Talkers Part 6

"What does the gentleman mean?" asked the servant of Mr. Pope.

"He wants to know if Squire Foster is at home."

"Yes, sir, he is. Will you walk in?"

Mr. Hill and his friend were showed into the parlour, where they waited the coming of the Squire. After a brief interval "the resident proprietor" made his appearance.

"Ah, ah! how do you do, Mr. Hill? I am very glad to see you," said the Squire, at the same time shaking him by the hand.

"I am in the highest state of excellent health, extremely obliged, Squire. I am sanguine to hope, sir, that you live in the felicity of enjoying, and possessing, and feeling an undistracted state of the physical const.i.tution. Will you, Squire, give me the pleasure and allow me the happiness of introducing and bringing to your acquaintance my friend Mr. Pope? Squire Foster,--Mr. Pope."

"How did you leave Mrs. Hill and family?" asked the Squire.

"It gives me no ordinary pain, and no usual grief, and no common sorrow, to inform and instruct you that I left Mrs. Hill, my dear wife, my choice companion, subject to, and suffering from, and enduring under, a severe and trying affectation of her respiratory organs, superinduced by an exaggerant cold, received, and taken, and caught by her the other day of last week, when we were travelling, and riding, and going to the village of Burnley. My little ones, my children, my offspring, Squire, I am excussitated to say, are in the finest, the best, the happiest state of their juvenile physique that I have ever known, remembered, and borne in mind."

"How is your son John, the little fellow with whom I was so much pleased when I was at your house last?" enquired Squire Foster.

"He is a unique adolescent--a heavenly cherub. His excessively prodigious development of juvenile intellectual and religious numerous tendencies produce within me the largest, the greatest, the richest exquisite emotions of deep pleasurability, and profoundest sensations of unparalleled wonderment."

"You are very eloquent this morning," said the Squire, rather sarcastically.

Mr. Hill, considering himself a little flattered by this encomium, said, "My eloquence, sir, is the natural, the habitual, the spontaneous, the unprompted infusions of my own individuality of mental hallucinations, sparkling out in the scintillations which you do me the honour of denominating, and calling, and epithetising as eloquence."

Mr. Hill was something of a transcendentalist in his way. The Squire was aware of his tendency in this direction, and not having a distinct idea of what his transcendentalism was, he ventured to ask him during the conversation to give him a definition of it. After a brief pause, as though Mr. Hill was meditating for a succinct and clear definition, he said,--

"I would define transcendentalism as the spiritual cognoscence of psychological irrefragability, connected with concuitant ademption of encolumnient spirituality, and etherealized contention of subsultory concretion."

"That _is_ transcendentalism, indeed!" exclaimed the Squire. "It goes beyond my understanding and comprehension."

"I feel myself in the same predicament," observed Mr. Pope, who up to this time had been silent during the desultory conversation of the Squire and Mr. Hill.

"From what stand-point (as the Germans would call it) do you gain that view of transcendentalism?" asked Mr. Pope.

"I have gained it from the esoteric stand-point of Christian exegetical a.n.a.lysis; and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of h.o.m.ogeneous asceticism, I perceive at once the absolute individuality of this definition."

"That is perfectly satisfactory," said Mr. Pope, with a look and in a tone of keen irony.

I will not detain the reader any longer with specimens of the Pleonast in the person of Mr. Hill; but give a few others of a desultory character, with which I have met in reading and otherwise.

A certain gentleman was once speaking to a few friends on the subject of happiness, and in giving his experience as to where it could not be found, he is said have spoken thus,--

"I sought for happiness where it could not be found; I looked for felicity where it could not be discovered; I enquired after bliss in those places, situations, and circ.u.mstances which neither bliss, nor felicity, nor happiness ever visited. Thus it remained with little change, and continued without much alteration, all through the days of my youth, the years of my juvenility, and the period of my adolescence."

"Is that really your experience?" said one who was listening; "and do you intend that as a caution to us against seeking happiness in the same way?"

"Most positively and a.s.suredly I do. Profoundly impressed with the veracity of these sentiments, deeply sensible of their correctness, and heartily persuaded, and a.s.sured, and convinced of their consonance with truth, I urge and press upon your attention what I have above and before couched and expressed in such simple, and plain, and intelligible language, and language easily to be understood withal."

