happened after this duel of Sword v. Fiery Eye.  I know from a sheet that came out of place that Margot stabbed herself with a dagger ("richly jewelled"), but of all that came between I have not the faintest suspicion.  That is the peculiar interest of it.  At this particular moment the one book I want to read in all the world is the rest of this novel of Euphemia’s.  And simply, on the score of a new hat needed, she keeps it back and haggles!

OF CONVERSATION

AN APOLOGY

I must admit that in conversation I am not a brilliant success.  Partly, indeed, that may be owing to the assiduity with which my aunt suppressed my early essays in the art:  “Children,” she said, “should be seen but not heard,” and incontinently rapped my knuckles.  To a larger degree, however, I regard it as intrinsic.  This tendency to silence, to go out of the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, is largely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation and breadth and tenderness of mind; I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe, no rattle that I should be expected to delight my fellow-creatures by the noises I produce.  I go about to this social function and that, deporting myself gravely and decently in silence, taking, if possible, a back seat; and, in consequence of that, people who do not understand me have been heard to describe me as a “stick,” as “shy,” and by an abundance of the like unflattering terms.  So that I am bound almost in self-justification to set down my reasons for this temperance of mine in conversation.

Speech, no doubt, is a valuable gift, but at the same time it is a gift that may be abused.  What is regarded as polite conversation is, I hold, such an abuse.  Alcohol, opium, tea, are all very excellent things in their way; but imagine continuous alcohol, an incessant opium, or to receive, ocean-like, a perennially flowing river of tea!  That is my objection to this conversation:  its continuousness.  You have to keep on.  You find three or four people gathered together, and instead of being restful and recreative, sitting in comfortable attitudes and at peace with themselves and each other, and now and again, perhaps three or four times in an hour, making a worthy and memorable remark, they are all haggard and intent upon keeping this fetish flow agoing.  A fortuitous score of cows in a field are a thousand times happier than a score of people deliberately assembled for the purposes of happiness.  These conversationalists say the most shallow and needless of things, impart aimless information, simulate interest they do not feel, and generally impugn their claim to be considered reasonable creatures.  Why, when people assemble without hostile intentions, it should be so imperative to keep the trickling rill of talk running, I find it impossible to imagine.  It is a vestige of the old barbaric times, when men murdered