Talkers Part 28

I shall make no apology for quoting on this subject from a letter out of the "Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq.," written by him to Miss Mary Greyson.

"You remember the last pleasant evening in my last visit to Shirley, when I accompanied you to the party at Mrs. Austin's. Something occurred there which I had no opportunity of _improving_ for your benefit. So as you invite reproof--an invitation which who that is mortal and senior can refuse?--I will enlarge a little.

"The good lady, our hostess, expressed, if you recollect, a fear that the light of the unshaded camphine was too bright, in the position in which you sat, for your eyes. Though I saw you blinking with positive pain, yet, out of a foolish timidity, you protested, 'No; oh no; not at all!' Now that was a very unneighbourly act of the tongue, thus to set at nought the eye; the selfish thing must have forgotten that 'if one member suffer, all the others must suffer with it.' My dear, never sacrifice your eyes to any organ whatever; at all events, not to the tongue,--least of all when it does not tell the truth. Of the two, you had better be dumb than blind.

"Now, if I had not interposed, and said that you _were_ suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a--a--what shall I call it?--it must out--a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence of mind that the thought of absolute truth shall so preoccupy you as to defy surprise and antic.i.p.ate even the most hurried utterances.

"The incident is very trifling in itself; I have noticed it because I think I have observed on other occasions that, from a certain timidity of character, and an amiable desire not to give trouble, or make a fuss, as you call it (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed--that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.'

"Let truth--absolute truth--take precedence of everything; let it be more precious to you than anything else. Sacrifice not a particle of it at the bidding of indolence, vanity, interest, cowardice, or shame; least of all, to those tawdry idols of stuffed straw and feathers--the idols of fashion and false honour.

"It is often said that the great lesson for a young man or a young woman to learn is how to say 'no.' It would be better to say that they should learn aright how to use both 'yes' and 'no,'--for both are equally liable to abuse.

"The modes in which they are employed often give an infallible criterion of character.

"Some say both doubtfully and hesitatingly, drawling out each letter--'y-e-s,' 'n-o,'--that one might swear to their indecision of character at once. Others repeat them with such facility of a.s.sent or dissent, taking their tone from the previous question, that one is equally a.s.sured of the same conclusion, or, what is as bad, that they never reflect at all. They are a sort of parrots.

"One very important observation is this--be pleased to remember, my dear, that 'yes,' in itself, always means 'yes,' and 'no' always means 'no.'

"I fancy you will smile at such a profound remark; nevertheless, many act as if they never knew it, both in uttering these monosyllables themselves and in interpreting them as uttered by others. Young ladies, for example, when _the_ question, as it is called, _par excellence_ (as if it were more important than the whole catechism together) is put to them, often say 'no' when they really mean 'yes.' It is a singular happiness for them that the young gentlemen to whom they reply in this contradictory sort of way have a similar incapacity of understanding 'yes' and 'no;' nay, a greater; for these last often persist in thinking 'no' means 'yes,' even when it really means what it says.

"'Pray, my dear,' said a mamma to her daughter of eighteen, 'what was your cousin saying to you when I met you blushing so in the garden?'

"'He told me that he loved me, mamma, and asked if I could love him.'

"'Upon my word! And what did you say to _him_, my dear?'

"'I said yes, mamma.'

"'My dear, how could you be so----'

"'Why, mamma, what else _could_ I say? it was the--_truth_.'

"Now I consider this a model for all love-pa.s.sages: and when it comes to your turn, my dear, pray follow this truth-loving young lady's example, and do not trust to your lover's powers of interpretation to translate a seeming 'no' into a genuine 'yes.' He might be one of those simple, worthy folk who are so foolish as to think that a negative is really a negative!

"I grant that there are a thousand conventional cases in which 'yes'

means 'no,' and 'no' means 'yes;' and they are so ridiculously common that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or, rather, is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact, quite apart from positive lying--that is, any intention to deceive--the honest words are so often interchanged, that if 'no' were to prosecute 'yes,' and 'yes' 'no,' for trespa.s.s, I know not which would have most causes in court. Have nothing to do with these absurd conventionalisms, my dear. 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' If you are asked whether you are cold, hungry, tired, never, for fear of giving trouble, say the contrary of what you feel. Decline giving the trouble if you like, by all means; but do not a.s.sign any false reason for so doing.

These are trifles, you will say; and so they are. But it is only by austere regard to truth, even in trifles, that we shall keep the love of it spotless and pure. 'Take care of the pence' of truth, 'and the pounds will take care of themselves.'

"Not only let your utterance be simple truth, as you apprehend it, but let it be decisive and unambiguous, according to those apprehensions.

Some persons speak as falteringly as if they thought the text I have cited ran, 'Let your yea be nay, and your nay, yea.' And so they are apt to a.s.sent or dissent, according to the tenor of the last argument: 'Yes--no--yes--no.' It is just like listening to the pendulum of a clock.

