n in a soft ripple,--never a wave,
and never a calm; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or a
high-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so gracefully, that
we find meaning for the music they make as we find faces in the coals
and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is something very odd, though,
about this mechanical talk.

You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine was
detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well, you
have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if the
locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have suspected that
you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if you had not seen
the engine running away from you on a side-track. Upon my conscience,
I believe some of these pretty women detach their minds entirely,
sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that we never know the
difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables just as their fingers
would sprinkle the music-drops from their pianos; unconscious habit
turns the phrase of thought into words just as it does that of music
into notes.--Well, they govern the world, for all that,--these
sweet-lipped women,--because beauty is the index of a larger fact than
wisdom.

----The Bombazine wanted an explanation.

Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the
promise of the future.

----All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I,
suppose, sealed--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an
intelligent Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange a
dozen words. One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each other,--to
be perfectly courteous,--more than courteous; for we are the entertainer
and the entertained, and cherish particularly amiable feelings to each
other. The claret is good; and if our blood reddens a little with its
warm crimson, we are none the less kind for it.

----I don't think people that talk over their victuals are like to say
anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with
strong drink before they begin jabberin'.

The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words had
been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.--The boys of my time used
to call a hit like this a "side-winder."

----I must finish this woman.--

Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as
he sat at meat. Because this was a good whil