The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which
must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life.
The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent
hands.]

This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men
that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would
do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working
professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a
pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures
your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow
after the operation.

There are men of _esprit_ who are excessively exhausting to some people.
They are the talkers that have what may be called _jerky_ minds. Their
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright
things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After
a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull
friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after
holding a squirrel.

What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A
ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our
dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds.

"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders,--the same
that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a few original
stanzas, not remembering that "The Pactolian" pays me five dollars a line
for every thing I write in its columns.