arts of conversation," and sweetly "prattling out of fashion," make
very pretty music from a beautiful face and a female tongue; but from a
rough manly voice and coarse features mere nonsense is as harsh and
dissonant as a jig from a hurdy-gurdy. The Swearers I have spoken of in
a former paper; but the Half-Swearers, who split and mince, and fritter
their oaths into "gad's but," "ad's fish," and "demme," the Gothic
Humbuggers, and those who nickname God's creatures, and call a man a
cabbage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, and an unaccountable skin,
should never come into company without an interpreter. But I will not
tire my reader's patience by pointing out all the pests of conversation,
nor dwell particularly on the Sensibles, who pronounce dogmatically on
the most trivial points, and speak in sentences; the Wonderers, who are
always wondering what o'clock it is, or wondering whether it will rain
or no, or wondering when the moon changes; the Phraseologists, who
explain a thing by all that, or enter into particulars, with this and
that and t'other; and lastly, the Silent Men, who seem afraid of
opening their mouths lest they should catch cold, and literally observe
the precept of the Gospel, by letting their conversation be only yea and
nay.

The rational intercourse kept up by conversation is one of our principal
distinctions from brutes. We should, therefore, endeavor to turn this
peculiar talent to our advantage, and consider the organs of speech as
the instruments of understanding; we should be very careful not to use
them as the weapons of vice, or tools of folly, and do our utmost to
unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits, which tend to lessen the value
of such an inestimable prerogative. It is, indeed, imagined by some
philosophers, that even birds and beasts (tho without the power of
articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter;
and that dogs, cats, etc., have each a particular language to
themselves, like different nations. Thus it may be supposed that the
nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear for their own native woodnotes
as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of
Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose as the inhabitants
in High German; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as
intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low Dutch. However this may be,
we may consider those whose tongues hardly seem to be under the
influence of reas