"It is a great aggravation of the misuse of 'yes' and 'no,' that the young are apt to lose all true apprehension of their meaning, and think, in certain cases, that 'yes' cannot mean 'yes,' nor 'no' 'no.'

"I have known a lad, whose mother's 'no' had generally ended in 'yes,'

completely ruined, because when his father said 'no' in reply to a request for unreasonable aid, and threatened to leave him to his own devices if he persisted in extravagance, could not believe that his father meant what he said, or could prevail on justice to turn nature out of doors. But his father meant 'no,' and stuck to it, and the lad was ruined, simply because, you see, he had not noticed that father and mother differed in their dialects--that his father's 'no' always meant 'no,' and nothing else. You have read 'Rob Roy,' and may recollect that that amiable young gentleman, Mr. F. Osbaldistone, with less reason, very nearly made an equally fatal mistake; for every word his father had ever uttered, and every muscle in his face, every gesture, every step, ought to have convinced him that his father always meant what he said.

"In fine, learn to apply these little words aright and honestly, and, little though they be, you will keep the love of truth pure and unsullied.

"Ah me! what worlds of joy and sorrow, what maddening griefs and ecstacies have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in scenes of agony.

"There are occasions--and those the most terrible in life--when the lips are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express what the m.u.f.fled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering compa.s.sionate circ.u.mlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but to such a question silence and dejection can alone say 'no.'"

x.x.xI.

_A GROUP OF TALKERS._

I. THE MISANTHROPE.

He is sour and morose in disposition. He is a hater of his species.

Whether he was born thus, or whether he has gradually acquired it through contact with mankind, will best be ascertained from himself. I think, however, that he too frequently and too readily inclines in his nature to run against the angles and rough edges of men's ways and tempers, by which he is made sore and irritable, until he loses patience with everybody, and thinks everybody is gone to the bad. He is happy with no one, and no one is happy with him.

His talk agrees with his temper. He says nothing good of anybody or anything. Society is rotten in every part. He cares for no one's thanks.

He bows to no one's person. He courts no one's smiles. There is neither happiness nor worth anywhere or in any one. He says,--

"Only this is sure: In this world nought save misery can endure."

If you try to throw a more cheerful aspect upon things and breathe a more genial soul into his nature, he says to you,--

"Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away?

And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey."

He is hard to cure, but worse to endure. Sunshine has no brightness for him. Love has no charms. Beauty has no smiles. Flowers have no fragrance. All is desert to him; and alas! he is desert to all.

II. THE STORY-TELLER.--He is ever and anon telling his anecdotes and stories, until they become as dull as an old newspaper handled for days together. He seldom enters your house or forms one of a company but you hear from him the same oft-repeated tales. He may sometimes begin on a new track, but he soon merges into the old. You are inclined to say, "You have told me that before;" but respect to the person who speaks, or a sense of good manners, restrains, so you are under the necessity of enduring the unwelcome repet.i.tion.

I have known this talker, again and again, rise from his seat with an intention of going because of a "pressing engagement," and yet he has stood, with hat in hand, for a further half-hour, telling the same stories which on similar occasions he had told before. I knew what was coming, and wished that he had left when he rose at first to do so, rather than afflict me with the same worn-out threadbare tales of three-times-three repet.i.tion in my ears.

I have thought, Whence this failing? Whether from loss of memory or from the fact that these things have been so often repeated that, when once begun, they instinctively and in the very order in which they are laid in the mind find an irresistible outlet from the mouth: like a musical-box, when wound up and set a-going, goes on and on, playing the same old tunes which one has heard a hundred times, and which it has played ever since a musical-box it has been.

I am inclined to think, however uncharitable my thinking may seem, that this is the chief cause of his fault. I think so because I have frequently noticed him saying as soon as he has begun, "Have not I told you this before?" and I have answered, "Yes, you have;" still he has gone on with the old yarn, telling it precisely in the same way as before; as the aforesaid instrument plays its old tunes without variation right through to the end.

The affliction would not be so bad to bear if he cut his stories short; but, unfortunately, he does not, and I verily believe cannot, any more than the parson who has repeated his sermons a hundred times can curtail, or leave out some of the old to subst.i.tute new. Not only so; another addition to the burden one has to endure is, that he always repeats his stories with such apparent self-satisfaction--a smile here, a laugh there, a "ha-ha-ha" in another place; at the same time you feel he is a bore, and wish his old saws were a hundred miles away.

One has been reminded, in hearing him talk, of what Menander says about the Dodonian bra.s.s, that if a man touched it only once it would continue ringing the whole day in the same monotonous tone. Thus this talker, touch him on the story-key, and he plays away until you are jaded in listening.

"His copious stories, oftentimes begun, End without audience, and are never done."

Is there a remedy for this talker? I fear not. He has practised so long--for he generally is sixty or seventy years old--that little hope can be entertained of his cure. He will have to _wear_ out. This, however, you can do for yourself; only go into his company _once_, and you will not be afflicted with his repet.i.tion; and if he would go into the same company only once, it would secure to him a more enduring reputation.