Talkers: With Illustrations

Altiloquents are not unfrequently found among a class of young persons who think they must talk in a manner corresponding with their dress and appearance – fine and prim. A barber is a “tonsorial artist,” and the place in which he works a “hair-dressing studio;” a teacher of swimming is a “professor of natation,” and he who swims “natates in a natatorium;” a common clam-seller is a “vender of magnificent bivalves;” a schoolmaster is a “preceptor,” or “principal of an educational institute;” a cobbler is a “son of Crispin;” printers are “practitioners of the typographical art;” a chapel is a “sanctuary,” a church a “temple,” a house a “palace” or an “establishment,” stables and pig-styes are “quadrupedal edifices and swinish tenements.”

One of this class, a young lady at school, considering that the word “eat” was too vulgar for refined ears, is said to have substituted the following: “To insert nutritious pabulum into the denticulated orifice below the nasal protuberance, which, being masticated, peregrinates through the cartilaginous cavities of the larynx, and is finally domiciliated in the receptacle for digestible particles.”

“It is impossible,” says a recent writer, “not to deplore so pernicious a tendency to high-flown language, because all classes of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, from insincerity and dissimulation, and from an effeminate proneness to use up in speaking the energy we should turn to doing and apply to life and conduct. Without a substratum of sincerity, no man can speak right on, but runs astray into a kind of phraseology which bears the same relation to elegant language that the hollyhock does to the rose.”

The altiloquent talker may be called a word-fancier, searching for all the fine words discoverable, and then putting them together in a sort of mosaic-pavement style or artificial-flower order, making something to be considered pretty, or fascinating, or profound.

“Was it not beautiful?” asked Miss Bunting of Mr. Crump, after hearing one of these talkers. “Did you ever hear anything like it?”

“No, I did not,” answered Mr. Crump, “and I do not wish to hear anything like it again. Too much like a flourishing penman, Miss Bunting, who makes more of his flourishes than of his sense, and which attract the reader more than his communication.”

“But was he not very deep, Mr. Crump?”

“No, Miss Bunting, he was not deep. You remind me of an occasion some time past when reading a book of an altiloquent style. A friend of mine asked, ‘Is it not deep?’ I answered, ‘Not deep, but drumlie.’ The drumlie often looks deep, and is liable to deceive; but it is shallow, as shallow as a babbling brook, as shallow as the beauty of the rose or the human countenance. Sometimes you may think you have a pearl; but it is only a dewdrop into which a ray of light has happened to fall. Such kind of talk, wherever it may be, is only like the aurora-borealis, or like dissolving views which for the moment please. But you know, Miss Bunting, it is the light of the sun that makes the day, and it is substantial food that feeds and strengthens.

“Balloons are very good things for rising in the air and floating over people’s heads; but they are worthless for practical use in the stirring and necessary activities of life. Gew-gaws are pretty things to call forth the wonder of children and ignorant gazers; but the judicious pass them with an askant look and careless demeanour. A table well spread with fine-looking artificial flowers and viands may be nice for the eye, but who can satisfy his hunger and thirst with them? Thus it is with your altiloquent talkers, Miss Bunting. They give you, as a rule, only the tinsel, the varnish, the superficial, which vanishes into thin nothing under your analysis of thought or your reflection of intelligent light.≵

XXVI.

THE DOUBLE-TONGUED

“Think’st thou there are no serpents in the worldBut those who slide along the glassy sod,And sting the luckless foot that presses them?There are who in the path of social lifeDo bask their spotted skins in fortune’s sun,And sting the soul.”Joanna Baillie.

He is so called because he carries two tongues in one – one for your presence and one for your absence; one sweet as honey, the other bitter as gall; one with which he oils you, the other with which he stings you. In talking with you he is bland and affable; but in talking about you he detracts or slanders. The other night, when at your hospitable board, he was complimentary and friendly; the night after, at the hospitable board of your neighbour, in your absence, he had no good word to say of you.

