If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren.  If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth “says he,” and listen like a three-years’ child, as the author of the “Old Sailor” says.  I had rather hear one of those grand elemental laughs from either of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,) glisten to one of those old playbills of our College days, in which “Tom and Jerry” ("Thomas and Jeremiah,” as the old Greek Professor was said to call it) was announced to be brought on the stage with whole force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying.  Of course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute, illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a while as much as another.

Nobody talks much that does n’t say unwise things,—­things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.  Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of thought.  I can’t answer for what will turn up.  If I could, it would n’t be talking, but “speaking my piece.”  Better, I think, the hearty abandonment of one’s self to the suggestions of the moment at the risk of an occasional slip of the tongue, perceived the instant it escapes, but just one syllable too late, than the royal reputation of never saying a foolish thing.

—­What shall I do with this little man?—­There is only one thing to do,—­and that is to let him talk when he will.  The day of the “Autocrat’s” monologues is over.

—­My friend,—­said I to the young fellow whom, as I have said, the boarders call “John,”—­My friend,—­I said, one morning, after breakfast,—­can you give me any information respecting the deformed person who sits at the other end of the table?

What! the Sculpin?—­said the young fellow.

The diminutive person, with angular curvature of the spine,—­I said, —­and double talipes varus,—­I beg your pardon,—­with two club-feet.

Is that long word what you call it when a fellah walks so?—­said the young man, making his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you may have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when they show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by this rotating guard,—­the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported, fiercely prominent, death-threatening.

It is,—­said I.—­But would you have the kindness to tell me if you know anything about this deformed person?

About the Sculpin?—­said the young fellow.

My good friend,—­said I,—­I am sure, by your countenance, you would not hurt the feelings of one who has been hardly enough treated by Nature to be spared by his fellows.  Even in speaking of him to others, I could wish that you might not employ a term which implies contempt for what should inspire only pity.