ract ideas. It is a virtue
which belongs to the mind and moral character of certain persons. It
is a reciprocal human quality; active as well as passive; a power of
bestowing and receiving.

An amiable person is one who has a capacity for loving and being loved.
An affable person is one who is ready to speak and to be spoken to,--as,
for example, Milton's "affable archangel" Raphael; though it must be
confessed that he laid the chief emphasis on the active side of his
affability. A "clubable" person (to use a word which Dr. Samuel Johnson
invented but did not put into his dictionary) is one who is fit for the
familiar give and take of club-life. A talkable person, therefore, is
one whose nature and disposition invite the easy interchange of thoughts
and feelings, one in whose company it is a pleasure to talk or to be
talked to.

Now this good quality of talkability is to be distinguished, very
strictly and inflexibly, from the bad quality which imitates it and
often brings it into discredit. I mean the vice of talkativeness. That
is a selfish, one-sided, inharmonious affair, full of discomfort, and
productive of most unchristian feelings.

You may observe the operations of this vice not only in human beings,
but also in birds. All the birds in the bush can make some kind of a
noise; and most of them like to do it; and some of them like it a great
deal and do it very much. But it is not always for edification, nor are
the most vociferous and garrulous birds commonly the most pleasing. A
parrot, for instance, in your neighbour's back yard, in the summer time,
when the windows are open, is not an aid to the development of Christian
character. I knew a man who had to stay in the city all summer, and in
the autumn was asked to describe the character and social standing of
a new family that had moved into his neighbourhood. Were they "nice
people," well-bred, intelligent, respectable? "Well," said he, "I don't
know what your standards are, and would prefer not to say anything
libellous; but I'll tell you in a word,--they are the kind of people
that keep a parrot."

Then there is the English Sparrow! What an insufferable chatterbox,
what an incurable scold, what a voluble and tiresome blackguard is this
little feathered cockney. There is not a sweet or pleasant word in all
his vocabulary.

I am convinced that he talks altogether of scandals and fights and
street-sweepings.

The kingdom of ornithology is divided into tw