Such is the versatility of his nature, that he is called by a variety of names. Sometimes he is named “Double-faced,” because he has two faces answering to his two tongues. Sometimes he is named “Backbiter,” because if he ever bite any one it is behind his back, where he thinks he is not seen; and so soon is he out of sight, that you can only learn who has bitten you from some honest friend that saw him do it and instantly hide himself under a covering which he always carries about with him for such occasions. He is sometimes named a “Sneak,” because he has not courage to say candidly to your face what he means, but creeps about slyly among other people to say it, that he may evade your notice, and at the same time retain your confidence in him as a personal friend. He is sometimes named a “Snake-in-the-grass,” because he secretes himself in shady places, waiting his opportunity to sting without your knowing how or by whom it was done. In fine, he has been named a “Hypocrite,” who comes to you in “sheep’s clothing,” but is in truth a “ravening wolf.”

“His love is lust, his friendship all a cheat,His smiles hypocrisy, his words deceit.”

He welcomes you with a shake of the hand at his door, and says in soft flattering words, “How glad I am to see you, Mr. Johnson! Pray do walk in;” and while you are laying your hat, gloves, and umbrella on the hall table, he whispers to some one in the parlour, “That Johnson has just come in, and I am sure I don’t care to see him.”

Mrs. Stubbs informs her husband on arriving home in the evening that she met Mrs. Nobbs in the street, and invited her to take a friendly cup of tea with them to-morrow, and then adds with emphasis, “but I do hope she will not come!”

A young gentleman complimented Miss Stokoe the other night in company upon her “exquisite touch on the piano” and the “nightingale tones of her voice in singing;” but as he was walking home from the party with Miss Nance, he said to her (of course in the absence of Miss Stokoe) that “Miss Stokoe, after all that is said in her praise, is no more than an ordinary pianist and singer.”

“That was a most excellent sermon you gave us this morning,” said Mr. Clarke to the Rev. T. Ross, as he was dining with him at his house. “I hope it will not be long before you visit us again.”

“I am obliged for your compliment,” replied Mr. Ross.

A day or two after Mr. Clarke was heard to say that he had never listened to such “a dull sermon, and he hoped it would be a long time ere the reverend gentleman appeared in their pulpit again.”

“What darling little cherubs your twins are,” said Mrs. Horton to Mrs. Shenstone in an afternoon gathering of ladies at her house. “I really should be proud of them if they were mine: such lovely eyes, such rosy cheeks, such beautiful hair, and withal such sweet expressions of the countenance! And then, how tastily they are dressed! Dear darlings! come and kiss me.”

Mrs. Shenstone smiled complacently in return; and shortly after retired from the room, when the two “little cherubs” approached their prodigious admirer, with a view to make friends and impress upon her the solicited kiss. She instantly put them at arm’s length from her, saying to Mrs. Teague, who sat next her, “What pests these little things are, treading on my dress, and obtruding their presence on me like this. I do wish Mrs. Shenstone had taken them out of the room with her.”

“I am deeply grieved to learn,” said Farmer Shirley one day to his neighbour, Farmer Stout, “that your circumstances are such as they are. Now, if you think I can help you in any way, do not be backward in sending to me. You shall always find a friend in me.”

That very afternoon this same farmer Shirley was heard to say in a company of farmers at the “Queen’s Head” that Stout had brought all his difficulties upon himself, and he was not sorry for him a bit. The next day Stout availed himself of the “great kindness” offered him by Shirley, and sent to ask the loan of a pound to pay the baker’s bill, in order to keep the “staff of life” in the house for his family; when Shirley sent word back to him that he had “no pounds to lend anybody, much less one who had by his own extravagance brought himself into such difficult circumstances.”

This double-tongued talker is not unfrequently met with in public meetings. Especially is he heard in “moving votes of thanks,” and “drinking toasts.” Fulsome praises and glowing eulogiums are poured out by him in rich abundance, which, as soon as the meetings are over, are eaten up again by the same person, but of course in the absence of his much-admired gods.

