"
"Too true--too true," rejoined Mr Bang. "In fact, judging from my own
small experience, Borism is fast attaining a head it never reached
before. Speechifying is the crying and prominent vice of the age. Why
will the ganders not recollect that eloquence is the gift of heaven,
Thomas? A man may improve it unquestionably, but the Promethean fire,
the electrical spark, must be from on high. No mental perseverance or
education could ever have made a Demosthenes, or a Cicero, in the ages
long past; nor an Edmund Burke"
"Nor an Aaron Bang in times present," said I.
"Hide my roseate blushes, Thomas," quoth Aaron, as he continued--"Would
that men would speak according to their gifts, study Shakspeare and Don
Quixote, and learn of me; and that the real blockhead would content
himself with speaking when he is spoken to, drinking when he is drucken
to, and ganging to the kirk when the bell rings. You never can go into
a party nowadays, that you don't meet with some shallow, prosing,
pestilent ass of a fellow, who thinks that empty sound is conversation;
and not unfrequently there is a spice of malignity in the blockhead's
composition; but a creature of this calibre you can wither, for it is
not worth crushing, by withholding the sunshine of your countenance from
it, or by leaving it to drivel on, until the utter contempt of the whole
company claps to change the figure--a wet night--cap as an extinguisher
on it, and its small stinking flame flickers and goes out of itself.
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