There is something very odd, though,
about this mechanical talk.
You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine was
detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well, you
have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if the
locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have suspected that
you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if you had not seen
the engine running away from you on a side-track. Upon my conscience,
I believe some of these pretty women detach their minds entirely,
sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that we never know the
difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables just as their fingers
would sprinkle the music-drops from their pianos; unconscious habit
turns the phrase of thought into words just as it does that of music
into notes.--Well, they govern the world, for all that,--these
sweet-lipped women,--because beauty is the index of a larger fact than
wisdom.
----The Bombazine wanted an explanation.
Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the
promise of the future.
----All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I,
suppose, sealed--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an
intelligent Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange a
dozen words. One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each other,--to
be perfectly courteous,--more than courteous; for we are the entertainer
and the entertained, and cherish particularly amiable feelings to each
other.
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