Talkers: With Illustrations

“Is it not all fancy on your part, Mr. Smith?” asked Mrs. Lane.

“I only hope it may be, but I fear it is true.”

“In what respects do you think he is changed?” asked Mrs. Lane.

“I do not, somehow or other, observe the same tone of spirituality in his preaching and company as were so obvious during the first part of his sojourn with us.”

“Well, do you know,” said Mrs. Lane, “although I asked whether it was not all fancy on your part, yet I have had my apprehensions and fears, similar to yours. I have never mentioned them to any one before. I have been very grieved to see the change, and have prayed much for him. How do you account for it, Mr. Smith?”

“I can only account for it by the supposition that he has been too much under the influence of Mr. Thoughtless, who, you know, is a man given to flattery, and who has by this flattery injured other young ministers who have been with us.”

“It is ten thousand pities,” said Mrs. Lane, “that Mr. Sharp was not warned of the dangers of his flattery.”

“It is just here, you know, Mrs. Lane. Mr. Thoughtless is a man of such influence in our Church, so bland in his way, so fair in his words, so wealthy in his means, that it is little use saying anything to warn against him. Besides, I fear that others have been too flattering in their addresses and compliments.”

Mrs. Lane replied with evident emotion, “I am jealous of our dear minister. He is in jeopardy. O do let us pray for him, Mr. Smith, lest the flattering lips prove his ruin?”

Mrs. Lane was right in her fears. In the course of a few months after this brief conversation, Mr. Sharp had reached a great height of self-importance. He failed in most of the amiable virtues which adorned his early career. He deteriorated in the zeal and spirituality of his preaching. He became florid, self-assured, and self-displaying. He thought his abilities too great for the Church at C – . The congregation had declined, and he assigned to himself as a reason, they could not appreciate the high quality of his preaching. He sought a change; and accepted an invitation to a Church in the city of B – . In this Church he had little acceptance after a few weeks. Surrounded as he was by so many popular ministers of other Churches, he was unable to maintain his ground. He fell into temptation, and committed sin. He was arraigned before his brethren, tried in the presence of the most satisfactory witnesses, and expelled from the Christian Ministry.

This deep degradation was afterwards traced in its origin to the flattering, fawning tongue and conduct of Mr. Thoughtless.

Flattery is too frequently indulged in by parents towards their children. How many sons and daughters have been ruined by it would be difficult to say. I will give one case as an illustration.

Mr. Horton was a tradesman in a flourishing business. He looked well after it as a man of the world, and never allowed a “good chance” to escape. He had a son as his first-born. This son was a great favourite with him, for he saw in him the powers which would make a clever man of business. When he first wore jackets, Harry proved himself an adept in small trades, bartering his worn out and damaged toys for the better ones of his playmates.

“I tell you,” said Horton one day to a friend of his in the presence of Harry, “that is the boy who is good at a bargain.”

This was the phrase he often used when he wished to pass an eulogium upon his boy as a little tradesman. Also in other ways he failed not to set up his son as a paragon in business.

Made vain by these flatteries, he went on in increasing zeal and craftiness to be “good at a bargain.”

The flattering words of his father impelled him in all possible ways to make money; so that when grown to manhood he was an adept at sharpness in trade practices. At last, however, he went too far. His cunning, which had grown out of “being good at a bargain,” was employed in a fraud, which was discovered and led to his apprehension. When his trial came on, his father was present, anxiously waiting the issue. When the sentence of his guilt was given, and his punishment stated, he covered his face with his hand in deep emotion of paternal grief. He could not look upon his condemned son, whom he had helped to ruin, whom he had started and encouraged in the way which brought him to this end.

It was a most distressing scene when the father and son met in the dreary prison cell. Each looked at the other with reproach. Each blamed the other for the shame and pain brought upon them.

“This is a ‘bad bargain,’ my boy,” said the old man, tremulously. “You have ruined us all.”

“Ruined you!” responded the son, in a tone that stung the father to the heart. “Who ruined me? I was ruined when you flattered me so in my boyhood, telling me so often how clever I was and good at a bargain, instead of checking me: when you praised my trickery instead of punishing it. Had you then kept back those words of parental flattery and trained me in principles of strict honesty, I should not now have been here, paying in prison walls by convict labour and a felon’s name the price of ‘being good at a bargain.’”

In how many other ways the flattering tongues of parents have issued in the ruin of children I have not space to illustrate.

“Take care,” says Walter Raleigh, “thou be not made fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies as thou shall never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling. They are hard to distinguish from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter.”

“Beware of flattery – ’tis a flowery weed
Which oft offends the very idol vice
Whose shrine it would perfume.”

····

“Of all wild beasts, preserve me from a tyrant;
And of all tame – a flatterer.”

IV.

THE BRAWLER

“As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the loudest babblers.”

    – Plato.

