THE IRISH MONTHLY APRIL, 1907 LITTLE ESSAYS ON LIFE AND CHARACTER I. SOCIAL TALL TALK HAVE sometimes been brought into contact with people whose conversation is florid and imposing, and destitute of adjectives of the positive degree-transcendentalists, such folk soar above the commonplace and deal only in the superlative and the unapproachable. In moments of solitude and silence, which with all of us are, alas, too few and brief, memory reproaches them with past mistakes and delinquencies; but when they begin to talk, they are other men, failure and defeat they have never known. The excitement of conversation, the stimulus of vanity, the prospect of fame (that last infirmity of noble minds), with the eagerness to seize the upper hand and outshine competitors, lead them to spurn the bounds of actual experience and mere truth. They embellish, they exert their imagination, they idealize, and they succeed very often in making themselves ridiculous. When I think of those men, who, indeed, in the spending of money and the other practical details of life show no lack of common sense, I am conscious of a mild wonder, and, casting about for an explanation of their hardihood and brilliancy in conversation, I try to enter into their thoughts and examine their point of view. I am slow to believe that they are liars, or that they have even a wish to deceive; and the best conjecture that I can form of their mental state represents them as excited and dazzled in the presence of listeners, and influenced by a spurious kind of inspiration. Like orators who soar on eagles' wings and carry their hearers with them, they amplify and burst into flowers of rhetoric, and perorate, and would be astonished if anyone accused them of deliberate lying. It is not their fault (no more than it is an orator's) if the listener is deceived. VOL. XXXV.-No. 406. When from their treasures they bring forth things easy of comprehension, they feel that they confer a benefit and that it is none of their business to provide an intellect that shall save hearers from error. And, no doubt, in their use of the rhetorical figure of exaggeration, which, according to its definition, is "an elegant surpassing of the truth "(Cicero, De Oratore), it is sometimes easy to discount their assertions; as when a Gascon, hearing his fellowsoldiers talking of their warlike deeds, said, "I would have ye know that the mattress I sleep on is stuffed with the whiskers of those whom I slew in fair fight." But skilful manipulators of verbiage shun such manifest excess, and yet know how to convey the impression that they are cleverer, stronger, handsomer, or in some other important respect more admirable than their fellows. Praise is sweet, yea, too sweet, for the desire of it leads them, despite their cunning, into many a pitfall. An acquaintance of mine, Isaac Onstilts, Esq., is a case in point. Vaulting ambition, which so often o'erleaps itself, is one of Isaac's infirmities. His conviction that the world is full of fools he does not hesitate to affirm with loud emphasis, and the rustics of the village near which he lives look up to him with respect and admiration. For he is none of those insignificant and poor-spirited folk, whose diction is mean and pointless, and whose whole career from the cradle to the grave is flat and barren, without honour to themselves and without profit to the human race; in the sonorous phraseology of his favourite author, Dr. Johnson, he sets forth his exploits and opinions, and is not deterred by any squeamish modesty from painting himself as he is, a successful man unspoiled by prosperity. At the sea-port to which he migrates for a month every summer, he throws out his chest and walks in the middle of the road, the whole width of which seems scarce large enough for his swaying arms and majestic stride, and people ask who he is. The street arabs keep out of his way. Once when he reproved them for expectorating on the side-path, a youngling of the tribe inquired: "Say, Bill, what's that, 'pectoratin'? "Oh, nothin' but just spit." "Why don't he say so?" "'Cause the yokel don't know no better." During an evening walk he saw a crowd running, and he caught hold of a small boy: "What is it? is it a conflagration?" The urchin gave him a puzzled look and broke from his grasp, shouting: "No, no, 'tis a fire!" The clergymen with whom Onstilts converses he convicts of want of knowledge of the world and even of mistaken views on certain points of theology and practical morality. To military men he has revealed secrets of engineering, quoting Vauban as his authority, and he expatiates on the strategy of Napoleon and Von Moltke, which he studied when viewing, as a Cook's tourist, the famous battlefields of the Continent. The good stories of the Duke of A, and the Marquis of B, his particular friends, he retells for the benefit of ordinary people, while a passing allusion is made to the eminent public men who button-hole