The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1871-09-16
Vague People.

Vague People.
Have you ever suffered from the
fearful infection of vague people
To argue with them is to spend labor
and strength in vain, like trying to
make rope out of sea sand. Beaten
off at every point, they settle down
again into the old vague vapory credo.
and it is like fighting with ghosts to
attempt to convince them of better
way. They look at you helplessly,
assent loosely to your propositions but
when you come to the necessary de-
duction, they double back in a vague
assertion that they do not agree with
you, they cannot prove you wrong,
but they are right; and you know
then that the collapse is hopeless. If
this meant tenacity, it would be so
far respectable, even though the con-
viction were erroneous; but it is the
mere unimpressible fiuidity of vague
ness, the impossibillity of giving shape
and conference to floating fog or
formless haze. Vague as to the basis
of their beliefs, they are wagner still
as to their facts. These indeed are
like ladder of which half the rungs
are missing. They never remember
story, and they cannot describe
what they have seen. Of the first
they are sure to lose the point and to
entangle the thread of the last they
forget all the details, and confound
both sequence and position. As to
dates, they are as if lost in Il wood
when you require definite centuries,
years, months. 1t is as much as they
can do to remember their own birth
day but they are never sure of their
children's; and generally mix up
names and ages in a manner that ex-
asperates the young people like a per-
sonal insult.
With the best intentions in the
world they do infinite mischief. They
detail what they think they have
heard of their neighbors' sayings and
doings; but as they never detail any
thing exactly, or twice alike, by the
time they have told the story to half
dozen friends they have given cur
rency to half a dozen different chime
Tas which never existed save in their
own woolly imaginations. No repute
is safe with them, even though they
may be personally good-natured and
anxious not to do any one harm but
they are so vague that they are al
ways setting ahOat exaggeratiOns
which are substantially falsehoods
and if you tell them the most innocent
fact of any one you would not injure
for words-say you own daughter or
your dearest friend-they are sure to
repeat it with additions and distor-
tons, till they have made it into
Frankenstein which no one now can
subdue. Besides this mental haziness,
which neither sees nor shapes fact
correctly, vague people are so loose
and unstable in their habits. They
know nothing of punctuality at home
OF abroad; and you are never sure
that you will not stumble on them at
meal-times at what time soever you
may call. But worse than this, your
own meal-times or any other times are
never safe from them. They float in
to your house uncertainty, vaguely,
without purpose, with nothing to say
and nothing to do, and for no reason
that you can discover. And when
they come they stay and you cannot
for the life of you find out why they
have come at all.
They invade you all times, in your
busy hours, and on your sacred days,
and sit there in a chaotic kind of 81
lence, or with vague talk that it tires
your brains to bring to focus; but
they are too foggy to understand any
thing like delicate hint, and if you
want to get rid of them, you must risk
a quarrel and effectively shoulder
them out. They viii be no loss.
They are SO much driftweed in your
life, and you can make no good of
them for yourself or others. Even
when they undertake to help you, they
do you more harm than good by the
hazy way in which they understand
and the inexactness with which they
carry out your wishes. They volun-
teer to get you by favor the thing you
want and cannot find in the general
way of business-say, something of
peculiar shade of olive greenland
they bring You in triumph brilliant
cobalt; and if you trust to their I'M
controlled action in your affairs, you
find yourself committed to response