As we in England are a sober People, and generally inclined rather to a certain Bashfulness of Behaviour in Publick, it is amazing whence some Fellows come whom one meets with in this Town; they do not at all seem to be the Growth of our Island; the Pert, the Talkative, all such as have no Sense of the Observations of others, are certainly of foreign Extraction.  As for my Part, I am as much surprised when I see a talkative Englishman, as I should be to see the Indian Pine growing on one of our quick-set Hedges.  Where these Creatures get Sun enough, to make them such lively Animals and dull Men, is above my Philosophy.

There are another Kind of Impertinents which a Man is perplexed with in mixed Company, and those are your loud Speakers:  These treat Mankind as if we were all deaf; they do not express but declare themselves.  Many of these are guilty of this Outrage out of Vanity, because they think all they say is well; or that they have their own Persons in such Veneration, that they believe nothing which concerns them can be insignificant to any Body else.  For these Peoples sake, I have often lamented that we cannot close our Ears with as much ease as we can our Eyes:  It is very uneasy that we must necessarily be under Persecution.  Next to these Bawlers, is a troublesome Creature who comes with the Air of your Friend and your Intimate, and that is your Whisperer.  There is one of them at a Coffee-house which I my self frequent, who observing me to be a Man pretty well made for Secrets, gets by me, and with a Whisper tells me things which all the Town knows.  It is no very hard matter to guess at the Source of this Impertinence, which is nothing else but a Method or Mechanick Art of being wise.  You never see any frequent in it, whom you can suppose to have anything in the World to do.  These Persons are worse than Bawlers, as much as a secret Enemy is more dangerous than a declared one.  I wish this my Coffee-house Friend would take this for an Intimation, that I have not heard one Word he has told me for these several Years; whereas he now thinks me the most trusty Repository of his Secrets.  The Whisperers have a pleasant way of ending the close Conversation, with saying aloud, Do not you think so? Then whisper again, and then aloud, but you know that Person; then whisper again.  The thing would be well enough, if they whisper’d to keep the Folly of what they say among Friends; but alas, they do it to preserve the Importance of their Thoughts.  I am sure I could name you more than one Person whom no Man living ever heard talk upon any Subject in Nature, or ever saw in his whole Life with a Book in his Hand, that I know not how can whisper something like Knowledge of what has and does pass in the World; which you would think he learned from some familiar Spirit that did not think him worthy to receive the whole Story.  But in truth Whisperers deal only in half Accounts of what they entertain you