The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses this noblest of institutions.  Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his popgun.  Such a society is the crown of a literary metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in.  Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive.  Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put together.

—­All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.”  They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.  Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy?  I allow no “facts” at this table.  What!  Because bread is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking?  Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech?

[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind.  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 who 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.