Miss ——­ was desirous of meeting him.  The world became instantly a blank to him.  The enthusiastic damsel stared at him with large admiring eyes.  After a period of agonized silence, a remark occurred to him which he felt might have been appropriate if it had been made earlier in the encounter.  He rejected it as useless, and after another interval a thought came to him which he saw might have served, if the suspense had not been already so prolonged; this was also put aside; and after a series of belated remarks had occurred to him, each of which seemed to be hopelessly unworthy of the expectation he had excited, the hostess, seeing that things had gone wrong, came, like Artemis, and led Iphigenia away, without the philosopher having had the opportunity of indulging in a single reflection.  The experience, he said, was of so appalling a character, that he set to, and invented a remark which he said was applicable to persons of all ages and of either sex, under any circumstances whatever; but, as he would never reveal this precious possession to the most ardent inquirers, the secret, whatever it was, has perished with him.

One of my friends has a perfectly unique gift of conversation.  He is a prominent man of affairs, a perfect mine of political secrets.  He is a ready talker, and has the art, both in a tete-a-tete as well as in a mixed company, of mentioning things which are extremely interesting, and appear to be hopelessly indiscreet.  He generally accompanies his relation of these incidents with a request that the subject may not be mentioned outside.  The result is that every one who is brought into contact with him feels that he is selected by the great man because of some happy gift of temperament, trustworthiness, or discretion, or even on grounds of personal importance, to be the recipient of this signal mark of confidence.  On one occasion I endeavoured, after one of these conversations, not for the sake of betraying him, but in the interests of a diary which I keep, to formulate in precise and permanent terms some of this interesting intelligence.  To my intense surprise and disappointment, I found myself entirely unable to recollect, much less to express, any of his statements.  They had melted in the mind, like some delicate confection, and left behind them nothing but a faint aroma of interest and pleasure.

This would be a dangerous example to imitate, because it requires a very subtle species of art to select incidents and episodes which should both gratify the hearers, and which at the same time it should be impossible to hand on.  Most people who attempted such a task would sink into being miserable blabbers of tacenda, mere sieves through which matters of secret importance would granulate into the hands of ardent journalists.  But at once to stimulate and gratify curiosity, and to give a quiet circle the sense of being admitted to the inmost penetralia of affairs, is a triumph of conversational art.