Talkers Part 11

_THE WHISPERER._

"And when they talk of him they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, and rolling eyes."

SHAKESPEARE.

His stock of information is always of the most original kind, and no want of it into the bargain. No one is acquainted with the facts treasured in his memory but himself. Nor does he want any one else to know, excepting a particular friend in whom he has the greatest confidence. And he will only inform him in a whisper, lest any other should hear; and this upon the sacred condition that he will never discover the secret to his nearest friend, not even to the wife of his bosom. And lo, when the grand secret is divulged into his inclining and attentive ear, it is either an old story which everybody knows, or a communication of gossip about some one in whom he has no interest whatever.

Peter Hush is a Whisperer often met with in the ranks of life. He is a descendant from an ancient family of that name, which has lived so long that the origin can scarcely be traced out. He stands related to a vast number of Hushes located in different parts of the world. It is the business of Peter, in the first place, to walk around in the neighbourhood where he resides in order to pick up what sc.r.a.ps of information he can find. He cares not where he finds them, nor how, nor what they are; he has a use for them. He collects stories in the private history of individuals, mixed up with a slight degree of scandal. The sickness of persons, evening parties, clandestine visits, secret courtships, elopements, marriages, difficulties of tradesmen, quarrels of husbands and wives, rumours from abroad respecting a newly located neighbour, with such-like things, const.i.tute the commodity which he gathers. He is seldom or ever without a stock on hand; if he cannot give you of one kind, he can of another. Sometimes I have met him in a bye-road, and, before he told me what he had to say, he came close to me, and being a little shorter than myself, stood on tip-toe, and whispered in my ears; then telling me aloud, "Be sure now you say nothing about it; I wouldn't have it repeated for all the world." Poor Peter need not have been alarmed, for I knew the thing long before he did. I have been alone with him in a large room, and he would take me up one corner to whisper something in my ears. He has a way sometimes of ending his whispering revelations with a loud, "Do not you think so?"

then whisper again, and then aloud, "But you know that person," then whisper again. The thing would be well enough if Peter whispered to keep the folly of what he says among friends; but, alas! he does it to preserve the importance of his own thoughts. It is a wonderful thing that, although he is never heard to talk about things in nature, and never seen with a book in his hand, yet he can whisper something like knowledge of what has and of what now pa.s.ses in the world, which one would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him worthy to receive the whole story. But the truth is, he deals only in half accounts of what he would entertain you with. A help to his discourse is, "That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely, and he had it from persons too considerable to be named, what he will tell you when things are riper." He informs you as a secret that he designs in a very short time to reveal you a secret; you must say nothing to any one. The next time you see him the secret is not yet ripened, he wants to learn a little more of it, and in a fortnight's time he hopes to tell you everything about it.

You may sometimes see Peter seat himself in a company of eight or ten persons whom he never saw before in his life; and after having looked about to see that no one overheard, he has communicated unto them in a low voice, and under the seal of secrecy, the death of a great man in the country, who was perhaps at that very moment travelling in Europe for his pleasure. If upon entering a room you see a circle of heads bending over a table, and lying close to one another, it is almost certain that Peter Hush is among them. Peter has been known to publish the whisper of the day by eight o'clock in the morning at one house, by twelve at a second, and before two at a third. When Peter has thus effectually launched a secret, it is amusing to hear people whispering it to one another at second hand, and spreading it about as their own; for it must be known that the great incentive to whispering is the ambition which every one has of being thought in the secret and being looked upon as a man who has access to greater people than one would imagine.

Besides the character of Peter Hush, as a whisperer, there is Lady Blast, about whom a word or two must be said. She deals in the private transactions of the sewing circle, the quilting party, with all the arcana of the fair s.e.x. She has such a particular malignity in her whisper that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation it breathes upon. She has a most dexterous plan at making private weddings. Last winter she married about five women of honour to their footmen. Her whisper can rob the innocent young lady of her virtue; and fill the healthful young man with diseases. She can make quarrels between the dearest friends, and effect a divorce between the husband and wife who never lived on any terms but the most peaceful and happy. She can stain the character of the clergymen with corruption, against which no one could ever utter the faintest moral delinquency.

She can beggar the wealthy, and degrade the n.o.ble. In short, she can whisper men base or foolish, jealous or ill-natured; or, if occasion requires, can tell you the failings of their great-grandmothers, and traduce the memory of virtuous citizens who have been in their graves these hundred years.

A few words more respecting the Whisperer taken from the Bible. The Psalmist regarded those who whispered against him as those who hated him. "All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt" (Ps. xli. 7). "A whisperer separateth chief friends," is the declaration of the wise man (Prov. xvi. 28). And again, he says, "Where there is no whisperer (marginal reading) the strife ceaseth"

(Prov. xxvi. 20). "Whisperers" is one of the names given by St. Paul to the heathen characters which he describes in the first chapter of Romans. Let my reader, then, beware of the Whisperer. Give no ear to his secrets. Guard against an imitation of his example. Favour the candid and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable, and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the mischievous consequences in others.

XIV.

_THE HYPERBOLIST._

"He was owner of a piece of ground not larger Than a Lacedemonian letter."--LONGINUS.

"He was so gaunt, the case of a flagelet was a mansion for him."--SHAKESPEARE.

