THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

I really believe some people save their bright thoughts, as being too precious for conversation.  What do you think an admiring friend said the other day to one that was talking good things,—­good enough to print?  “Why,” said he, “you are wasting merchantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour.”  The talker took him to the window and asked him to look out and tell what he saw.

“Nothing but a very dusty street,” he said, “and a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it.”

“Why don’t you tell the man he is wasting that water?  What would be the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers through them with the valves open, sometimes?

“Besides, there is another thing about this talking, which you forget.  It shapes our thoughts for us;—­the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore.  Let me modify the image a little.  I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay.  Spoken language is so plastic,—­you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for modelling.  Out of it come the shapes which you turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to write such.  Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader’s mind, or miss it;—­but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can’t help hitting it.”

The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, “Fust-rate.”  I acknowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression.  “Fust-rate,” “prime,” “a prime article,” “a superior piece of goods,” “a handsome garment,” “a gent in a flowered vest,”—­all such expressions are final.  They blast the lineage of him or her who utters them, for generations up and down.  There is one other phrase which will soon come to be decisive of a man’s social status, if it is not already:  “That tells the whole story.”  It is an expression which vulgar and conceited people particularly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from them.  It is intended to stop all debate, like the previous question in the General Court.  Only it don’t; simply because “that” does not usually tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story.