The crimson carpet
flushes warm under my feet. The arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair
spins round with me, as if it were giddy with pleasure; the vast
recumbent _fauteuil_ stretches itself out under my weight, as one joyous
with food and wine stretches in after-dinner laughter.
The boarders were pleased to say that they were glad to get me back. One
of them ventured a compliment, namely,--that I talked as if I believed
what I said.--This was apparently considered something unusual, by its
being mentioned.
One who means to talk with entire sincerity,--I said,--always feels
himself in danger of two things, namely,--an affectation of bluntness,
like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness.
What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to
give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two
talkers as the time will let him. Life is short, and conversation apt to
run to mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some very good
stories about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up
a long talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something
like this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best
Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to
time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery
glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in _eau-de-vie de
Dantzic_; their accents flowing on 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.
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