It would not be difficult to go on with instances illustrative of these double-tongued exercises. They are almost as universal as the multifarious phases of society. They are met with in the street, in the shop, in the family, in the church, in the court, in the palace and cottage, among the rich and poor.

Addison, in writing of this fault in talking in his times, gives a letter which he says was written in King Charles the Second’s reign by the “ambassador of Bantam to his royal master a little after his arrival in England.” The following is a copy, which will show how in those days the double-tongued talked, and how the writer, a stranger in this country, was impressed by it.

“Master, – The people where I now am have tongues further from their hearts than from London to Bantam, and thou knowest the inhabitants of one of these places do not know what is done in the other. They call thee and thy subjects barbarians, because we speak what we mean, and account themselves a civilized people because they speak one thing and mean another; truth they call barbarity, and falsehood politeness. Upon my first landing, one, who was sent by the king of this place to meet me, told me that he was extremely sorry for the storm I had met with just before my arrival. I was troubled to hear him grieve and afflict himself on my account; but in less than a quarter of an hour he smiled, and was as merry as if nothing had happened. Another who came with him told me, by my interpreter, he should be glad to do me any service that lay in his power; upon which I desired him to carry one of my portmanteaux for me; but, instead of serving me according to his promise, he laughed, and bid another do it. I lodged the first week at the house of one who desired me to think myself at home, and to consider his house as my own. Accordingly I the next morning began to knock down one of the walls of it, in order to let in the fresh air, and had packed up some of the household goods, of which I intended to have made thee a present; but the false varlet no sooner saw me falling to work but he sent me word to desire me to give over, for that he would have no such doings in his house. I had not been long in this nation before I was told by one for whom I had asked a certain favour from the chief of the king’s servants, whom they here call the lord-treasurer, that I had eternally obliged him. I was so surprised at his gratitude that I could not forbear saying, ‘What service is there which one man can do for another that can oblige him to all eternity?’ However, I only asked him, for my reward, that he would lend me his eldest daughter during my stay in this country; but I quickly found that he was as treacherous as the rest of his countrymen.

“At my first going to court, one of the great men almost put me out of countenance by asking ten thousand pardons of me for only treading by accident upon my toe. They call this kind of lie a compliment; for when they are civil to a great man, they tell him untruths, for which thou wouldst order any of thy officers of state to receive a hundred blows on his foot. I do not know how I shall negotiate anything with this people, since there is so little credit to be given to them. When I go to see the king’s scribe, I am generally told that he is not at home, though perhaps I saw him go into his house almost the very moment before. Thou wouldst fancy that the whole nation are physicians, for the first question they always ask me is, how I do; I have this question put to me above a hundred times a day; nay, they are not only thus inquisitive after my health, but wish it in a more solemn manner, with a full glass in their hands, every time I sit with them at the table, though at the same time they would persuade me to drink their liquors in such quantities as I have found by experience will make me sick.

“They often pretend to pray for thy health also in the same manner; but I have more reason to expect it from the goodness of thy constitution than the sincerity of their wishes. May thy slave escape in safety from this double-tongued race of men, and live to lay himself once more at thy feet in the royal city of Bantam.”

This double-tonguedness of which we have spoken is anything but creditable to an age that makes claim to such a high state of civilisation, to say nothing of Christianity. It shows a gilded or superficial state of things, which cannot but end in consequences disastrous and irremediable.

The finical and fashionable may call the candid speaker a boar, and shun him. He may be an outcast from their society: but, after all, his honesty and candour will wear better and longer than their sham and shoddy. His “Nay, nay,” and “Yea, yea,” will outlast and outshine their double-tongued prevarication and flattery. Better a boar – if you know him to be such – than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A rough friend is more valuable than a hypocritical sycophant.

