversational monsters as well as other
violations of nature's creative processes. And the more thought that
talk holds in solution, the more grateful the offering. But I have
often listened attentively and pleasurably to an hour's flow from the
lips of a pretty, graceful woman, or an interesting child, just saying
enough myself to prove that sleep had not seized me. And at the
subsidence of the tide, I could not for the life of me recall a single
idea to which verbal embodiment had been given. Perhaps I had been
carried away by the music of tone, or the charming, ever-changing curves
of the opening and closing lips, or the dimples in the cheeks, as they
budded, blossomed, and faded in the light of the now laughing, now
languishing eyes, that never lost their hold of mine, yet never bore
mine dow