The habit of this talker is to exaggerate. He abides not by simple truth in the statement of a fact or the relation of a story. What he sees with his naked eye he describes to others in enlarged outlines, filled up with colours of the deepest hues. What he hears with his naked ears he repeats to others in words which destroy its simplicity, and almost absorb its truthfulness. A straw is a beam, a mole-hill a mountain. His ducks are geese, his minnows are perch, and his babes cherubs. The fading light of the evening he merges into darkness, and the mellow rays of the morning into the dazzling sunshine of noonday. He turns the pyramid on its apex, and the mountain on its peak. If he has a slight ache in the head, he is distracted in his senses, and a brief indisposition of his friend is a sickness likely to be of long duration and serious consequence.

Simple truth is not sufficient for the Hyberbolist to set forth his views and feelings in conversation. He wishes to convey the idea that _he_ has seen and experienced things in number, quality, and circ.u.mstances exceeding anything within the range of your knowledge and experience. He is wishful that you should "_wonder_" and utter words of exclamation at his statements. If you do not, he may perchance repeat himself with enlarged hyperbolisms; and should you then hear in a matter-of-course manner, he may give you up as one stoical or phlegmatic in your temperament.

The following lines, written by Dr. Byrom in the last century, will serve to show the nature and growth of hyperbolism in many instances; especially in the repet.i.tion of facts:--

"Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand, One took the other briskly by the hand; 'Hark ye,' said he, ''tis an odd story this, About the crows!' '_I don't know what it is_,'

Replied his friend.--'No! I'm surprised at that; Where I come from, it is the common chat.

But you shall hear: an odd affair indeed!

And, that it happen'd, they are all agreed; Not to detain you from a thing so strange, A gentleman that lives not far from 'Change, This week, in short, as all the Alley knows, Taking a puke, has thrown up _three black crows_.'

'_Impossible!_' 'Nay, but it's really true; I have it from good hands, and so may you.'

'_From whose, I pray?_' So having nam'd the man, Straight to enquire his curious comrade ran.

'_Sir, did you tell?_'--relating the affair.

'Yes, sir, I did; and if it's worth your care, Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me,-- But, by-the-bye, 'twas _two_ black crows, not _three_.'

Resolv'd to trace so wondrous an event, Whip, to the third, the virtuoso went.

'_Sir_,'--and so forth. 'Why, yes; the thing is fact, Though in regard to number not exact; It was not _two_ black crows, but only one; The truth of _that_ you may depend upon.

The gentleman himself told me the case.'-- 'Where may I find him?'--'Why, in such a place.'

Away goes he, and having found him out, 'Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt;'

Then to his last informant he referr'd, And begg'd to know, if _true_ what he had heard, 'Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?'--'Not I.'

'Bless me! how people propagate a lie!

Black crows have been thrown up, _three_, _two_, and _one_: And here, I find, all comes, at last, to _none_!

Did you say _nothing_ of a crow at _all_?'

'Crow--Crow--perhaps I might, now I recall The matter over.'--'And, pray, sir, what was't?'

'Why I was horrid sick, and, at the last, I did throw up, and told my neighbour so, Something that was--_as black_, sir, as a crow.'"

An Englishman and a Yankee were once talking about the speed at which the trains travelled in their respective countries. The Englishman spoke of the "Flying Dutchman" travelling sixty miles an hour.

"We beat that hollow," said the Yankee. "Our trains on some lines travel so fast that they outgo the sound of the whistle which warns of their coming, and reach the station first."

Of course the "Britisher" gave the palm to his American cousin, and said no more about English locomotive travelling.

Hyberbolism is a fault too much cultivated and practised among the "young ladies" of our schools and homes. They think it an elegant mode of speaking, and seem to rival each other as to which shall best succeed. An ordinary painting of one of their friends is "an exquisitely fine piece of workmanship, and really Reynolds himself could scarcely exceed it." And that bouquet of wax flowers on the side-board "are not surpa.s.sed by the products of nature herself." That young man lately seen in company at the house of Mrs. Hood "is one of the handsomest young gentlemen that I ever beheld; indeed, Miss Spencer, I never saw any one to equal him in reality or in picture." To tell the truth, courteous reader, this said "young gentleman" was scarcely up to an ordinary exhibition of that s.e.x and age of humanity; but this young lady, for some reason or other, could not help speaking of him as the "_highest style_ of man."

Our children are even found indulging in this exaggerated mode of speech, as the following may ill.u.s.trate:--

"Oh, mother," said Annie, as she threw herself into a chair, on her return from a walk, "_I cannot stir another step._"

"Why, Annie," answered her mother, "I thought your walk was pleasant, and not tiring at all."

"It was such a long one," said Annie; "_I thought we should never have got home again._ I would not walk it again _for all the world_."

"But did you not enjoy the walk in the fields, Annie?"

"Oh, no; there were so many cows that _I was frightened to death_."

"What a little angel our baby is," said Nancy, one day to her sister, "_I feel as though I could eat it up._"

"O what a _monstrous brute_ our governess is!" said Marian to a school-fellow one afternoon, because she had corrected her rather sharply for some misdemeanour.

"I say, Fred, we have strawberries in our garden _as big as my fist_,"

said David one day to him.

Fred opened his eyes in wonder, and said, "I should like to see them."

Fred went to see them, and David's garden strawberries were found to be no larger than one of his ordinary-sized marbles.

"Come," says James to Harry, "let us go and get some blackberries; there are _oceans_ of them on yonder hedge."

"Oceans!" said James in wonder.

"Yes, oceans; only you must mind in getting them that you don't fall into the ditch, or you will be _over your head_ in mud."

James went with Harry, and found that the blackberries were as spa.r.s.e on the hedge as plums in his school pudding, and as for mud to cover him, he saw scarcely enough to come over his boots.