“As thistles wear the softest downTo hide their prickles till they’re grown,And then declare themselves, and tearWhatever ventures to come near;So a smooth knave does greater featsThan one that idly rails and threats;And all the mischief that he meant,Does, like the rattlesnake, prevent.”

Archbishop Tillotson, in speaking of this subject in his day, says, “The old English plainness and sincerity, that generous integrity of nature and honesty of disposition, which always argues true greatness of mind, and is usually accompanied with undaunted courage and resolution, is in a great measure lost amongst us.

“It is hard to say whether it should more provoke our contempt or our pity to hear what solemn expressions of respect and kindness will pass between men almost upon no occasion; how great honour and esteem they will declare for one whom, perhaps, they never saw before; and how entirely they are all on a sudden devoted to his service and interest, for no reason; how infinitely and eternally obliged to him, for no benefit; and how extremely they will be concerned for him, yea, and afflicted too, for no cause. I know it is said in justification of this hollow kind of conversation that there is no harm, no real deceit in compliment, but the matter is well enough so long as we understand one another; words are like money, and when the current value of them is generally understood, no man is cheated by them. This is something, if such words were anything; but being brought into the account they are mere cyphers. However, it is a just matter of complaint that sincerity and plainness are out of fashion, and that our language is running into a lie; that men have almost quite perverted the use of speech, and made words to signify nothing; that the greatest part of the conversation of mankind is little else but driving a trade of dissimulation.

“If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better: for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? Now the best way in the world to seem to be anything is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that, it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it; and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it are lost.”

XXVII.

THE DUBIOUS

“Man, on the dubious waves of error tossed,His ship half-foundered, and his compass lost,Sees, far as human optics may command,A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land:Spreads all his canvas, every sinew plies;Pants for ’t, aims at it, enters it, and dies!”Cowper.

This is a talker of an opposite stamp to the dogmatist. The one knows and asserts with imperial positiveness, the other with childish trepidation and hesitancy. “It is so, it can’t be otherwise, and you must believe it,” is the dictatorial spirit of the dogmatist. “It may be so, I am not certain, I cannot vouch for its truthfulness: in fact, I am rather inclined to doubt it, but I would not deny nor affirm, or say one word to dispose you either way,” is the utterance of the spirit of Dubious. He is an oscillator, a pendulum, a wave of the sea, a weathercock. He has no certain dwelling-place within the whole domain of knowledge, in which to rest the sole of his feet with permanency. He sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels nothing with certainty, and hence he knows nothing by his senses but what is enveloped in the clouds of doubtfulness. He tenaciously guards himself in the utterance of any sentiment, story, or rumour, lest he expose himself to apprehension. His own existence is a fact of which he speaks with caution. His consciousness may be a reality of which he can say a word. As to his soul, he does not like to speak of that with any assurance. The being of a God is a doctrine in the clouds, and he cannot affirm it with confidence. There may be such places as China, India, Africa, etc.; but as he has never seen them, he dare not venture his full belief in their existence. Whatever he has seen, and whatever he has not seen, seem to stand on the same ground as to the exercise of his faith. Things worldly and religious, simple and profound, plain and mysterious, practical and theoretical, human and divine, personal and relative, present and future, near and afar off, – all seem to crowd around him with a hazy appearance, and he has no definite or certain knowledge respecting them of which to speak. All the things he has ever read or heard he seems to have forgotten, or to hold them with a vague and uncertain tenure. There is nothing within him to rely upon but doubts, fears, and may bes. He lives, moves, and has his being in uncertainties. He will not positively affirm whether his face is black or white, his nose long or short, his own or some other person’s. He “guesses” that two and two make four, and that four and three do not make eight. He “guesses” that blue is not red, and that green is neither blue nor red. He “guesses” that the earth is globular, but would not like to assert that it is not a plain. He “guesses” that the sun gives light by day and the moon by night; but as for affirming either the one or the other, he would not like to commit himself to such positiveness. His talk is full of “hopes,” “presumes,” “may bes,” “trusts,” “guesses,” and such-like expressions. He is certainly a doubtful man to have anything to do with in conversation. I do not say he is dangerous. Far from this, for he has not confidence enough in your actual materiality to make an assault upon your person; and he has not certain knowledge sufficient to contend with your opinions, so that there is no need of apprehension upon either the mental or physical question. It is difficult to acquire any information from him, for who likes to add that to his stock of knowledge which is shrouded in doubts, and to which the communicator will not give the seal of his affirmation? Of course some knowledge must be held and communicated problematically. Such we are willing to take in its legitimate character. But our Dubious talker appears to destroy all distinction and difference, and to arrange all knowledge in the probable or doubtful category, and hence he has nothing but doubtful information to impart, which in reality is no information. To enter into conversation with Dubious, therefore, is no actual benefit to the intellect or the faith. It is harassing, perplexing, provoking to the man who possesses belief in the certainty of things. It is to him time lost, and words uttered in vanity. He retires from the scene with dissatisfaction and disgust. He pities the man who knows nothing, whose intellect revolves in universal haziness, and whose soul is steeped in the quagmires of unrestrained scepticism.