him to ask his advice and find out the trend of opinion in his county. I abstain from referring to literary and artistic topics, on which he is an acknowledged authority, and shall merely mention the anecdote (I look on it as both illfounded and ill-natured) that a great living painter, hearing him discourse on the masterpieces of Rubens, Murillo, and Raphael, exclaimed in a loud aside, "Lord, what a fool!" Such is Isaac Onstilts, so loud, so big-hearted, so superior, and so irrepressible, that "I cannot speak him home." It is proverbially easy to see the mote in another's eye, but I ask myself, conscience-stricken, is there a beam in my own? Can I recall, without a blush, certain tall talk indulged in as a boy, a youth, a man? Verily, I bow my head, and beating my breast in confusion resolve to be blameless in this particular for the rest of my days. And thou, dear reader, let me ask it in all gentleness, hast thou never narrated thy feasts of agility and strength, thy exploits as a horseman, an angler, a swimmer? Hast thou buried in silence the football goals which thou hast kicked, or that "century not out," with which thou wert credited in a famous cricket match; or, perhaps, the "hat-trick" which stamped thee as the bowler of a season? Is there aught with which thou canst reproach thyself in connexion with music, or literary success, or social standing, or thy genealogical tree? But I stay my hand; for thou needest not my help, I am sure, in the salutary exercise, often by thee worthily gone through, of examining thy conscience: thou hast set the house of thy spirit in order, and the dust of the land of tall talk has been shaken from thy feet. Thine is the wisdom of the Germanic proverb, "Who says little has little to answer for," and thou takest to thy heart the advice of the Spanish saw, "No flies can get into a shut mouth." St. Thomas Aquinas devotes a brief section of his Summa to boasting or tall talk, which he terms jactantia. Jactantia, he says, is directly opposed to truth per excessum, and springs usually from vanity or the desire of vain glory. Yet what * *Sometimes it may be occasioned, he explains, by the hope of material gain, as when lawyers and physicians boast of their attainments and successes. Advertisements of patent medicines must be referred to the same would be in ordinary circumstances unjustifiable exaggeration, or boasting, is in the case of some individuals but the statement of an undoubted fact. When Giotto with a sweep of his hand draws a circle, or Michael Angelo produces a masterpiece, either may say with truth, "It cannot be better done.' The conscious possession of special power is not opposed to modesty, and where singular talents are bestowed, it would be wrong to bury them, and so from sloth or diffidence make them useless to the world. We are all liable to illusion with respect to ourselves; and a gentle and charitable judgment of extravagant language will take us nearer to the truth than will a mocking and cynical condemnation of the speaker. All through life fancy and selflove play us scurvy tricks in the views which they persuade us to entertain of our abilities, virtues, and faults, and we often hold with sincerity opinions on such personal points, which clear-sighted friends know to be mere delusion. Yet it is surely our duty to free ourselves, as far as possible, from fog of mind, and cultivate self-restraint, candour, and truthfulness. Social virtues of this character are the bonds that unite civilized men and create the confidence which is essential to trustworthy dealings with one another. Nor is it necessary that we should believe that the commonplace in speech and conduct is the only form of truth, or lies nearest the truth. To man, owning, as he does, an imperishable spirit as well as a body, life and its belongings can never be wholly commonplace. The reflecting and enlightened mind regards the earth as a wonderland, where We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love. Is it not the simple truth that in the sunshine and the beauty of this world of ours, in the kindly change of day and night, in the succession of the seasons, in all the marvels of power and wisdom that we see around us, we behold the tokens of a Father's love? A truth of this nature enlarges our views and impels us to cherish lofty ideals of veracity, courage and nobleness of soul. Those love truth best who to themselves are true, Sincerity and unselfishness, hopefulness and energy, industry and perseverance-all of us can, if we maintain a resolute will, become possessed of those qualities, with Heaven's help, and exercise by means of them a beneficent influence on the lives of others and the welfare of our country M. W. category. As well as the following inscription in glaring letters on the signboard outside a diminutive shop in a New York cellar: "Great International and Trans-Continental Umbrella and Walking Stick Emporium." |