A Chat by the Way [pp. 270-274]

A CHAT BY THE WA Y.
A CHAT BY THE WAY.
THE most awkward moment of an acquaintance is when you
first make it. What are you going to say? Nine cases out of
ten you take refuge in the "weather," and, having launched the
ship of conversation upon those familiar and ordinary waters,
you begin to steer into less-frequented channels. At its best,
however, I believe there is not one out of every thousand people
who knows what a conversation should be. Some talk altogether
with their mouths; these I would call inflationists. They are all
words, lip-movement, and lingual oscillation. Some talk with their
hearts in their mouths, and bespatter you regardlessly with all the
sympathies of human nature until your weak nerves tingle under
the irritation. There are jesting, sminiling talkers, serious, frowning
talkers; but the most exasperating of all conversationalists is the
perpetual listener. A simple "yes" and "no" is the substance
and refrain of his converse. You begin to feel as if you were
giving a lecture to a very stupid audience. A pause comes
about. What in the world shall you next say? You set about
cudgelling your brains for some topic to fill up the breach without
seeming to force matters. You wait for some reply, some little
suggestion, that may open a loophole of escape; you are as
anxious for this reinforcement as Wellington was for Bliicher at
Waterloo. If you could only rouse the slightest little flame to
set the fire burning and kindle the slowly-dying embers once
more into a glow! But in vain you forage through the fields of
memory, art, science, and literature. Your dumb companion
blows the chilly breath of silence over the warm glow of enthusiasm which you have just managed to excite in -your own mind.
His apathetic "yes" or "no," like a gust of cold wind in a dreary
passage-way, extinguishes your dimly flickering candle and
leaves you once more in the dark. A conversation like that is as
bad as the rack and thumb-screw. Not so bad, but bad enough,
is the infliction of the perpetual talker, who glibly and, it seems,
conscientiously pours forth an uninterrupted stream of perennial
converse. You manage to edge in a remark, such as "Well, I
do not altogether think-" when, at a leap displaying a verbal
and vocal agility which might do credit to an acrobat were it in
the physical order, our friend jumps into your remark, topples it
over with a few hasty, well-delivered epithets, and is off at a
[Nov.,
270