Then there is your sentimental water--fly, who blaws in the lugs of the
women, and clips the King's English, and your high--flying dominie body,
who whumles them outright. I speak in a figure. But all these are as
dust in the balance to the wearisome man of ponderous acquirements, the
solemn blockhead who usurps the pas, and if he happen to be rich,
fancies himself entitled to prose and palaver away, as if he were Sir
Oracle, or as if the pence in his purse could ever fructify the cauld
parritch in his pate into pregnant brain. There is a plateful of P's
for you at any rate, Tom. Beautiful exemplification of the art
alliterative--an't it?"
'Oh that Heaven the gift would gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us!'
My dear boy, speechifying has extinguished conversation. Public
meetings, God knows, are rife enough, and why will the numskulls not
confine their infernal dullness to them? why not be satisfied with
splitting the ears of the groundlings there? why will they not consider
that convivial conversation should be lively as the sparkle of musketry,
brilliant, sharp, and sprightly, and not like the thundering of heavy
cannon, or heavier bombs.--But no--you shall ask one of the Drawleys
across the table to take wine. 'Ah,' says he--and how he makes out the
concatenation, God only knows--'this puts me in mind, Mr Thingumbob, of
what happened when I was chairman of the county club, on such a day.
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