'"
"I think," said Miss Graves, "it is Rochefoucault who says, 'The great
art of conversation is to hear patiently and answer precisely.'"
"A very poor definition for so profound a philosopher," remarked Mrs.
Apsley.
"The amiable author of what the gigantic Johnson styles the melancholy
and angry "Night Thoughts," gives a nobler, a more elevated, and, in my
humble opinion, a juster explication of the intercourse of mind," said
Miss Parkins; and she repeated the following lines with pompous
enthusiasm:--
Speech ventilates our intellectual fire,
Speech burnishes our mental magazine,
Brightens for ornament, and whets for use.
What numbers, sheath'd in erudition, lie,
Plung'd to the hilts in venerable tomes,
And rusted in, who might have borne an edge,
And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech---
If born blest heirs of half their mother's tongue!"
Mrs. Bluemits proceeded:
"'Tis thought's exchange, which, like the alternate push
Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum,
And defecates the student's standing pool."
"The sensitive poet of Olney, if I mistake not," said Mrs. Dalton,
"steers a middle course, betwixt the somewhat bald maxim of the Parisian
philosopher and the mournful pruriency of the Bard of Night, when he
says,
'Conversation, in its better part,
May be esteem'd a gift, and not an art.
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