This is a Talker whose characteristic consists in the possession of sound lungs and sonorous voice. He is particularly jealous of their failure, and hence, as a means of their preservation, he keeps them in good exercise. “Practice makes perfect;” and believing in this maxim, he uses his vocal functions without squeamish regard to the possibility of their decline. One would imagine from the volume and strength of tongue-power put forth in his conversation that he considered his hearers stone deaf. He does not in fact talk but proclaim. I doubt not that he is sometimes guilty of this outrage from vanity, because he thinks what he has to say is of such vast importance; or he has his own person in such veneration, that he believes nothing which concerns him can be insignificant to anybody else. I do not wonder that some people have had the drum of their ears seriously affected by his brawling. Nor is it surprising that old maids have been thrown into hysterics, and little children scared out of their wits by his vociferousness. Nor should it be set down as a thing extraordinary that strong-nerved men have found it expedient to insist either upon a reduction of the wind in the organ, or a stoppage of the instrument altogether, or a hasty exit of their persons from his presence.

As a preventive of these calamities in the future, and as a means of restoring this unfortunate talker into his proper position in the ranks of modern polite and intelligent society, I have been led to search in my books for a cure of his fault, and I have discovered the following in the Spectator: —

“… Plutarch tells us that Caius Gracchus, the Roman, was frequently hurried by his passions into so loud and tumultuous a way of speaking, and so strained his voice as not to be able to proceed. To remedy this excess, he had an ingenious servant, by name Licinius, always attending him with a pitch-pipe, or instrument to regulate the voice; who, whenever he heard his master begin to be high, immediately touched a soft note, at which, ’tis said, Caius would presently abate and grow calm.

“Upon recollecting this story, I have frequently wondered that this useful instrument should have been so long discontinued, especially since we find that this good office of Licinius has preserved his memory for many hundred years, which, methinks, should have encouraged some one to revive it, if not for the public good, yet for his own credit. It may be objected that our loud talkers are so fond of their own noise that they would not take it well to be checked by their servants. But granting this to be true, surely any of their hearers have a very good title to play a soft note in their own defence. To be short, no Licinius appearing, and the noise increasing, I was resolved to give this late long vacation to the good of my country; and I have at length, by the assistance of an ingenious artist (who works for the Royal Society), almost completed my design, and shall be ready in a short time to furnish the public with what number of these instruments they please, either to lodge at coffee-houses, or carry for their own private use. In the meantime I shall pay that respect to several gentlemen, who I know will be in danger of offending against this instrument, to give them notice of it by private letters, in which I shall only write, ‘Get a Licinius.’

“I had almost forgotten to inform you that as an improvement in this instrument, there will be a particular note, which I shall call a hush-note; and that is to be made use of against a long story, swearing, obsceneness, and the like.”

V.

THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

“Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”

    – James.

“We should be as careful of our words as our actions; and as far from speaking as doing ill.”

    – Tull.

The presence of this talker is almost ubiquitous. His aim is to create ill-humour, misunderstandings, bickerings, envies, jealousies, suspicions, quarrels, and separations, where exist mutual good-will, concord, love, confidence. His nature and work are in reality beneath the society of human beings. It is even questionable whether he is not in these respects below the rank of demons. Yet he boldly enters your presence, sits by your side, looks you askant in the face, asks you questions, communicates information, and feigns himself your friend and the friend of everybody. At the same time he may be concocting a plan of mischief between you and a neighbour with whom you are living on terms of amity; and the next thing you hear after he has left your house is, that you and your neighbour are intending some evil one towards the other. This is all you know of it. The fact is, Mischief-maker is at the bottom of it, and if the friendship between you is not broken, it will not be his fault.

He is in peaceful society like a mischievous child in a well-furnished drawing-room, puts things in confusion, and destroys much that is valuable and worth preserving, and when asked, “Who has done it?” pleads ignorance, or places it upon the shoulders of others, joining you in strong utterances of condemnation of such wanton conduct.

Mr. and Mrs. Blandford had lived together in their village cottage forty years, in the greatest conjugal affection and concord. It was generally known that they had seldom or ever had a quarrel or misunderstanding during the whole of that period. They were hoping that their declining years would be spent in similar blessedness. But, alas! such was not to be their lot.

There lived not far from them a neighbour whose disposition was anything but loving, and who took pleasure in promoting ill-will between those who lived in peace. She had long had her heart set upon provoking a quarrel between this happy pair. She had tried in many secret ways to bring it about, but all failed. At last she hit upon one which accomplished her malicious end, and evinced the more than diabolical nature of her design.

On a certain day she made a neighbourly call upon Mrs. Blandford, and in course of conversation, said, —

“You and Mr. Blandford have lived a long time together.”

“We have. Forty years, I think, next December the 14th.”

“And all this time, I am told, you have never had a quarrel.”

“Not one.”