be talkative;
composure, never at fault--for feelings are dangerous things;
gravity--for that looks wise; coldness--for other men are cold;
selfishness--for every one is struggling for his own. This is all false,
all bad; the slavery chain of custom riveted by the foolishness of
fashion; because there ever is a band of men and women, who have nothing
to recommend them but externals--their looks or their dresses, their
rank or their wealth--and in order to exalt the honour of these, they
agree to set a compact seal of silence on the heart and on the mind;
lest the flood of humbler men's affections, or of wiser men's
intelligence, should pale their tinsel-praise; and the warm and the wise
too softly acquiesce in this injury done to heartiness shamed by the
effrontery of cold calm fools, and the shallow dignity of an empty
presence. Turn the tables on them, ye truer gentry, truer nobility,
truer royalty of the heart and of the mind; speak freely, love warmly,
laugh cheerfully, explain frankly, exhort zealously, admire liberally,
advise earnestly--be not ashamed to show you have a heart: and if some
cold-blooded simpleton greet your social effort with a sneer, repay
him--for you can well afford a richer gift than his whole treasury
possesses--repay him with a kind good-humoured smile: it would have
shamed Jack Dillaway himself. If a man persists to be silent in a crowd
for vanity's sake, instead of sociable, as good company expects, count
him simply for a fool; you will not be far wrong; he remembers the
copy-book at school, no doubt, with its large-text aphorism, "Silence is
wisdom;" and thinking in an easy obedience to gain credit from mankind
by acting on that questionable sentence, the result is what you
perpetually see--a self-contained, self-satisfied, selfish, and reserved
young puppy. Hint to such an incommunicative comrade, that the fashion
now is coming about, to talk and show your wisdom; not to sit in shallow
silence, hiding hard your folly; soon shall you loosen the flood-gates
of his speech; and society will even thank you for it; for, bore as the
chatterer may oft-times be, still he does the frank companion's duty;
and at any rate is vastly preferable to the dull, unwarmed,
unsympathetic watcher at the festal board, who sits there to exhibit his
painted waistcoat instead of the heart that should be in it, and
patiently waits, with a snakish eye and a bitter tongue, to aid
conversation with a sarcasm.

Henry