The perfect mixture, which is not a common one, is that
of the person who both desires to know and is willing to illustrate
one's experience by his own. Then there is a still more inexplicable
class--the people who go greedily to entertainments, come early and go
late, who seem to wish neither to learn nor to communicate, but sit
staring and tongue-tied. The inveterate talker is the least tiresome of
the three undesirable types, because one at least learns something of
another's point of view. But the danger of general society to a person
like myself, who has a desire to play a certain part in talk, is that
sometimes one is tied to an uncompromising person as to a post for
execution. I love a decent equality in the matter of talk. I want to
hear other people's views and to contrast my own with them. I do not
wish to lie, like a merchant vessel near a pirate ship, and to be fired
into at intervals until I surrender. Neither do I want to do all the
firing myself.
The odd thing is that people, like the saints in the psalm, are so
joyful in glory! They seem entirely content with their aims and
methods, and not even dimly to suspect that they might be enlarged or
improved. Some of them want to talk, and some of them seem not even to
wish to be talked to; a very few to listen, and a small and happy
percentage desire both to give and to take.
Well, I suppose that I ought to be glad that my visitor enjoyed
himself; but I cannot help feeling that my coachman would have done as
well as myself--indeed better, for he is a pleasantly taciturn man, and
would not even have given way to rebellious thoughts.
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