Cowper does admirable justice to this talker in the following lines: —

“Dubious is such a scrupulous good man —Yes – you may catch him tripping if you can:He would not with a peremptory toneAssert the nose upon his face his own;With hesitation admirably slow,He humbly hopes – presumes – it may be so.His evidence, if he were called by lawTo swear to some enormity he saw,For want of prominence and just relief,Would hang an honest man and save a thief.Through constant dread of giving truth offence,He ties up all his hearers in suspense;Knows what he knows as if he knew it not;What he remembers, seems to have forgot;His sole opinion, whatsoe’er befall,Centring at last in having none at all.Yet, though he tease and baulk your listening ear,He makes one useful point exceeding clear;Howe’er ingenious on his darling themeA sceptic in philosophy may seem,Reduced to practice, his beloved ruleWould only prove him a consummate fool;Useless in him alike both brain and speech,Fate having placed all truth above his reach,His ambiguities his total sum,He might as well be blind, and deaf, and dumb.”

XXVIII.

THE SUSPICIOUS

“Foul suspicion! thou turnest love divineTo joyless dread, and mak’st the loving heartWith hateful thoughts to languish and repine,And feed itself with self-consuming smart;Of all the passions of the mind thou vilest art.”Spencer.

The words of his mouth live with a spirit of doubt, incredulity, and jealousy. Actions, thoughts, motives, are questioned as to their reality and disinterestedness. Good counsel given in time of perplexity is attributed to some ulterior purpose which is kept out of view. Gifts of beneficence are said to be deeds of selfishness – patronage is expected in an affair you have on hand, or you anticipate as much or more in return in some other ways. A family visited with a severe affliction is suspected to have the cause in some secret moral delinquency in the father, or mother, or elder son or daughter. A merchant meets with reverses in his business, and he is suspected of something wrong, for which these reverses are sent as punishment. A traveller meets with an accident, by which a member of his body is fractured or life taken away: he is suspected of having been a great sinner before God, for which His vengeance now visits him.

The suspicious talker may be found in one or other phase of his character in almost every class and grade of society. How often the husband suspects the wife, and the wife the husband; the master the servant, and the servant the master; brothers suspect brothers; sisters sisters; neighbours neighbours; the rich the poor; the poor the rich.

The talk of the suspicious is bitter, stinging, exasperating. How often it ends in jealousy, strife, quarrels, separations, and other evils of a similar kind!

This talk seldom or ever effects any good. It more frequently excites to the very thing on which the suspicion has fixed its demon eye, but of which the subject of the suspicion was never guilty.

Suspicious talk, like many other kinds, has frequently no foundation to rest upon, excepting the fancy of an enfeebled mind or the ill-nature of an unregenerate heart.

“That was a very nice present which Mr. Muckleton sent you on Christmas-Day,” said Mr. Birch to his neighbour.