A Pleonast, once speaking of a man who was found drowned in a ca.n.a.l in the neighbourhood where he lived, said,--

"He is supposed to have perpetrated, committed, and done, voluntary, willing, and of himself, destruction, suicide, and drowning, while in a mood of mental aberration, superinduced, brought about, and effected, by long indulgence in and continued habits of inhaling, drinking, and swallowing, to inebriation and drunkenness, intoxicating liquids."

At one time, complaining of the effect of the air upon his lungs, which were rather delicate, the Pleonast said,--

"The ponderosity, the pressure of the ethereal elements, the regions of the atmosphere, the circ.u.mambient world, will not give me or allow me the full, the free, the unrestrained extent of liberty to exercise myself in the respiratory, functional faculties of my earthly human existence."

The above ill.u.s.trations may suffice to show how the Pleonast transgresses the propriety of speech in his conversation.

A person in talking should endeavour to use such words as will convey his meaning, and no more. Words are only the clothing of thought, and when too numerous they enc.u.mber instead of adorn. When improperly connected, as sometimes they are by the Pleonast, they amuse and entertain rather than instruct and edify. Given thoughts clear and simple, it will not be difficult to find words which will be simple and clear also. Language and thought thus harmonised will render the one that uses them an acceptable talker to be heard, rather than a Pleonast to be ridiculed.

VII.

_THE SELF-DISPARAGER._

"The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns, more or less, and glows in every heart; The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure, The modest shun it, but to make it sure."

YOUNG.

This is a talker not unfrequently met with. He speaks in disparaging terms of himself and his doings, not so much because he means you to understand him as he speaks, as that he either feigns humility or desires you to look more favourably upon him than you do, and say to him, "O dear no, you are quite wrong in your judgment. I see very differently; and think, Mr. Baker, that you injure yourself and your performances by talking as you do."

If you speak in words of honest praise of some good feature of his character, or of something he has done or possesses, he says in effect, "I wish it was even as you say; but you are mistaken. I have no such trait as you refer to, and what I have done is far from deserving the eulogium you have pa.s.sed upon it. I am a very poor creature, and have no such goodness as you attribute to me, and am not capable of doing any such good work as you say I have done."

Miss Slater was a young lady generally acknowledged to possess good taste and refined judgment. She was also considered to be honest in spirit and candid in her expression of opinion. What she said she meant, whether in praise or in censure; and no one could say she was a flatterer or a cynic.

On a certain occasion, in conversation with Miss b.u.t.ton, she observed to her, "I was much pleased with that landscape painting which I saw in your parlour the last time I was at your house. Your mother said that it was one you did while at Manor House School."

"Yes, Miss Slater," she replied, "it was done by me; but it is a very inferior piece; not half so good as it might have been."

"I think it is very good indeed: so true to nature. The trees, the clouds, the birds, the river, and in fact the whole of it commends itself to my approval. It does you great credit and contains very good promise for the future, if you continue in the exercise of painting."

"You are, indeed, quite mistaken in your judgment, Miss Slater. It is really not up to most of my other paintings. I am ashamed of it, and have often said it is not worthy the beautiful frame which father had made for it."

Now, if Miss Slater had expressed herself in censure upon any particular part, Miss b.u.t.ton would probably have shown signs of uneasiness, if not displeasure.

Under this cla.s.s of talkers may be mentioned those professors of religion who affect failings which they know they have not, and who acknowledge sins of which they know they are not guilty, for the sake of being reckoned among those who make a merit of "voluntary humility."

They are among the "most unworthy of G.o.d's saints." They are the "vilest of the vile," "not fit to have a name or a place among Christ's people;"

"their righteousness is filthy rags;" they are the "chief of sinners."

Now, there is little doubt that these words are perfectly true; only, the question is, whether they themselves really believe them to be so.

It often occurs that these "great sinners," these "vilest of the vile,"

while forward to say such things of themselves, are the last to admit them as true when said of them by others.

This reminds one of an instance in which a member of a Church was giving way to this kind of self-disparagement, when a fellow member responding to him said, "True, my brother, you are among the greatest of sinners;"

when he instantly warmed up in self-defence, and replied, "I am no greater sinner than you are; look at home before you accuse other people."