The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1882-02-16
WE will never forget the very SEN

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WE will never forget the very SEN
sible sentence in the Elementary Spell
ing Book: "a loquacious companion
is sometimes a great torment" We
have sometimes regretted that some
men had not been born dumb.
Read the following, from an article
in Good Words:
The cacoethes scribendi, it has been
remarked, is a spirit that will not
forth even by prayer and fasting-on
the part of the readers. The cacoethes
loquendi is worse. Readers can fast.
What is it to me that every hour emits
a sloshy sermon, tract, or speech; that
every day brings forth lady novelist
with the same old plot, sentimental
passion, and stale morality, and every
week another neo-Oxford poet with a
new meaningless jingle of equally jad-
ed and often happily incredible immo-
ralities? I know that everything
worth saying, permitted to be said in
English, has been said a hundred
times; and, save for information, am
resolved to read no more. But when
my friend calls I cannot always be
from home" If I am dining, or
bathing, or merely "out," he will wait
till I am ready, or return; he wants
to have a talk i. e., he is resolved for
three stricken hours to make me listen
to him, and succeeds in destroying my
whole days work. | fidget on my
chair; he is glued to his, he has ac-
tually scooped it out. I pace the room
like hyena, he follows me up and
down. | assent to every platitude or
paradox, profess my ignorance Of pol
itics and art, my Indifference to the
welfare Of the people" IT'S idle; he
qcW inform me. I have headache
talk will do me good. I am busy
affects to move, but returns from the
doorway, hat in hand, to renew his
tale.
OF much speaking there are, of
course, many sorts: serious, silly, pc
dantic, vacuous, on a hobby or aero
batic. The least fatiguing Of inces-
SAINT speakers are perhaps those who
talk mere nonsense, for you can alb
stract your thoughts from their bab-
BILE, and, in the last extremity, they
can without loss be somewhat rudely
dismissed. To this class belong Jacks
of all trades; poetasters; people who
scamp their work, quit their posts and
run screeching over the country; priv
ileged bufoons at more than with
whom audiences laugh. Persons OF
this description do not wait for invi-
tations. They invite themselves. II
you are timid man, leave the house
if you have heart, for future peace
say, point blank, you won't have
them. Hobby-riders have teen such
frequent butts that they require few
words. Most Of them are amusing
sometimes instructive, for a day, in.
tolerable for year. The sub-species
are various; ranging from metaphysi-
clans, grammarians, men of science
and specialists who have made one au
thor "the study Of their lives" dowr
to philanthropists, among whom ad.
vocates Of ''the Higher Education ot
Women" sanitary reformers, and tee.
totallers are the worst. | have known
one whose whole being centred on al
article Of household furniture repre-
sented by the initials of a great Lon.
don distriat; another, who found him:
self sent into the world to prove thai
the wines Of Scripture were unfer-
: mented. One must not blame these
people; they are no more responsible
for their disease than for color-blind
ness; but they are improbable, and
however hard it may seem, must bt
sternly cut.
Far more formidable and difficult
to deal with is the accomplished anc
able friend who has been bitten by
the tarantula of talk, who speaks we'll
nay even brilliantly, but will never
cease. With him you cannot dream
for he is as sharp as a needle, and will
haul you up with a question. You
must listen, and it is the most exhaust.
ing process in the world. His con.
versation, so to miscall it, where you
have rarely one word in ten, is con.
tinuous cataract of intelligence; his
company a tension of all the nerves
He knows most things, and is a caus,
tic critic Of all he knows. Start 6
subject On which you can get the vino
of him, he will adroitly waive it, and
spring Oh any one of half-a-dozer
others on which be can bowl you out
When he visits, he announces his ad.
vent by half a page before he has paid
the cab-fare. When he invites, you
must be prepared to be pumped upon
at meals; while he eats, as a mere by
play, by intermittent mouthfuls. He
has no hobbies and no vices, his mas
| ter passion, like that of a confirmed
drunkard, devours the rest. Sober,
steadfast, and inexorable, he is a glut-
ton only of speech, a dipsomaniac of
his own wit. To live with him is to
undergo perpetual humiliation, as of
one being examined without being al
lowed to answer. He hovers about
you like q midge, and weaves webs
around you like spider. a walk to-
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