They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to you, the Reader) for people that do a good deal of talking; they call them “conversationists,” or “conversationalists “; talkists, I suppose, would do just as well.  It is rather dangerous to get the name of being one of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is expected to say something remarkable every time one opens one’s mouth in company.  It seems hard not to be able to ask for a piece of bread or a tumbler of water, without a sensation running round the table, as if one were an electric eel or a torpedo, and couldn’t be touched without giving a shock.  A fellow is n’t all battery, is he?  The idea that a Gymnotus can’t swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational being.  Good talk is not a matter of will at all; it depends—­you know we are all half-materialists nowadays—­on a certain amount of active congestion of the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not before.  I saw a man get up the other day in a pleasant company, and talk away for about five minutes, evidently by a pure effort of will.  His person was good, his voice was pleasant, but anybody could see that it was all mechanical labor; he was sparring for wind, as the Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., would express himself.  Presently,—­

Do you,—­Beloved, I am afraid you are not old enough,—­but do you remember the days of the tin tinder-box, the flint, and steel?  Click! click! click!—­Al-h-h! knuckles that time! click! click!  Click! a spark has taken, and is eating into the black tinder, as a six-year-old eats into a sheet of gingerbread.

Presently, after hammering away for his five minutes with mere words, the spark of a happy expression took somewhere among the mental combustibles, and then for ten minutes we had a pretty, wandering, scintillating play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, if it did not kindle, all around it.  If you want the real philosophy of it, I will give it to you.  The chance thought or expression struck the nervous centre of consciousness, as the rowel of a spur stings the flank of a racer.  Away through all the telegraphic radiations of the nervous cords flashed the intelligence that the brain was kindling, and must be fed with something or other, or it would burn itself to ashes.

And all the great hydraulic engines poured in their scarlet blood, and the fire kindled, and the flame rose; for the blood is a stream that, like burning rock-oil, at once kindles, and is itself the fuel.  You can’t order these organic processes, any more than a milliner can make a rose.  She can make something that looks like a rose, more or less, but it takes all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that blossom in your button-hole; and you may be sure that when the orator’s brain is in a flame, when the poet’s heart is in a tumult, it is something mightier than he and his will that is dealing with him!  As I have looked from