e nekke bone,"

in vain expectation of that seed that was to be laid upon his tongue,
and give him renewed and clearer utterance.

These men may have something to say, if they could only say it--indeed
they generally have; but the next class are people who, having nothing
to say, are cursed with a facility and an unhappy command of words, that
makes them the prime nuisances of the society they affect. They try to
cover their absence of matter by an unwholesome vitality of delivery.
They look triumphantly round the room, as if courting applause, after a
torrent of diluted truism. They talk in a circle, harping on the same
dull round of argument, and returning again and again to the same remark
with the same sprightliness, the same irritating appearance of novelty.

After this set, any one is tolerable; so we shall merely hint at a few
other varieties. There is your man who is pre-eminently conscientious,
whose face beams with sincerity as he opens on the negative, and who
votes on the affirmative at the end, looking round the room with an air
of chastened pride. There is also the irrelevant speaker, who rises,
emits a joke or two, and then sits down again, without ever attempting
to tackle the subject of debate. Again, we have men who ride
pick-a-back on their family reputation, or, if their family have none,
identify themselves with some well-known statesman, use his opinions,
and lend him their patronage on all occasions. This is a dangerous plan,
and serves oftener, I am afraid, to point a difference than to adorn a
speech.

But alas! a striking failure may be reached without tempting Providence
by any of these ambitious tricks. Our own stature will be found high
enough for shame. The success of three simple sentences lures us into a
fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from whose shut brackets we may never
disentangle the thread of our discourse. A momentary flush tempts us
into a quotation; and we may be left helpless in the middle of one of
Pope's couplets, a white film gathering before our eyes, and our kind
friends charitably trying to cover our disgrace by a feeble round of
applause. _Amis lecteurs_, this is a painful topic. It is possible that
we too, we, the "potent, grave, and reverend" editor, may have suffered
these things, and drunk as deep as any of the cup of shameful failure.
Let us dwell no longer on so delicate a subject.

In spite, however, of these disagreeables, I should recommend any
student to s