ne 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 at
sight for a mere whim; when it was good form to take off your sword in
the antechamber, and give your friend your dagger-hand, to show him it
was no business visit. Similarly, you keep up this babblement to show
your mind has no sinister concentration, not necessarily because you
have anything to say, but as a guarantee of good faith. You have to make
a noise all the time, like the little boy who was left in the room with
the plums. It is the only possible explanation.

To a logical mind there is something very distressing in this social law
of gabble. Out of regard for Mrs. A, let us say, I attend some festival
she has inaugurated. There I meet for the first time a young person of
pleasant exterior, and I am placed in her company to deliver her at a
dinner-table, or dance her about, or keep her out of harm's way, in a
cosy nook. She has also never seen me before, and probably does not want
particularly to see me now. However, I find her nice to look at, and she
has taken great pains to make herself nice to look at, and why we cannot
pass the evening, I looking at her and she being looked at, I cannot
imagine. But no; we must talk. Now, possibly there are topics she knows
about and I do not--it is unlikely, but suppose so; on these topics she
requires no information. Again, I know about other topics things unknown
to her, and it seems a mean